Fuels are currently obtained almost exclusively from crude oil, but there is no alternative. There are various processes with which fuels can also be produced in other ways. However, they all have one thing in common: They are niche solutions that will hardly achieve any appreciable market share in the foreseeable future. There are various reasons for this, which we want to examine in this series of articles.
There are now a whole range of methods for artificially producing liquid fuels, and by no means all of them rely on electricity and electrolysis, as is the case with eFuels. In the “TO-SYN-FUEL” project, the Fraunhofer Institute “UMSICHT” investigated how fuel can be obtained from sewage sludge. At the time of the recently published final report, the plant in Hohenburg had produced 50,000 liters of synthetic crude oil from 500 tons of dried sewage sludge. Fraunhofer is confident that there could be various business models in the technology.
A piece of the puzzle
First, though, some context to dampen the expectation that sewage sludge is just—boom! – could replace petroleum. In Germany there is potential for around 1.8 million tons of dried sewage sludge annually. If only diesel were made out of it (it will probably be diesel and petrol in their typical proportions), this fuel would cover a maximum of 6 per thousand of the diesel consumption from 2022 (we burned 32.5 million tons). We are therefore dealing with a small piece of the energy puzzle, not with a general solution for “business as usual”. For “everything to continue as before” there is no alternative to oil. With that clue behind us, let’s take a look at the exciting piece of the puzzle!
