Co-electrolysis to produce syncrude
The production of syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen, is a critical step in making synthetic fuels. A lot of approaches are used in this process. In collaboration with its industrial partner Sunfire, the KIT lab uses co-electrolysis to produce syngas.
The approach is highly efficient since it can convert water vapor and CO2 directly into syngas in a single step. This helps eliminate steps like separate hydrogen production used in syngas production through other approaches.
“Up to 85 percent of the electrical energy used for this process can be recovered as chemical energy in the syngas,” said Hubertus Richter, a senior engineer at Sunfire, in the press release.
“In addition, we could demonstrate with this coupling that our co-electrolysis method features a very high plant availability and reliability and has the potential to produce syngas with the desired quality at any time.”