On 18 August 2026, thyssenkrupp marked ten years of its Carbon2Chem® research platform and announced that the green light has been given for the construction of a plant in Duisburg that will produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from steel-mill gases. According to trade coverage, the carbon comes from blast-furnace gases and the route runs through methanol (Alcohol-to-Jet).
It is an interesting piece of engineering and, in our view, an awkward piece of carbon accounting, and the two cannot be separated. What follows is an attempt to hold both in view.
Ten years of turning waste gas into feedstock
According to thyssenkrupp’s press release, Carbon2Chem started in 2016 with the groundbreaking ceremony for a technical centre in Duisburg, with the premise of treating CO₂ and other components of blast-furnace gases not as waste but as raw materials. Metallurgical gases contain carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, which can feed chemical products such as methanol, ammonia and synthetic fuels.
The project has more than twenty partners from industry and academia, including several thyssenkrupp companies and research institutes such as the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion and the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Aerospace.
Matthias Kammel, Managing Director of thyssenkrupp Carbon2Chem, is quoted in the release: “We view CO₂ and other components of blast furnace gases not as waste, but as raw materials.”
Why the methanol-to-jet route has moved forward
Methanol is a convenient molecule to make, but flying on it requires conversion to jet fuel and, crucially, qualification under the aviation fuel standards. According to chemeurope, a revision of ASTM D7566 Annex 5 qualifying methanol as a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel was published on 30 July 2026; the resulting components can be blended with at least 50 per cent by volume of conventional kerosene. Until then, methanol-to-jet projects were building towards a specification that did not yet exist, in our reading.
Readers of this blog will recognise the route. SPIN member Paul Scherrer Institute and the Zurich-based start-up Metafuels opened the aerobrew demonstration plant in Villigen on 20 August 2026, described as the first facility worldwide to combine all production steps of the methanol-to-jet route under one roof. What differs between Villigen and Duisburg is, in our view, not the chemistry but where the carbon comes from.
The carbon question, honestly stated
The carbon in blast-furnace gas originates in coal-based metallurgical coke, so it is fossil carbon. This is the point at which a certain kind of commentary declares the whole exercise greenwashing; in our view that reflex is wrong, but so is the opposite reflex of calling the output climate-neutral without qualification.
One condition remains non-negotiable from a Power-to-X perspective: e-SAF only makes climate sense when the carbon it contains is recycled CO₂ from biogenic, atmospheric or industrial sources, and when that recycling displaces fossil carbon instead of providing a reason to burn more of it. Industrial point sources are legitimate. A steel mill that exists anyway, producing gases that would otherwise be burnt or released, is in our view a defensible source of recycled CO₂.
The condition bites at the other end of the sentence. If the value of the gas stream became a reason to keep blast furnaces running longer than they otherwise would, the logic inverts. That is the question worth putting to any steel-gas project. thyssenkrupp Steel is also building a direct-reduction plant in Duisburg, a €3 billion project whose funding terms are being revised because hydrogen use is no longer considered realistic in the initial operating phase. In our reading, that suggests the blast-furnace gas this SAF plant relies on is a diminishing resource over the longer term.
RFNBO, recycled carbon fuel, or neither
European law draws categories that the chemistry does not. Whether the Duisburg output can qualify as a Renewable Fuel of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO) depends, among other things, on the hydrogen supply and on how the carbon is attributed. The announcement does not say. There is also a clock: France Hydrogène describes the RFNBO delegated act as prohibiting the use of CO₂ from industrial sources from 2041 onwards. For a long-lived asset, that is not a distant technicality; in our view it is a question the financing model has to answer.
What has not been said
The press release gives no capacity figure, no investment sum, no construction start and no commissioning date. Some outlets, such as Dr. Web, describe the facility as a pilot plant. According to the release, a second electrolysis hall is to be handed over to thyssenkrupp nucera next year, strengthening the site’s hydrogen supply and supporting continuous industrial operation.
A project announced without numbers should, in our view, be filed under intent rather than delivery until the figures arrive.
Why this matters in Switzerland
Switzerland has adopted the EU’s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation into its air transport agreement with the EU, with a SAF blending obligation for fuel suppliers at Zurich and Geneva. The synthetic-fuel sub-quota begins building up in 2030. Swiss aviation therefore sits inside a demand curve similar to the EU’s, which means, in our view, that every credible e-SAF production project in Europe is indirectly part of the Swiss supply picture.
The Duisburg concept invites a comparison. SPIN member and SPIN board member Synhelion is working on a 30,000-tonne plant now in pre-FEED at RWE’s Hürth-Knapsack site, and Metafuels’ first commercial facility is planned at the Evos terminal in the Port of Rotterdam, with production targeted from 2030.
That is not a reason to dismiss what thyssenkrupp is attempting. Recycling carbon that European heavy industry emits today, while that industry transitions, is exactly the kind of bridge Power-to-X can build. It is a reason to insist that the bridge is described accurately: as defossilisation of a fuel that would otherwise be entirely fossil, with a defined end date attached to its feedstock, rather than as climate-neutral flying. Saying so precisely is what keeps the argument credible when the numbers finally do arrive.
Sources: thyssenkrupp press release, 18 August 2026; Dr. Web; chemeurope.
🤖 AI transparency: This text and its visual were created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human.
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