Porsche & Siemens to build synthetic fuel plant

Porsche and Siemens have announced the start of construction of a plant to produce low-carbon synthetic fuels, Report informs referring to arstechnica.

The enterprise will be built near Punta Arenas city in Chile and will be commissioned in 2022.

Porsche and Siemens are developing a low-carbon synthetic fuel that combines green hydrogen (produced by wind-powered electrolysis) with carbon dioxide (filtered from the atmosphere) to form methanol, which is in turn then turned into gasoline.

Assuming all goes to plan, the plant should be able to produce 34,000 gallons (130,000 liters) of synthetic fuel in 2022 before scaling up to 14.5 million gallons (55 million liters) by 2024 and 145 million gallons (550 million liters) by 2026, at the cost of around $7.6 per gallon ($2 per liter).

“We have at least the best guess, that we could reduce the carbon footprint by 90 percent,” explained Michael Steiner, member of the Porsche executive board for research and development. “So, still there is some residual CO2 footprint from blending and other processes, and you have to have in mind we have the expertise to design this fuel fully compatible to the existing fuel and to the existing engines, and this is key for success,” Steiner explained.

Porsche’s particular interest in synthetic fuels is driven by the fact that 70 percent of the cars it’s ever made are still on the road.

“So we did already testing on historic 911 cars with e-fuel, and that is one of our tasks in this project that we have the expertise to specify the fuel in a way that this is really compatible with the engines we build,” Steiner said.