French multi-energy group TotalEnergies SE (LON:TTE) has partnered with Dresden-based electrolyser developer Sunfire GmbH and two Fraunhofer institutes on a pilot e-methanol project in an effort to reuse the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its refinery in the German town of Leuna.
The Leuna refinery produces some 700,000 tonnes of methanol per year from fossil raw materials and is the largest such facility in Europe. To synthesise the so-called green methanol, or e-methanol, TotalEnergies is launching a research project with the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP and the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS to test the combination of three processes.
As explained by Fraunhofer IMWS, the e-CO2Met project would test the use of the CO2 from the refinery and green hydrogen from high-temperature electrolysis and the subsequent methanol synthesis on the Hy2Chem scaling platform.
"With the Hy2Chem platform, we can test the use of regeneratively produced hydrogen for the production of feedstock chemicals and fuels in sustainable synthesis processes on a large scale for the first time - even under the conditions of a fluctuating hydrogen stream," said group leader Ulrike Junghans, the project coordinator at Fraunhofer CBP.
Sunfire is supplying its 1-MW high-temperature electrolyser, which due to its efficiency of more than 80%, requires significantly less power to produce one kilogramme of hydrogen, according to Fraunhofer IMWS.
Fraunhofer IMWS operates the Hydrogen Lab at the Leuna Chemical Park, a large-scale test facility fully integrated with the chemical industry. There, TotalEnergies and Fraunhofer CBP would build a pilot plant to convert green hydrogen and highly concentrated CO2 into green methanol.
The Hydrogen Lab can simulate different load profiles typical of renewable energy supply, map their diurnal and inter-seasonal fluctuations and provide important findings for the design and cost estimation of the systems under realistic conditions, the research institute said.
"TotalEnergies R&D program on Carbon Capture and Utilization is developing approaches for the economically viable reuse of CO2 which is in line with the climate ambition of the company," said Marie-Noelle Semeria, chief technology officer at TotalEnergies. "e-CO2Met is the first pilot project for TotalEnergies to convert CO2 with renewable electric energy to methanol”.
The pilot plant project is funded by the German state of Saxony-Anhalt via the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
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Sketch of the e-methanol pilot project in Leuna, Germany. Image source: Fraunhofer IMWS (www.imws.fraunhofer.de)
