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The utilization of hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels is a promising option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of heavy-duty vehicles. Here, the production of sustainable hydrogen plays a key role. Very promising is the production of hydrogen by means of water electrolysis that links fluctuating electricity production from renewable sources with sectors based on chemical energy carriers. Water electrolysis will be one of the key technologies to reduce the energy system transformation costs and to stabilize the electricity grid. Hydrogen can be used directly as a fuel in heavy-duty vehicles or converted with CO2 to fuels like methanol or Fischer-Tropsch products. Methanol can be used both as a fuel and as feedstock for further upgrading to fuels like dimethyl ether (DME), oxymethylene ether (OME), methanol-to-gasoline (MtG) and methanol-to-jet fuel. Recently, also the conversion of hydrogen with nitrogen to ammonia as fuel gains increasing interest in combustion engines. Beyond CO2 reduction exhaust gas emissions have also to be reduced significantly. CatVap® is an innovative fuel processing technology that enables efficient exhaust gas treatment in order to achieve near-zero emission mobility. In addition, hydrogen can be used to operate fuel cell power trains, which is more and more discussed for heay-duty applications. Now it’s the time for a broader market introduction of hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels in the mobility sector and thus, for cost reduction due the corresponding scale-effects.

Oxymethylene Dimethyl Ethers (OME) are promising diesel fuel alternatives and interesting solvents for various industrial applications. In this report (Reproduced from [Hank et al. 2019] with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry), a well-to-wheel Life Cycle Assessment of short OME oligomers as produced via a Power-to-Liquid (PtL) pathway has been conducted. Variations in electricity and carbon dioxide supply as well as the hardware demand for the PtL plant components (e.g. PEM water electrolysis, carbon capturing, 36 kta OME plant capacity) have been considered. Conventional diesel fuel is used as the comparative benchmark.

The manufactures of internal combustion engines face currently a lot of challenges. Among these are the required drastic emission reductions of carbon dioxide (CO2) as well as harmful substances the most prominent. As a consequence of these harsh market conditions solutions that could cope with this framework are urgently needed. In this context the state of the art of synthetic fuels as an essential part of the energy system is discussed and how they could offer solutions.