Synthetic Fuels in the News

2GreenEnergy has had a long-running interest in helping a company called Doty WindFuels enter the synthetic fuel market; in fact, they’re on our “clean energy investment opportunities” page.  The company, based in Columbia, SC, has a proprietary multi-step approach that starts with off-peak wind (or nuclear, or anything), hydrogen from electrolyzed water, and point sources of CO2.

There have been lots of attempts to do this over the last 80 years or so, but none for efficient or cost-effective.

Come to learn that Audi is working on this, though in less efficient means.  From Green Auto Digest:

Audi is preparing to start production of a synthetic diesel fuel that it’s calling e-diesel. Working with two partner companies, a plant will be set up in Laufenburg, Switzerland, that will be able to take excess energy coming from hydropower combined with CO2, converting it into a CO2-neutral diesel fuel. The CO2 being used will come from the air or bio waste gases. Construction of the plant will start in 2018 and should be finished by the end of that year, with the capacity of producing around 105,000 gallons of e-diesel per year. Audi’s e-fuels started in 2011 with plans to start energy production from wind turbines in the North Sea that would feed the renewable energy back into the grid. That led to turning renewables into liquid fuels that could power vehicles, with the first one being e-gas in 2013. The E-gas synthetic fuel, similar to natural gas, was followed by e-benzin in 2015, a synthetic fuel named after Germany’s term for gasoline, benzin.