The world has, for a while now, woken up to the danger(s) of climate change and is frantically trying to right past wrongs.
In the latest attempt, companies in Germany and Canada are making diesel literally out of thin air — capturing carbon dioxide and converting it to fuel. The chemistry isn’t too complicated. The mechanism splits water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, then adds the hydrogen to CO2 to make the fuel.
Canadian company, Carbon Engineering, and German company, Sunfire, have come up with this alternative diesel, called e-diesel.
With the potential to play an important role in the climate change problem, e-diesel doesn’t change the level of CO2 in the atmosphere but unlike its fossil fuel counter-part, doesn’t add to it either. So your car returns to the atmosphere the amount of CO2 that it removed in the first place.
Huge CO2 absorbing turbines in Canada will turn CO2 from the air into fuel, which will turn back into CO2 when used.
The German company, Sunfire has a slightly more elaborate procedure — Power-to-Light — to make diesel out of CO2 and water.
German Minister of Education and Research, Johanna Wanka, became the first one of to try the fuel on April 21, 2015 in Dresden, Germany.
Sunfire aims to price the synthetically produced fuel at €1 to €1.60 (Rs 74 to Rs 119) but the German government’s taxation and the process of importing fuel, if and when it reaches India, will significantly influence the price.
With system efficiency of 70%, the company’s Chief Technical Officer, Christian von Olshausen, claims that the car engine is less noisy with the fuel in it.
This synthetic diesel, made using CO2, is a huge success for our sustainability research. If we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources, and put the fundamentals of the “green economy” in place.
— Johanna Wanka, Minister of Education and Research, Germany