Synthetic fuels (e-fuels)
Introduction
Electrofuels,[1] also known as electrofuels or with the anglicism e-fuels, are an emerging class of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels that are manufactured by storing electrical energy from renewable sources in the chemical bonds of liquid or gaseous fuels.[2][3].
The main objectives are the synthesis of butanol, biodiesel and hydrogen, but other alcohols and carbon-containing gases such as methane and butane are also included. These types of advanced fuels are generally produced from carbon dioxide (obtained mainly from biological sources or potentially from industrial emissions) together with hydrogen which is obtained from the electrolysis of water using electricity from renewable energy sources. The term "electrofuel" refers to the process used for its generation.
Electrofuels are part of the alternatives to fossil fuels in transportation. Compared to most of these other alternatives, these fuels have the advantage that they can be used in current conventional vehicles, without the need to adapt the engine. Other uses that electrofuels could also have are the storage and subsequent generation of electrical energy.
Investigation
At that conference, director Eric Toone stated that "Eighteen months into the program, we know they work. We need to know if we can make them important." Several groups are beyond proof of principle, and are working to scale up electrofuels economically and efficiently.
Electrofuels have the potential to be disruptive energy innovations if they can be cheaper than petroleum fuels and if chemical feedstocks produced by electrosynthesis can be cheaper than those refined from crude oil. They also have great potential to disrupt the renewable energy landscape, as electrofuels allow renewable energy from all sources to be conveniently stored as liquid fuels.
Power at X
Contenido
Los procesos de conversión de electricidad y energías renovables variables para producir electrocombustibles dependen primariamente de tecnologías de potencia a X (PtX o P2X) y vías de producción, como potencia a gas (PtG o P2̩G) y potencia a líquido (PtL o P2L) entre otras.