Germany cleantech company Sunfire GmbH may have found a future replacement for fossil fuels, having developed a rig that can transform water into a synthetic fuel source.
The rig accomplishes this through "Power-to-liquid" technology, which converts water and carbon dioxide (CO2) into liquid hydrocarbons to be used as synthetic petroleum, kerosene and diesel, according to CNET.
Solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs) play a role in the process, converting energy supplied by wind, solar and other renewable resources into steam. Hydrogen is produced by removing oxygen from the steam, and is then used to produce CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO). The rig then synthesizes the resultant H2 and CO into high-purity fuel.
Sunfire had to make use of the Fischer-Tropsch process, a technique for producing liquid hydrocarbons developed in 1925, in order to get the results it needed, Yahoo! News reported.
The rig is able to recycle 3.2 tonnes of CO2 each day and produces one barrel of fuel each day. The machine currently serves for demonstration and feasibility uses.
Sunfire, which had to spend "seven figures" to design and build the rig, says the process is able to achieve an efficiency rate of 70 percent by using excess heat to create more steam, CNET reported.
Christian von Olshausen, CTO of Sunfire, said the company now has to focus on "regulatory factors falling into place in a way which gives investors a sufficient level of planning reliability."
"Once that has occurred it will be possible to commence the step-by-step substitution of fossil fuels," von Olshausen added. "If we want to achieve fuel economy in the long term, we need to get started today."
