Joint Development of Climate-Neutral Fuels for Future Mobility

Aachen, Germany, February 2023 – The joint project “Demonstrating a Circular Carbon Economy in Transport Along the Value Chain” (DeCarTrans), coordinated by FEV, started in January. Over the next four years, the project partners aim to demonstrate how renewable fuels can be produced on an industrial scale. Previous studies have shown that these synthetically produced fuels can enable a CO₂-free existing fleet.

Since the transformation of the transport sector to fully electrified mobility is progressing only slowly, its greenhouse gas emissions are also declining only very slowly. To accelerate their reduction, it is therefore necessary to additionally address the existing fleet of vehicles with combustion engines. The use of liquid, renewable fuels plays a key role here.

In the DeCarTrans project, which has now been launched, the continuous production of synthetic gasoline is to be investigated in a demonstration plant on an industrial scale of up to 380,000 liters total production volume. The main objectives of the joint project are to improve process efficiency (e.g., through heat re-integration) and to increase product quality in order to minimize the emission of pollutants during combustion. In addition, the consortium is evaluating possible sales and market launch scenarios as well as the associated legal framework (including RED II).

In the Closed Carbon Cycle Mobility (C³-Mobility) research project, also coordinated by FEV, the 30 partners from industry and research have already demonstrated that synthetic gasoline produced from methanol is an extremely promising “green” fuel. The underlying process, methanol-to-gasoline from renewable methanol, uses “green” methanol that can be obtained from CO₂ sources in industry or agriculture, for example.

The DeCarTrans research project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV) as part of the “Development of Renewable Fuels” funding initiative (funding code 16RK14004D). A total of eight companies from the mineral oil industry, the process engineering industry, and research and development have joined forces in the DeCarTrans consortium.