Sargassum
A brown seaweed that drifts in huge mats on the open Atlantic. Since 2011 it has been washing up massively on Caribbean and West African coasts, where it rots and releases harmful gases.
Reference
The words we use, in plain language
Sixteen technical terms that appear across this site, each explained in one or two sentences.
Across the site, terms with a dotted underline show these explanations when you hover over them - or tap them on a phone.
Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt
The recurring band of drifting sargassum stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. In peak months, satellite estimates have exceeded 30 million tonnes of wet seaweed.
Biomass
Material from living things - plants, algae - used as a raw material or an energy source. Here: the seaweed itself.
Wet biomass / wet tonnes
Seaweed weighed as collected, water included. Fresh sargassum is mostly water, so "wet" figures are much larger than the dry matter they contain - our figures say which basis they use.
Feedstock
The raw material a plant transforms. For Salacia: collected sargassum.
Valorisation
Turning something treated as waste into products with value, instead of dumping or destroying it.
Drop-in fuel
A fuel that replaces its fossil equivalent directly - same engines, same tanks, same pipelines, no modification.
Biofuel
Fuel made from recently living material such as plants or algae, rather than from oil, gas or coal.
SAF - sustainable aviation fuel
Jet fuel made from non-fossil sources. European law obliges airlines to blend a growing share of it: from 2% in 2025 to 70% in 2050.
ReFuelEU Aviation
The EU regulation (2023/2405) that sets binding minimum shares of sustainable fuel for flights departing from European airports.
Co-products
The other useful outputs a process yields alongside its main product. Selling them improves the economics of the fuel.
Lifecycle assessment (LCA)
A method that counts a product's emissions over its whole life - raw material, transport, processing, use - not just at the factory gate.
Carbon intensity
How much greenhouse gas a fuel causes per unit of energy it delivers, in grams of CO₂-equivalent per megajoule. Lower is better; the EU fossil reference is 94.
CO₂e - CO₂-equivalent
A common unit that expresses all greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide…) as the amount of CO₂ with the same warming effect.
Circular economy
Keeping materials in use - the waste of one activity becomes the raw material of another - instead of extracting, using once and discarding.
Pilot · demonstrator · platform
The scale-up ladder: a pilot proves the process at small scale; a demonstrator runs it continuously in industrial conditions; a platform is the full-size plant.