E-TANDEM

The EU target for 2050 to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions economy is crucial to cease global warming and its consequences on climate. While electrification is the blueprint for passenger vehicles, the de-fossilization of other transport sectors such as heavy-duty and long-haul ground, shipping and aviation transport relies on the availability of carbon-neutral fuels with much higher volumetric energy densities than state-of-the-art batteries.

Synthetic liquid hydrocarbons and light oxygenate (methanol, DME) renewable fuels stand as the current options. Higher (with 5 or more carbon atoms in their chemical formula) oxygenate compounds, such as aliphatic alcohols and ethers, could prove a highly preferred alternative, due to their exceptional capacity to reduce tailpipe volatile organics and soot emissions compared to paraffinic fuels (owing to their mildly oxygenated chemical formula) and their advantageous logistics and compatibility with current-fleet infrastructures (fuel distribution networks and internal combustion engines) compared to lighter oxygenate compounds with greater oxygen contents.

The E-TANDEM (Horizon Europe) project ambitions to unlock an efficient and direct production of a new higher-oxygenate diesel-like e-fuels which can replace fossil diesel in the marine and heavy-duty transport sectors. Said oxygenated fuel is directly produced from waste CO2 (from industrial exhaust streams or direct capture from the air) as the sole carbon source, and renewable power as the sole energy input, in a once-through hybrid catalytic process which integrates three major catalysis branches: electrocatalysis, solid thermocatalysis and molecular chemocatalysis.

E-TANDEM advances on breakthrough findings made by consortium partners with catalyst materials which, owing to their unconventional performance, enable for the first time the integration of reductive polymerization and oxo-functionalization reactions from renewable syngas (CO+H2) in a single-step process with greater carbon and energy efficiency than conventional multi-step conversion schemes, alongside essentially no CO2 side-production. The project will demonstrate the new e-fuel production concept in continuous mode at bench-scale (< 1L/h) validating the technology at technology readiness level (TRL) 4. Emphasis will be placed on assessing and optimizing the process dynamic response to stationary and daily fluctuations which are inherent to renewable hybrid wind-solar power inputs. Moreover, fuel benchmarking, techno-economic and life-cycle analyses will assess the soundness of current fleet-compatibility, sustainability and societal aspects of the newly proposed higher oxygenate e-fuel and its production concept.

Duration: 01 November 2022 - 30 April 2026