After a detailed state of the art analysis of the engineering documents, new plant structure for multi Mega Watt (MW) modules has been designed based on first electric design and main equipment. First approaches to increase the reactor capacity have been developed following a strategy of numbering-up vs. scaling-up to design 5 MW & 20 MW units. The concept of numbering-up is to multiply the reaction structures per reaction, the number of reactors per module and the number of modules per plant. This way, a road to 100 MW unit has been initiated. To enable the automation processes in the company, IC started the implementation of an ERP system, set-up a dedicated make or buy process, but also a quality assurance framework with a dedicated process map and process portfolio of the company; thus setting-up the management, operational and supporting processes necessary to allow the certification (ISO 9001) of the company. Relying on the work performed by the engineering of the modules and plants, IC finally build and assembled the first industrial prototypes of the Reverse-Water-Gas-Shift (RWGS) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactors and a series of tests to validate the industrial stage have been performed.; thus, validating the design for the bigger reactors to be integrated into the exploitation for real environment demonstration in Frankfurt Höchst that will be inaugurated in Q3 2023. Furthermore, the concept for the serial production of the reactors and plant modules for a world-scale plant (100 MW) has been developed allowing a first extension of the manufacturing hall, integration of production stations, and new production process as e.g. external stamping instead of milling. The serial production should be officially launched in 2025. While further developing its technology, IC works actively on building its business opportunities by initiating cooperation with dedicated partners and customers, but also qualifying deals for plants realisation and fuel off-takes. In this framework, IC updated its business models and sales processes to guaranty the successful realisation and expansion of IC PtX plants. Since the topic of synthetic fuels is still unknown and controversial in Europe, it is crucial to support a dynamic dissemination campaign to increase the awareness for CO2 neutral fuels. Therefore, IC is using any opportunities through social media, press, TV, political events, etc. to increase its visibility and show the potential of e-fuels for the different transport (e.g. aviation, shipping) and industrial sectors (e.g. chemical industry). A big effort was also put on establishing the exploitation strategy towards the demonstration site of Frankfurt-Höchst: a validated design for a 10 MW plant has been finalized and constitutes the basis for the plant module of Frankfurt-Höchst, which will reach a 2.500 t/a production capacity of e-fuels. In alignment with IC's globalization business strategy, a design for world-scale plants of 35.000 t/a production capacity (100 MW electrolysis capacity) has been developed relying on the numbering approach for up-scaling the technology. Also, preparing and submitting the BImSchG application, which is mandatory in Germany if building a chemical plant, was a big milestone achieved. A further big step was the REACH registration of the e-fuels produced in Frankfurt-Höchst, such as FT-Oil/Diesel and FT-Wax.
