Excerpt from the article:
Millions of combustion engines – powering machines, vehicles and aircraft – will remain in use for decades to come. Instead of replacing them, a Swiss chemical engineer is developing a greener alternative: a synthetic, “drop‑in” fuel that works with existing engines and infrastructure.
Inside her labyrinthine lab at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Dübendorf, a network of pipes and custom-built modules hums away as Alessia Cesarini shows off the prototype e-fuel unit she took two years building.
She aims to turn it into a business offering a viable alternative to conventional fossil fuels.
“There are lots of systems with combustion engines still running, and the idea is to provide a locally produced and less-polluting solution,” she explains.
Transport accounts for 47% of Switzerland’s energy-related CO2 emissions, versus 25% globally. A Swiss study estimates that around two million combustion-driven vehicles will remain on the country’s roads by 2040. Globally, Bloomberg estimates that 55% of cars will still run on combustion engines by that time. Also, for hard‑to‑abate sectors such as aviation, long‑term decarbonisation will depend heavily on the adoption of renewable fuels.
Cesarini’s approach is simple: “The goal is a solution that works with existing vehicles and infrastructure – sustainable both environmentally and economically,” she says.
There is no mention of the EROI (Energy Return On Investment) in the article but I very strongly suspect that it is under 1.
Meaning that it take more energy to make this fuel that this fuel can restitute.
It’s good for the very fee cases where fossil fuel absolutely cannot be replaced but it’s not a viable source of energy. It’s just another form of inefficient battery.
It is the same as with green hydrogen or electric cars.
We do not need energy sources. We already have a cheap energy source (wind, sun, nuclear energy…)
We need “a battery” that can be used in cars and allows for long ranges or at least can be quickly recharged. And fuel from carbon capture fits this criteria.
Carbon capture is not efficient. Neither is hydrogen that needs to be trucked around and stored cryogenically.
But efficiency does not matter if energy is very cheap or sometimes even free when there is too much sun.
I don’t think anyone claims that these synthetic fuels use less energy to produce than other storage mechanisms. This is just a way to store energy in a way that is very dense, measured by both mass and volume.