I often cover brand-new technology that promises to make motoring safer, cleaner, more convenient, or somehow better in the future. As I noted in this July 2019 recap of 37 years of Technologue columns (many predating my tenure with MotorTrend), the percentage of Technologue subjects that had by then reached production was a rather disappointing 36. So at this point, permit me to thank Porsche for helping bring a topic I’ve frequently covered to fruition: eFuel from direct air carbon capture.
These June 2008 and January 2012 columns both looked forward to a day when we might pull CO2 directly out of the sky and turn it into fuel. In August 2018 I reported about a company poised to begin producing just such an e-fuel from direct carbon capture. It was producing two barrels of fuel per day back then, and its planned larger facility in west Texas seems stalled in the planning stages.
But way down on South America’s windy southern tip, just north of Punta Arenas, Chile, the Haru Oni plant has recently broken ground, and this year is planned to produce enough green hydrogen and scrub sufficient CO2 from the atmosphere to produce almost 200,000 gallons of green methanol. A portion of this will be subsequently converted into roughly 34,000 gallons of green gasoline—all of which will be shipped to Porsche for use in motorsports.
In the Magallanes region of Chile, strong williwaw winds power extreme low-pressure systems created by the meeting of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The wind power consistently available there is roughly four times greater than any place on the European continent, which is one reason the plant is in Chile and not in Europe.
The project is a joint effort between HIF (Highly Innovative Fuels), Siemens Energy, ExxonMobil, and the Chilean oil and gas companies ENAP and Empresas Gasco. Once it reaches full commercial capacity in 2026, the plant will be able to produce 1 million tons of green methanol per year, of which a portion will be upconverted to 145 million gallons of gasoline.
In the first year, a 3.4-megawatt Siemens Gamesa wind turbine will power a Siemens Silyzer 200 proton-exchange membrane to produce green hydrogen from water via electrolysis at 65 percent efficiency. Commercialization will up the wind power to 2.5 gigawatts (scaling up the electrolysis accordingly), and further efficiency improvements are expected within the next five years.
A Global Thermostats system extracts CO2 from the air using an amine-based sorbent coating on a porous ceramic honeycomb matrix. CO2 is periodically “washed off” by low-temperature steam to yield 98 percent pure CO2. Green methanol is then formed by running the hydrogen and CO2 through a Johnson Matthey copper-zinc catalyst. Finally, the methanol is vaporized, superheated, and fed to a fluid-bed reactor where an ExxonMobil catalyst helps convert it to gasoline, with water as a byproduct. (This system seems simpler than the one in my October 2018 column.)
The additives and blending required to ensure eFuel can serve as a “drop-in” replacement for crude-based gasoline lowers its carbon intensity figure to around 10, not zero. That still means burning it results in 90 percent less net carbon than standard gasoline, with identical performance properties.
What does it cost? Porsche pegs the initial price at 10 euros per liter ($44.73 per gallon as of this writing!) but expects efficiencies of scale and technology to reduce that to $7.57/gallon by 2026. The automaker initially plans to run its race cars on eFuel in the Mobil 1 Porsche Supercup F1 support series but may eventually use it to fill new road cars at the factory as well as the vehicles used at Porsche Experience Centers. The eMethanol produced in the same plant might someday power the ships that deliver new Porsches. But the end game is to ensure there’s a carbon-neutral fuel that can power the 70 percent of all Porsches ever built that are still on the road long after the new-car fleet is fully electrified.
Keyword: Future Fuel: Porsche Sponsors Major eFuel Initiative—at $45/Gallon