Synthetic fuels with solar heat: first industrial plant ready
Synhelion, a spin-off from ETH Zurich, says it has managed to scale up its technology for producing fuels with solar heat.
(Image: Synhelion)
The world's first industrial plant to produce synthetic fuels using solar heat is now located in Jülich. The plant, called DAWN and operated by the company Synhelion, was inaugurated this week and is due to go into operation this year. It is intended to demonstrate that the technology can also be used on a large scale to produce renewable fuel for aviation in particular, but also for other means of transportation.
The plant consists of a 20-meter-high solar tower and a mirror field. The solar tower contains a solar radiation receiver, a thermochemical reactor and a thermal energy storage unit, which should enable the cost-efficient production of solar fuels around the clock. The aim is to produce several thousand liters per year.
1500 °C process heat
An input gas consisting of CO₂ and water vapor (H₂O) is heated directly in the plant with a process heat of around 1500 °C, which is then thermolytically split at a reactor module into synthesis gas ("syngas" for short), a mixture of hydrogen gas (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO). This gas is processed into synthetic crude oil using the standard Fischer-Tropsch process, known as syncrude.
This intermediate product is particularly suitable for transportation, explains Synhelion. The syncrude is then processed into certified fuels such as kerosene, petrol or diesel in a conventional oil refinery. They should be fully compatible with the fuel infrastructure.
The technology was developed at ETH Zurich; Synhelion is a spin-off of the university. A "mini refinery" was operated on the roof of the ETH for the first time in 2019. Since then, Synhelion has been working on scaling up the technology, known as "Sun to Liquid", and making it usable on an industrial scale. It is now ready for industrial use, and Synhelion plans to build the first commercial plant in Spain in 2025, which will produce around 1,000 tons of fuel per year. Within ten years, Synhelion aims to achieve an annual production volume of around one million tons of solar fuel.
(anw)