Synhelion opens world’s 1st industrial solar fuel plant
Published: Thursday, Jun 20th 2024, 14:50
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The Swiss company Synhelion inaugurated the world's first industrial plant for the production of solar fuel on Thursday. The plant in the German city of Jülich will produce several thousand liters of synthetic fuel every year.
Production is expected to start this year, Synhelion explained at the opening ceremony. Customers also include Swiss and its parent company Lufthansa as well as car importer Amag and aircraft manufacturer Pilatus. In addition to Swiss and Amag, the SMS Group, the cement group Cemex and the oil company Eni are also shareholders in the Lugano-based company.
Synhelion was founded in 2016 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich and proved for the first time in 2019 in a mini-refinery on the roof of ETH that fuels can be produced using solar heat.
Fuels for airplanes and cars
The plant in Germany consists of a 20 meter high solar tower and a mirror field. Temperatures of 1500 degrees are reached in the plant, which convert water and a carbon source into synthesis gas, a mixture of H2 and CO, in a thermochemical reactor. Thanks to a thermal energy storage system, production can run around the clock.
The plant produces synthetic crude oil, known as syncrude. This intermediate product is then processed into fuels in a conventional oil refinery.
In addition to solar kerosene for aviation, Synhelion will also produce solar gasoline and solar diesel for road transportation and shipping. "Solar fuels can directly replace fossil fuels and are fully compatible with the world's existing fuel infrastructure - from storage and transportation to combustion engines and aircraft engines," it said.
The plant in Jülich cost 20 million Swiss francs, said Synhelion Co-Managing Director Gianluca Ambrosetti in an interview with the news agency AWP.
Larger plants planned
But the company is already thinking ahead: in Spain, where the sun shines more often than in Switzerland or Germany, the world's first commercial plant for solar fuels is to be built from next year.
A total of around 1000 tons of fuel are to be produced there each year. This is significantly more than in Jülich, where the plant only produces several thousand liters per year. The first deliveries are expected from 2027.
This plant will cost several times more than the plant in Germany. Ambrosetti said that the financing round and the search for investors are now underway. Amag CEO Helmuth Ruhl said that Amag was participating in the financing round for the plant in Spain. And the company has promised to purchase the petrol produced there.
Aiming for much larger facilities
Synhelion is then planning further plants in Europe, the USA and the Middle East, which will significantly exceed the size of the first two plants and thus offer a much higher production capacity. These plants are expected to cost over 1 billion, said Ambrosetti.
From 2033, Synhelion aims to achieve an annual production volume of around one million tons of solar fuel, the company explained. This would correspond to half of Switzerland's kerosene requirements. The increasing volume will also make the fuel cheaper, which is currently still much more expensive than fossil fuel. Production costs of 1 euro per liter of fuel are to be achieved from 2033.
At present, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is still four to six times more expensive than conventional kerosene, Swiss Head of Commercial Heike Birlenbach told AWP. This is an enormous cost factor. The fuel bill accounts for around 30 percent of Swiss' operating costs.
"The widespread use of sustainable aviation fuels is one of the most important measures to achieve the CO2 targets in aviation," said Birlenbach. A year and a half ago, Swiss CEO Dieter Vranckx said that the airline wanted to obtain 11 percent of its kerosene from renewable sources by 2030. They currently only cover 0.2 percent of Swiss' fuel requirements. "We want to be completely climate-neutral by 2050," said Vranckx.
The EU stipulates blending percentages for sustainable aviation fuel. From next year, 2 percent of consumption must come from SAF. From 2030, a blending quota of 20 percent will be mandatory. This gives Synhelion planning certainty that the synthetic fuel can also be sold.
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