The Future of Energy: Synthetic Fuels, Electrofuels, and Carbon Capture

As we heavily pursue a future of electric vehicles, do we have alternatives? Today, I’ll begin by discussing synthetic fuels, which are liquid or gaseous fuels produced by not using fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, or natural gas. On the surface, this sounds great. The number of rare earths and raw materials needed to transform heating systems, the grid, and transport would require trillions of spending. This is needed at a time when inflation is running above targets and government debt is high. Couple this with a decoupling between the two most powerful countries in the world and inflation will suffer supply chain spikes and we all might have to wait a little bit longer to get the things we want. Are synthetic fuels a potential solution to limit the impact of electrifying the transport system on rare earths and raw materials?

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Examples of Synthetic Fuels

Three of the most used fuels in our fossil fuel world are gasoline, diesel, and natural gas, all for different reasons. Gasoline is used for our internal combustion engine vehicles, diesel is primarily used in larger methods of transport such as trucking, buses, trains, agricultural machinery and maritime shipping. Natural gas is used to generate electricity, heat for our homes, and in industrial processes.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Each of these three fossil-fuel-based fuels has synthetic alternatives being pursued.

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· Synthetic Gasoline – Also referred to as SynGas or SynGasoline, is a synthetic fuel produced through many chemical processes. What are these processes? The process first is called gasification and Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. Gasification is the process of converting organic or carbon materials into carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. This by itself doesn’t sound great. Let’s produce lots of gases that will make the problem of carbon emissions worse. The carbon-rich sources used are coal, natural gas, biomass, or waste plastics. After this, we have a synthetic gas. From here, the Fischer-Tropsch process converts the synthetic gas into liquid hydrocarbons such as gasoline.

This hydrocarbon liquid is then subjected to high temperature and pressure. With hydrogen in the mix, large hydrocarbon molecules break down into smaller ones. However, this doesn’t help with emissions. The conditioning of the hydrocarbon liquid can improve combustion efficiency and reduce sulphur content reducing the emission of sulphur dioxide which causes air pollution and acid rain, but it doesn’t help reduce carbon emissions. This process in itself can make the problem of carbon emissions worse! It depends on the overall process, the fossil-based energy source used, and if any emission control measures are in place during production and combustion. We’ll explore these soon.

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· Synthetic Diesel – Synthetic Diesel undergoes the same process as synthetic gasoline as it requires the same feedstock, gasification, and Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. The difference comes from hydrocarbon separation. The hydrocarbons produced during the Fischer-Tropsch process are separated and refined to isolate the hydrocarbons in the diesel range through a process called fractional distillation.