The Allplane Podcast #36 - solar fuels for aviation, with Carmen Murer of Synhelion
What if you could make sustainable aviation fuel from sunlight, water and and a source of carbon (either captured from the atmosphere or re-cycled from an emitting source)?
As outlandish as it sounds, Swiss startup Synhelion is developing a technology that, at is based on this very basic concept. Its Head of Corporate Communications, Carmen Murer, joins us for this episode of the podcast to share some insights about this amazing “solar fuel” technology works.
Sure, so far it is still at an experimental stage, but Synhelion is getting attention from some major players in the energy and aviation industries as well as from private investors that see in synthetic sustainable fuels the most straightforward, readily available tool to decarbonize aviation.
In this episode of the podcast we learn the story of Synhelion, a spin-off of the prestigious ETH Zurich research establishment, the pros and cons of the solar fuel technology and the road map for the coming years, in which Synhelion expects to scale up its technology and make a foray in the international aviation fuel market.
Listen to today’s episode to get a glimpse of the sustainable aviation fuels technology frontier, with Synhelion’s Carmen Murer.
Download this episode from:
Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher
Things we talk about in this episode:
The story of Synhelion
How its technology was developed at ETH Zurich
What are “solar fuels”? How are they made?
Why synthetic sustainable fuels matter & how they can help reduce aviation’s carbon footprint
How Synhelion has partnered with Lufthansa Group and Zurich airport
How Synhelion plans to scale its technology
Pros and cons of sustainable aviation fuels compared to other batteries and hydrogen
Resources
Zurich airport agreement announcement
Lufthansa Group partnership announcement
CEMEX partnership with Synhelion
Climeworks, the carbon capture company that Carmen mentions
Energy density, explained
Podcast episode about software to optimize flightpaths and lower carbon emissions
Below some pics and diagrams that help understand the process Synhelion uses to produce synthetic aviation fuel:
Podcast Music: Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3762-five-armies
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Interview Transcript
(please note that, although we strive to make it as close as possible to the original recording, the transcript may not be 100% accurate)
Hello, Carmen, how are you?
Hi, Miquel, thank you very much for having me. It's nice to be here.
Thank you very much, as well, for replying so fast to my invitation to participate in the podcast. I normally don't do it with such a short notice. But the other day, I was doing some research in the field of sustainable aviation fields, and I came across Synhelion, the company that you work for, and we're gonna be talking about now. And I was really, really fascinated by the way you present your technology. I find it really very futuristic sounding, because you are in the business of making solar fuel. So you are creating sustainable aviation fuel from the energy of the sun, basically, I think it's very interesting. If, you know, you could share some insights about how this technology works with our audience.
Yes, thank you. I'm very happy to do that. Many people say that our technology sounds a bit crazy at first sight. Because you could actually say that we turn air and sunlight into fuels. So that sounds a bit like magic. But when you look at it, it's actually quite logical. Because when you burn a fuel, co2 is released, and we just take that co2 and turn it back into fuel. So you could also say that we try to reverse combustion.
Yeah. And one of the main applications of this is, and one of the main areas where you're focusing your efforts is actually in aviation. And that's why I think it's very interesting to have you here on this podcast, which is mainly about aviation...you are basically a spinoff of ETH Zurich, a University Research Institute. What is it? Exactly?
Yes, ETH Zurich stands for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. And it's a very renowned University in Switzerland, that develops a huge amount of technologies. And that's also where, where we come from, we are a spinoff from ETH Zurich, we were founded in 2016. And the basis from our technology comes from the research that has been done at ETH Zurich,
You were incorporated in 2016. But I think the technology itself has been developed already from an earlier time, right? Because in 2015, it says on your website...or 2014...you already managed to create some fuel using this small scale version of this technology. Is that right?
Yes, that's right. This idea of turning co2 into fuel that's actually not that new, it already arose sometime in the 80s. And it sounds very easy, of course, to just reverse combustion. And but afterwards, if you get to the nitty gritty, it's, it's actually not that simple. So decades of research went into this. And then in 2014, we had a big breakthrough at ETH Zurich. And we managed to produce the world's first fuel from co2 and water in the lab. So that was one of one of the big milestones in the past. And then afterwards Synhelion was founded to bring this technology to the market, you've attracted the interest of some major players both in the oil industry and aviation industry as well.
And that's actually the thing that caught my attention as someone that covers aviation industries that you have as partners, no less than Lufthansa group and Zurich airport, as well as Italian oil company...What can you tell us about this link with industry?
Yes, the link with industry is very important in the scaling up of our technology. So, we have been in a collaboration with Italian oil and gas company as you said, he and I, since 2017. And they are supporting us in the development of our reactors. So the reactors that actually turn co2 and water into fuel. And then we also have partnerships with our future end customers, you could say. So, for example, Lufthansa group we we entered a partnership with them last year, and they're the main focus of this partnership is to make sustainable aviation fuels available on the market and to bring them to the market as quickly as possible, because of course, the aviation industry needs to reduce its carbon footprint. And it is, I would say, widely agreed that sustainable aviation fuels are the best, the quickest and the most realistic way to really Quickly reduce co2 emissions in the aviation industry. So yes, we are in a collaboration with Lufthansa and it's airlines, Swiss. Airlines, etc. And then on the other hand, we also started a partnership last year with Zurich airport. And Zurich Airport actually wants to buy all the fuels that our first demo plant will produce that cost price. So that was another great success for us. And it just shows that the industry is really interested in our product, and they are just waiting for it to be available.
Sounds great. So you already kind of sold your product beforehand, right?
Yeah, you could say that. Yeah. Zurich airport wants to support us, because they want to reduce their carbon footprint. And they see as well that sustainable aviation fuels are one of the key solutions. And that's why they want to even take a role in the development of these fuels and not just wait until we have them on the market, but already support us before that on the path to the markets.
Yeah, we're gonna go back to the, let's say financial, economic aspects of it later on. But first of all, I would like to go deeper into the technology itself. Because it sounds like magic, how does it really work in practice? Basically, what you're doing is you're taking carbon that is already in the atmosphere, and you are converting it into fuel. There is some type of carbon capture process or what can you tell us about the whole thing, how the whole process works?
Yes, that's right. So the end vision is to take co2 out of the air, and then turn it into fuel. And with that, you can close the carbon cycle because when you burn this fuel that you produce from co2 that was taken from the air, you actually fly net zero, your net carbon footprint is zero. Because this fuel only releases as much co2 when it's burned, as it consumed when you when you produce it,
You're recycling the carbon pretty much…
So yes, we are basically recycling co2. That's right. And so to go a bit more into detail how this works, we work with concentrated solar heat. This means that we have a solar tower which is surrounded by a mirror field. And these mirrors focus the sunlight onto the top of the tower. And there at the top of the tower, we have our technology. So the first part of our technology is a solar receiver that generates high temperature process heat. So that's 100% new carbon neutral way to generate process heat just from solar radiation, and then this process heat is fed to our reactor and this reactor turns co2 and water into center this gas and synthesis gas is a precursor to fuels. So you can turn the synthesis gas into any type of fuel afterwards with standard refinery processes. So you can produce jet fuel, but you could also produce diesel or gasoline.
Okay, so to summarize, if I understood correctly, you take the energy from the sun, you concentrate it in one point to generate a lot of heat, then you from another side, you take carbon, what did you take this carbon from the air or from what source?
Yeah, so our ambition is to take it from the air. But that's not what we now do. There's another spinoff from ETH Zurich that specializes in carbon capture Climeworks. Maybe you've heard of them before, but there are also other players in the market by now. And but then there are also other sources of co2 we could use at the beginning. For example, cement manufacturing, they have a lot of co2 emissions that they can't stop because they just come out of the stone when you produce cement. And that would be another source where we could take co2 from and recycle it to produce fuel with it.
Yeah, actually, I've seen on your website you have mentioned a very important cement company called Cemex as one of your partners as well.
Yes, that's right. With Cemex we are developing a technology that goes slightly in a different direction. And because there we are looking to use our high temperature solar processes to drive the whole cement manual Factoring plants so that that's not directly linked to fuels that has something to do with our technology, where we can produce high temperature process heat. But of course, they are also, or they could be an important source of co2 for us in the future to produce fuels. So we have this, like two ways how we could collaborate in the future.
So then back to the process, you have solar energy coming, one side, concentrated creating heat, then you you feed this carbon, the co2 and water, and there is some type of chemical reaction, I guess, that produces the synthetic gas, and then the synthetic gas needs to be converted into liquid fuel the aircraft can take.
Yes, that's right. And the important thing to mention is also that this technology already exists, so turning synthesis gas into jet fuel, or gasoline or diesel. That's, that's an established technology. So we're not developing that. The tricky part is really how you can create synthesis gas in a sustainable way. So that's our expertise. And that's, that's the solution we offer.
Sounds very good all together. But what are the challenges, then? I mean, is it a problem of the cost? Is it the problem of the scale that this technology works at? What are the main obstacles you're finding to turn those into a mainstream thing?
Okay, so, of course, it all sounds very simple. But in the end, it's not that simple. And as you said earlier, in 2014, we produced the world's first fuel in the lab. And then in 2019, we took it a big step further, and we produce the world's first solar solar fuel on the real field conditions, so we could really demonstrate the whole process chain from capturing co2 from the air, heating it up with sunlight and turning it into fuel. But that was just just a small plant that we had in 2019. It's located on the rooftop of ETH Zurich, and is produced about one decilitre of fuel per day. So that was an important step in our development. And now we're scaling the technology up in order to build big industrial scale plants. And that's, that's the step where, where we are currently working on. We are scaling up our technology, we're scaling up the individual parts of our technology in order to produce fuels. And the next step will now be to build our first industrial scale demo plant, which we want to achieve by 2023. And then after that, we want to build our first industrial scale plants that will produce fuels that we can sell to our customers,
Are you building these plants in Switzerland, or where?
So of course, it's very important to have good solar resources. Now, for the first demo plant, we will probably build it in, in Switzerland, or in Germany, where the solar resources are not ideal. But the knowledge we have in this region is ideal in order to build this plant very quickly. And then after that, by 2025, we want to build our first two commercial plants. And these commercial plants will be located in sunnier regions. So probably south of Spain, for example, that would already be a very good solar resources spot.
What are your expectations in terms of the reach and scope of these technologies? I guess, if this works out as expected to be really huge, I mean, it's a very, very big market. But what about the cost? You obviously have an agreement with Zurich airport to supply the airport with this. What are the financials of this? I mean, it's known that biofuels normally are more expensive than regular kerosene and jet fuel. Is it the same case here as well? Or are there other factors that might bring costs down? If that was obviously the obstacle?
Yes, there are a lot of factors that can bring costs down. So you're right, fuels will be a bit more expensive than fossil fuels in the beginning. They're going to be more expensive.
By what factor? Are there any figures for that?
That could be about two-fold. But that's that still remains to be seen how much more expensive they are actually going to be. And there's also politically a lot of movement going on at the moment with co2 taxes. And more and more countries committed to net zero. Yeah, there's, there's really a lot of movement in this field at the moment. But nevertheless, for us, fossil fuels are the benchmark, because we believe that we can only make a big impact and not stay a niche product, if we can be competitive with fossil fuels in the future. So this is really our goal to bring costs down. And of course, we have to build large plants. So when you build large plants, you can also drive costs down more effectively. So at the beginning, the fuels will be more expensive than fossil fuels. But over time, we want to reduce costs. And the potential of this technology is really huge, because in theory, you would have enough available land worldwide to produce several times the fuel demand that the world has. And also to like for the aviation industry. The aviation industry consumes at the moment, well, before the Coronavirus, about 300 million tons of fuel. And with our technology, we could produce about 50 times as much. And this means that even single countries could cover global jet fuel demand. And countries like the United States like Saudi Arabia, or Australia or Argentina alone, they could produce enough fuels to cover the whole aviation industry.
And the fuel the output, that fuel that you're producing, does it have limitations? it doesn't need to be blended in a specific percentage. What can you tell us about this?
Yes, at the moment, you're only allowed to fuel up a plane with 50% sustainable aviation fuel and 50% still needs to be conventional fossil fuel? That's just for certification reasons, I assume. But this is also expected to change over time.
Yes, actually, yeah, there were some news companies like Boeing, Rolls Royce, etc. that are looking into 100% biofuel
Yes, that's right, in the near term, near to medium term, but yeah, definitely, I think we're gonna see movement in this direction.
What about this plant? Does it require a very large investment to have one of these plants? Does it need to be a very big space? So it's something that can be deployed at many different locations relatively easily?
And so yes, these plants are typically quite large. So we're talking about several square kilometres for a plant that is a really large plant…
Because of the mirrors, because you need to have all the solar solar mirrors harvesting the sunlight and projecting it into a specific point?
Yeah, so, you definitely need some space for these mirrors. And then also, if you build larger plants, and then you also have to fuel synthesis right next to it. And that's, that's another factor to drive down costs. So it doesn't make sense to build a lot of small plants all over the place, but to have larger facilities in, in one place together. So yes, this technology does require a considerable amount of land, but it is typically desert land. So it's not arable land, and we're not competing with agriculture, which isn't a very important point…
I think, on your website, you also mentioned that you are working on a project, I don't know if it’s a derivative of this project or it is a different technology you are developing in parallel, to produce hydrogen as well.
Yes, with the more or less the same setup, you could also produce hydrogen, because we have this high temperature process heat and the reactors and in these reactors, you can have different different ingredients going into it and have different reactions driven with the solar heat. And so that's why we can actually produce a range of fuels such as diesel, kerosene, gasoline, methanol, methane, or also hydrogen that would also be an option.
Do you need to add methane to the mix? So it's only co2 and water? Because I remember having read on your website somewhere that you also use methane to create that.
Yes, that's right, that's actually an intermediary step we want to take just because this technology to turn only co2 and water into fuel is still a bit more complicated. And it has more innovation behind it, then turning co2, water and methane into fuel that's based on already industrialized reforming technology. So that's why we want to start with this technology first, where we also have half a part of methane in in the ingredients at the beginning. And with this, we can produce fuels that are partially renewable and still have a small amount or a small fraction of fossil components. Unless you could, of course, for methane, also take biogas, for example, and then it will be fully renewable again, if the biogas is produced in a renewable way.
So 2023 is when you said the experimental plant is expected to come into service or to be built or to come into service? What was the next milestone? creating an industrial scale facility? That was actually two facilities that we want to build by 2025?
Yes. And then afterwards, we want to scale it up further to build more and larger plants. And then by 2030, we want to produce as much fuel that we could cover about half of Switzerland's jet fuel demand. So if you look at it globally, you could say, well, that's not still not much. But if you look at it for a single country that could already cut co2 emissions from the aviation industry by 50%. And then, by 2040, we want to reach a capacity of about 40 million tonnes of fuel per year. And that would equal to about half of Europe's jet fuel demand. So we do believe that we can actually make a difference in really cut co2 emissions effectively in the aviation industry.
We're talking big numbers here. And I guess there's a lot of investment expected to go into this. How are you funded? Are you a startup with private investors? Do you have venture capital, you expect to fund this expansion through industrial partners like the ones we've mentioned before? What's the plan?
Yeah, so up until now, we have private investors. We've already raised about 16 million Swiss francs today. That's more or less the same in euros
One-Six? 16?
Yes. And now we're actually right in the middle of our next investment round, to finance this plan that we want to build by 2023 our first demo plant, the large scale one.
Very good. Sounds very, very interesting. So yeah, I really hope that, you know, these technologies can become a reality really soon. In this regard, on the commercial side, are you expecting airlines to become more active in the biofuel scene? What is your view on in terms of where the market is going? We're seeing countries like Norway are gonna start to make it mandatory to have a certain amount of biofuels, etc. Do you see the rest of the countries following this direction?
Yes, I think politics is going in this direction. For example, if you look at the EU with the Green Deal, they want to reduce their emissions from transportation by 90% by 2050. And the EU is actually also drafting legislation at the moment for sustainable aviation fuels. They want to promote them and help sustainable aviation fuels get more Yeah, to ramp up their production and to be more available and to actually also create a market market with many different players who can provide sustainable aviation fuels. And we see that the interest from the industry is really big. So not just Not just from airlines and airports, but in general from the whole aviation industry and also from the political side. Because everybody's desperately looking for solutions at the moment.
So, Carmen, tell me something: at a time when there are other startups or the researchers working on things like batteries for electric aircraft, there's been a lot of talk about hydrogen as well. What would be your pitch, when people ask you why invest in biofuels when there are, you know, all these other projects working on alternative completely different types of propulsion?
Well, the energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels like jet fuel is just extremely high, and it's almost unbeatable, you could say, well, if you take an example, chest fuel has 100 times higher energy density. And then the best state of the art batteries that are available at the moment like the Tesla S battery, of course, batteries will, will improve over time. But at the moment, there is no, no real solution to that problem. If you want to do long distance flights, and you want to do it with an electric propulsion, the battery is so large and heavy, that the plane could not even take off. So that's why we take a different approach. And our goal is to replace fossil fuels with clean synthetic fuels. So we can use the same infrastructure that we've already built up and just replace fossil fuels with cleaner fuels.
So just one note for the audience, when you talk about density is the amount of energy that is packed in a specific unit of weight, how you measure that?
It actually counts for energy per mass and energy per volume. And I don't know the exact exact numbers for both of these. But it's many times higher the energy density in both cases of liquid fuels, then, than for batteries. And so for, for small planes for short distances. I do believe that if you or that sorry, not if you sell electricity can be a good option. And there's a lot of technology being developed. But for long distance flights, there's not really a solution yet. And I think that sustainable aviation fuels are a very good solution that can be implemented fairly quickly. Because you don't need any new infrastructure. You can keep using the whole existing infrastructure. That's not just the planes, but also the fuel stations at the airports and the refineries and the whole distribution system that we've built up over decades, for fossil fuels that we can keep using this infrastructure. And the problem that we have is not the type of engines we use, but it's what you put into this engine. And if you can just replace the polluting fossil fuels with clean synthetic fuels, then, in my way, that's very quick and well, not very quick, but it's definitely quicker than developing a whole new infrastructure for the fuels and and for planes.
Yeah, we were talking about how to use existing technologies and infrastructure the other day with another guest in the podcast, they do software to help airlines to save fuel and fly more efficiently with their existing technology. So that's often an overlooked area of this green aviation push. Because obviously, there are the moonshots. And while yours is a moonshot, in a way, because you're developing a really novel technology, but on the other side, on the side of distribution, you can count on what's already there. So that that I think makes it very interesting as well...Well, Carmen, it's been great learning about the technology you are developing, Synhelion, It's definitely a project that I'm sure we will hear a lot more about in the coming years as you move along the way to develop all these plans, and to test and deploy this technology. Thank you so much for being today in the podcast. Hopefully, we'll be able to speak on some other occasion when you have reached all these new milestones and see how the whole project is going.
Yes, thank you very much. It was a pleasure. To speak to you and I'm really hopeful that with all the technologies that are being developed at the moment, not just ours, but there's so much innovation in the market and I'm really hopeful that we can reach net zero with all of these technologies.
Thank you so much.