Synthetic Fuels Could Save The ICE And The Planet, Say Oil Refiners
An organisation representing the fuel refining industry in Europe has issued a plea to politicians and car makers to take synthetic fuels seriously, stating that the CO2 reductions it could bring by 2035 are the equivalent of replacing 50 million ICE cars with BEVs.
In theory, the plan unveiled by FuelsEurope also means new car prices could be kept lower because less new tech would need to be developed. Battery-powered cars have earned a reputation for being seriously expensive to buy, which is a major obstacle to mass adoption. As long as they stay so costly there’s a need for alternatives, argues FuelsEurope.
Conveniently for FuelsEurope and its 40 constituent companies, synthetic fuels are quite a lot more expensive than those from fossil fuels. With their coffers having taken a kicking during the coronavirus pandemic, the group may be trying to accelerate the introduction of a more profitable alternative under the guise of environmental benefit.
The eventual aim, says its director general and spokesman John Cooper, is to break into the maritime and aviation industries with this fuel, but that the automotive industry is the one that gives them the best chance of bringing the cost of the technology down before it’s ready for industrial scale application. In other words, motorists are a known cash cow because we often have no choice but to pay what’s on the board. Happy days.
Low-carbon liquid fuels (LCLFs), to use their proper name, are made from chemicals that don’t produce any CO2 or other known greenhouse gases. At the moment they’re blended with fossil fuels and can’t be used on their own, requiring some modifications to engine technology before they can be used neat.
Mazda, McLaren and engine management experts Bosch are all looking at LCLFs seriously, even if no meaningful progress seems to have been made yet. Others, like Mercedes, say it’s a non-starter because the amount of energy it takes to create the fuel dissolves a vast portion of the overall efficiency of the energy cycle. For any given quantity of raw environmental energy, they say, you could power cars a lot further with batteries than with synthetic fuels.
In a statement released with the backing of all Europe’s major fuel suppliers, Cooper said:
“Today we are setting out an ambitious pathway for enabling transport to contribute to EU’s climate neutrality ambition by 2050, based on scale up of low-carbon-liquid fuels supply and use, across several transport sectors.
“With a clear societal and scientific case for far-reaching climate action, and taking into account the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus crisis, we respect that there will be no return to business as usual for the fuels industries.
“With the focus increasingly turning to recovery and new investments, we believe now is the time to start policy discussions with EU and national policy-makers and customer stakeholders to design the enabling policy framework for the deployment of these essential low-carbon fuels.”
Comments
Why not also do it the Bosch way and caputre CO2 from the atmosphere to create synthetic fuels?
Wouldn’t that help 2 things at once?
Even more energy intensive than producing synthetic fuel. CO2 is a very stable compound and converting it into a less stable hydrocarbon or alcohol etc requires a lot of energy.
It’s being done by other companies. Search for fischer-tropsch diesel and HVO. These are alternatives for fossil diesel, and already accepted by some manufactures.
Do these synthetic fuels have the same benefit as hydrogen fuel cells?
Not quite. Hydrogen only emits water, these wil still emit CO2 (and probably a bit of NO2 and stuff but maybe less than natural fuels as there won’t be impurities in the fuel). But it can still be made carbon-neutral if the fuel is produced via renewable electricity. Also for the same amount of oxygen you get A LOT more power with synthetic fuel than with hydrogen fuel.
What about E85 ? I heard that it spreads less CO2 when burned.
It does but not so much as synthetic fuel as it mostly liberates H2O and an even smaller amount of CO2.
The major stumbling block there is that widespread use of alcohol fuel would need vast areas of agricultural land (which could otherwise be put toward food production)
It does, but the energy density is much lower so you have to burn more fuel, which results in larger CO2 emissions in total. That’s a similiar thing with petrol vs. diesel, 1l petrol emits less CO2 than 1l diesel, but since diesel engines usually consume less fuel the total CO2 emissions are lower.
That’s why some governments have opted to force service stations to sell E10 as 95 oct.
E85 is highly corrosive.
The vast majority of cars will need a new fuel system from fuel tank to combustion chamber and everything in between to use E85 fuel.
E85 produces less CO2 in it’s combustion, but because it takes lots of energy to be produced it’s net CO2 per unit of energy provided is higher than unleaded petrol
E85 fuel has supply side constraints. Because E85 takes a long time and a lot of energy to produce the volume of E85 available at any one time is low. This means that if E85 is adopted as a mainstream fuel there simply wont be enough E85 to fuel most vehicles on the road, so it will be a struggle to find E85 to buy. Even if there is E85 fuel available, it’s price will skyrocket, with sellers knowing that people will essentially bid against each other to secure some E85 for them self.
The thing I find most intriguing about it is that all the way back in 1980s, the creator of Cyberpunk pen and paper game, Mike Pondsmith had this vision that sometime in the future, we’d have synthetic fuel that would be far superior to batteries. And it looks like his vision might become true! The man’s a freaking legend if it does come true! :D
https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/CHOOH2
Seems plausible, but how hard can it be to put it to the masses?
Anything that can preserve the V8 for future generations gets my support
or a V10
Audi and Sunfire have had this tech for a few years now, and the actual technique (electrolysis of water) has been around since the early 1900s. Product is called Blue Crude, and we already have Blue Diesel from it with trials of Blue Petrol already underway (it’s apparently the equivalent of 100 octane).
I think Norway is the only country building a factory for it right now (if it’s not already done). What’s even better is that a car can run on these fuels unmodified and in some cars can see a drop of nearly 80% of it’s total emissions.
I’ve never understood why Europe as a whole has never jumped into this head first. You’d think Europe would be bending over backwards to remove their reliance on American and Saudi oil and afford each country the potential to generate it’s own fuels.
because you can use 3 times less electricity by driving an EV for the same distance
Did we learn nothing from ethanol? Greenwashing wont cut it anymore
All I know about using ethanol for motoring / mobility is that only racing vehicles use ethanol fuel, plus there’s gonna be something awkward that’s gonna happen in case of invisible fire caused by ethanol. Fire incidents can happen when refuelling on gas stations, it’s only a lot weirder if it involves ethanol fuel. I know nothing else about ethanol fuel other than those two.
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