Green methanol for ships and aircraft

08/16/2023

Source: Energy & Management Powernews

A research project to produce green methanol for ships and aircraft has started in Leuna (Saxony-Anhalt). It is funded by the federal government with 10.4 million euros.

A consortium with the following partners is involved in the methanol research project "Leuna100": Climate-Tech-Start-up C1 from Berlin, Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES, Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology "UMSICHT", DBI-Gaste Technological Institute Freiberg and the Technical University of Berlin.

The goal is market-ready and scalable production of green methanol for marine and aviation applications, according to a statement from the consortium. Alcohol is seen as the key to defossilizing these industries and freeing them from dependence on petroleum, it said. To do so, the company is relying on the novel C1 catalysis process, it said.

According to C1, shipping alone is currently responsible for the emission of around 1.1 billion tons of CO2, which accounts for around three percent of global CO2 emissions. In addition, there are other air pollutants that are harmful to health, such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides or particulate matter. Replacing fossil oil with renewable marine fuels could save more than one gigaton of CO2 every year.

Previous process technically exhausted

Today's production of methanol is based on a one-hundred-year-old, technically exhausted and emission-heavy manufacturing process, based on fossil natural gas or coal. C1 has developed a new catalyst that aims to revolutionize this process. It enables the production of green methanol from non-fossil feedstocks such as biomass or CO2.

"In 1923, the world's first commercial methanol plant was built in Leuna. We are now continuing this success story by completely reinventing the methanol production process at the same location exactly 100 years later," explains Dr. Christoph Zehe, who is responsible for the project as co-founder of C1. "We are thus paving the way for the efficient use of renewable feedstocks for the production of green methanol on an industrial scale and making an important contribution to the development of the Leuna Chemical Park into a future location for green chemistry," says Zehe.

Developing an industrial-ready solution

For the market ramp-up of the e-methanol process, individual process steps and, above all, their coupling into an overall process must be optimized and scaled up, C1 adds. Accordingly, the goal of the project is the world's first realization of the overall process consisting of electricity-based synthesis gas generation and a fundamentally newly developed methanol synthesis under real conditions.

"The climate crisis is forcing an enormously ambitious reduction in CO2 emissions. However, hard-to-electrify sectors such as shipping and aviation have no technically established way to meet this economically and scalably. Regenerative fuels based on green hydrogen and CO2 offer an alternative, but are not yet ready for market ramp-up," explained Dr. Kai junge Puring, project manager at Fraunhofer Umsicht. This is exactly where the Leuna 100 project comes in, he added.

Michael Seirig, department head of hydrogen laboratories and field tests at Fraunhofer IWES, referred to his institute's Hydrogen Lab Leuna, which offers a unique research infrastructure for testing H2 and PtX technologies on an industrial scale and under real conditions, thus providing "optimal conditions for the project." PtX stands for Power to X, the conversion of electricity into any form of energy such as heat or gases or fuels.

Leuna 100 will start in August 2023 at the Leuna Chemical Park and is scheduled to run for three years. It is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport with a total of 10.4 million euros as part of the overall renewable fuels concept.

Author: Günter Drewnitzky