© Adobe Stock / Roger Richter/Westend61
Filling up on sun
Aircraft require thousands of litres of kerosene a day to operate, which amounts to 2-3% of global CO2 emissions. The company Synhelion is hoping to change this with “Dawn”, its pilot installation in the small town of Jülich in North-Rhine Westphalia, which aims to produce the first sustainable fuel sources for air transport – from just water, carbon and solar fuel. “After many years of research, we are producing larger amounts of sustainable fuel here for the first time,” announces Patrick Hilger, CEO of Synhelion Germany. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is supporting the project as part of its SolarFuels research programme.
Demonstrating the multi-stage production chain
The team of experts at Synhelion is planning to produce several thousand litres of synthetic fuel at its demo installation in Jülich. These amounts are of course not enough for an A320-family aircraft, which uses around 2700 litres of fuel an hour, to go very far, but the step from lab production to industrial-scale manufacturing is an important one. “With Dawn, we are showing that sun-to-liquid technology can work at the industrial level and is ready to be scaled up.” explains CEO Hilger. From 2025, the company plans to set up a commercial production facility in Spain that will produce over a million litres of solar fuel annually, which have already been ordered by the SWISS airline company.
Sunlight supplies the energy for the manufacturing process
Experts use the sun as an energy source when producing solar fuel. Over 200 repositionable mirrors collect the sunlight and reflect it into a receiver at the top end of the solar tower. This receiver turns the concentrated sunlight into temperatures of over 1000 degrees Celsius, which delivers the necessary process heat for the production of synthetic crude oil from carbon and water. An embedded thermal energy storage unit enables the tower to also produce solar fuel at night.
Solar fuel is compatible with common aircraft engines
Sustainably produced aircraft fuels, such as solar ones, are the most climate-friendly solution for long-haul flights and existing aircraft fleets, as electrification is not feasible here due to high battery weights. Another benefit: existing distribution networks, refineries and aircraft engines can continue to be used, easing the transition to these types of fuels.