The kick-off meeting (KOM) of EcoFuel project took place on February 17th, 2021, and in a virtual mode, as nearly all of Europe was experiencing a lock-down due to the Covid pandemic. The Covid pandemic also impacted the work at all partners throughout the first 18 months, slowing down recruitment processes, causing work restrictions in office and laboratories, and challenging communication within teams, among the consortium partners, and the networking in the community. Still, all consortium partners were able to keep to the project time schedule with minimized delays. In the second project half, further supply chain issues and spare parts availability caused a significant delay in the set-up of the DAC process step, the finalization of the co-electrolyzer, the operation of the OSU unit, finally resulting in a late start of the stability and durability testing. In the end, also due to the efforts on partner sides and the dedication of colleagues to EcoFuel project, all tasks could be performed until project end in December 2023. The first 18 months of EcoFuel project were dedicated to basic research and experimental investigations of the components and single elements of the EcoFuel process chain. Where appropriate, the initial research and experimental work was supported by dedicated literature and scientific paper studies.
In the second project periodic, the following production process related milestones were achieved:
• Design and develop a new ED-DAC technology
• Demonstration of CO2 DAC at small scale and delivery of captured CO2
• Successful synthesis of novel nanostructured, bimetallic and tandem anode OER and cathode ECO2R electrocatalysts
• Integration of the newly developed catalysts into an advanced cathode electrode architecture and optimization of its performance in preparation for scale up to industrial relevant sizes
• Scale-up operations to 300cm2-sized electrodes in a cell stack operating at ~1 kW
• OSU: Identification of a polymer for the membrane separation process, fabrication of a membrane module, and characterization thereof
• Complete set-up of stacked electrochemical system and thermo-catalytic system
• Reaction cascade to fuel products:
o Engineering and construction of electro-chemical and thermo-catalytic systems,
o Operation and validation of individual process steps under industrially relevant process conditions
o Improvement of reaction cascade for optimised synthesis of fuel products
The outstanding overall project achievements at M36:
• An alternative production pathway for an efficient, ecological and economic viable synthetic fuel developed
• TRL 4 (5) successfully achieved
• 6 patent applications
• Demonstration in reaction cascade successful
Based on the technical results achieved in EcoFuel, the project was able to provide following outlook and the business potential:
• EcoFuel fuel charge shows the potential to be qualified as drop-in fuel for transport sector application
• Potential applications of different EcoFuel pathway components identified:
o Sustainable ethylene
o Sustainable fuel
o Catalyst coated membranes (CCM) for PEM electrolysers
The technical achievements were supported by following networking and dissemination activities:
• 22 Conference presentations
• 5 further scientific publications
• Organization of a dedicated ‘EcoFuel Summit’
• Participation in the Horizon H2020 Cluster CCUS activity, working group ‘LCA on CCUS’
