2027 Series B
2030 Technology
Demo plant 2024 Deliver kg/day plant in Oxford
package licenced globally Licence
2028 Deliver 10 ton/day plant Commercial plant
Shape catalyst 2022
2026 Deliver 160 kg/day plant
Catalyst IP Filed 2020 Patent led and paper published
3,000 hours stability test in shaped form
2025 Series A2
Catalyst R&D 2010 Early research starts
FOAK plant
2023 £18m Series A
2021 £2m Spin out and seed
2014 EPSRC research funding
Figure 4 OXCCU’s pathway to scale
meaning the technology will be substantially derisked. The current target start date is 2026. The OX3 plant will be OXCCU’s commercial facility, which it plans to licence to a project developer, though it expects to be heavily involved. The company anticipates it will produce 10-20 tonnes of liquid fuel per day and generate both e-naphtha for chemicals and plastics, as well as e-SAF to help meet aviation fuel mandates. A key factor for success will be OXCCU’s significantly reduced Capex costs compared to others due to the advantages of the one-step process and the ability to utilise existing refinery infrastructure where possible for distillation, hydrotreatment, and blending. ASTM allows up to 5% co-processing with F-T SPK, and current SAF mandates and recycled chemical and plastic regulations allow for mass balancing. Conclusion Hydrocarbons are incredible materials, deeply linked to human progress, and cannot always be substituted. The good news is that the fossil type do not have to be used; they can be obtained another way, which reduces their emissions, enabling their continued use. The most scalable is PtL, but the challenge is cost. OXCCU is focused on developing the lowest cost PtL pathway via direct hydrogenation of CO₂, eliminating the RWGS step, and has a path to scale its technology. VIEW REFERENCES Andrew Symes andrew.symes@oxccu.com
Pathway to scale With £2m seed funding, OXCCU built its own lab and established an excellent team of chemists and chemical engineers. It successfully replicated the results from the Nature paper over extended periods and in an industrial format. In 2023, OXCCU secured an £18 million Series A funding round led by Boston-based Clean Energy Ventures, along with support from IP Group, Aramco, Eni, United Airlines, Braavos, Trafigura, University of Oxford, TEV, and Doral, with the purpose of building its OX1 plant in its new site in Oxford Airport. OX1 is now operational, producing 1.2 litres of liquid fuel per day, and will demonstrate the effect of the recycled gases in the recycle loop. It represents a significant scale-up from the lab by a factor of 1,000 and will be operated by OXCCU’s growing chemical engineering team. In the OX1 kg/day plant, OXCCU is currently using bottled hydrogen and CO₂, so the fuel is not yet low-carbon. However, the purpose of this plant is to demonstrate its catalyst and process outside of the lab rather than to produce fuel with an excellent LCA. The key is that there is a clear roadmap for scaling and LCA improvement with OX2 (see Figure 4 ). OXCCU’s first-of-a-kind (FOAK) OX2 plant will be based in Saltend Chemical Park, Hull in Humberside and is set to produce 200 litres of liquid fuel per day. Operated by PX Group, it will use green hydrogen and biogenic CO₂. This will provide all the fuel and data required for OXCCU to be able to licence its process to commercial projects. Crucially, the reactor tube dimensions, diameter and height will remain the same,
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