The pilot plant used by Sunfire to produce blue crude fuel.
A team of German engineers working for a company called Sunfire, managed to design and produce an alternative fuel called “Blue Crude”.
They started to work on this alternative fuel back in 2012, and in only three years, they’ve managed to produce a clean fuel that is a good alternative to oil.
By using a small pilot plant, they started to produce the first quantities of alternative fuel by combining an external renewable energy source (wind, solar or hydro) with carbon dioxide and water.
The environmental benefit obtained with the new fuel is the removal of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to be turned into an alternative energy resource.
In addition, to produce this alternative fuel, the team used only renewable energy sources, and the petroleum substitute used is friendly with the environment.
In theory, the process has only three steps.
1) by using electrolysis, the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen;
2) conversion is the second step, and here carbon dioxide is turned into carbon monoxide;
3) in the third step, carbon monoxide is united with the hydrogen to create hydrocarbons.
By optimizing the entire process, the Dresden engineers managed to increase the efficiency of the converter to a very high level.
Steam is used instead of liquid water, and this way the efficiency is improved.
The price for one litter of “Blue Crude” varies between 1 and 1.5 euro, which is more expensive than conventional fuels, but this price can be lowered if the renewable energy source used becomes cheaper.
The new fuel is superior to the conventional fuel because it doesn’t contain any aromatic component, so it burns without emitting sulfur.
The diesel version of the fuel has a high octane number and this shows that the new fuel needs more compression to be ignited.
The engine that will use the new fuel will run smoothly and will produce only a tiny amount of emissions due to the fact that contains no sulfur.
The Federal Minister of Science is a supporter of the team, and the first quantities of blue crude are meant to power their vehicles.
The plant designed in Dresden, Germany, was created to deliver much more than fuel in the future.
Christian von Olshausen, chief technical officer at Sunfire, says that the plant can be operated in two ways, it can be fueled with clean electricity on one side to deliver clean fuel on the other side, or fuel can be used to generate electricity.
The human society must find an alternative to the fossil fuels, and if we start by now, I’m sure that the day when fossil fuels will be depleted, will find us in a strong position because the alternative fuel will be already used worldwide.