Green fuel for ships and trucks

It is the “Innovator of the Year” for 2024: the DeCarTrans project aims to improve the production of climate-friendly e-fuel from methanol.

Experts believe that electric vehicles are the future. “But there will always be certain niches where carbon-based liquid fuels are still needed – for example, in heavy-duty transport and shipping,” says Dr. Joachim Pasel, who is head of the department “Chemistry of Fuel Synthesis” at the Institute of Energy Technologies – Electrochemical Process Engineering (IET-4). Together with five partners, his team has been investigating the production of synthetic gasoline from methanol in the DeCarTrans project. “We want to show how methanol can be converted into a renewable fuel on an industrial scale in just one step,” explains Pasel. The current methanol-to-gasoline process requires two chemical steps, which is time-consuming and expensive. This is something the DeCarTrans project aims to change. Their efforts have been recognized by the German business community, which awarded the project the 2024 “Innovator of the Year” prize in the “Energy” category. The project also received the audience award.

Today’s fuels are generally based on fossil raw materials such as crude oil, which release CO₂ when burned. A climate-friendly alternative would be sustainably produced synthetic fuels, commonly known as e-fuels, which could power conventional combustion engines and be supplied via existing infrastructure. “We want to demonstrate that green methanol can be used to produce a sustainable fuel with similar properties to conventional petrol,” says the Jülich researcher. Methanol can be produced sustainably by allowing green hydrogen to react with CO₂ from the atmosphere, for example.

Preisverleihung an DeCarTrans — Double reason to celebrate: DeCarTrans received both the main prize and the audience award for ‘Innovator of the Year’ 2024.

The methanol is converted into fuel in the pilot reactor of project partner CAC Engineering and in the large-scale test facility at TU Freiberg. Meanwhile, the Jülich researchers are developing a virtual replica of the pilot reactor. “It allows us to simulate the process on a computer and test various parameters such as temperature, pressure, and flow rate,” says Pasel. This significantly reduces the costs of technical implementation. The computer-based model is fed with experimental data from tests on a small Jülich test reactor.

The project will run until the end of 2026. Whilst charging an electric car battery will always be more energy-efficient than any production process for synthetic gasoline, Pasel is optimistic that “improved e-fuels will help to reduce CO₂ emissions in the transport sector in future, especially in existing fleets.”

This text is taken from the 1/25 issue of effzett. Text: Janosch Deeg