VoltAero hybrid-electric aircraft flies on wine waste

In France, a new hybrid-electric aircraft made a flight for the first time on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) made from wine waste. The French company VoltAero successfully performed the flight powered by SAF derived from bioethanol produced from the waste created by French vineyards. The fuel was delivered by partner TotalEnergies Aviation.

VoltAero’s Cassio S flew on a waste product that may have a great future. Research by the University of California-Davis Department of Food Science and Technology has shown that every 3 of 10 grapes in vineyards all over the world eventually go to waste.

According to FlyingMag, utilizing grape waste as a source for SAF and flying a plane on it, is a first in aviation. The flight was performed VoltAero’s Cassio S testbed airplane – a modified Cessna 337 Skymaster – equipped with a proprietary hybrid-electric powertrain. It ran on TotalEnergies’ Excellium Racing 100 fuel.

Compared to the fossil fuel equivalent, VoltAero said the vineyard-derived fuel can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 65 percent over its entire lifecycle. The Cassio 330 will be VoltAero’s first production plane that will be flown by a single pilot with space for four or five passengers and rely on 330 kilowatts of hybrid-electric propulsion power.