Interchangeable biogas and CO2 valorization through electrified syngas manufacturing for synthetic fuel production

To reduce the chemical industry’s strong dependency on fossil-fuels, finding new ways of producing fuels and chemicals based on renewable carbon is a necessity. We demonstrate full-chain, pilot-scale production of renewable synthetic fuel, by converting CO2, and/or biogas, firstly to syngas and subsequently to syncrude through the Fischer-Tropsch process. Using electrically heated syngas manufacturing at industrially relevant conditions, the CO2 and biogas were dynamically fed, where steam reforming of CH4 and reverse water-gas shift of CO2 and H2 were achieved interchangeably in the same reactor unit. Dynamic control of the feed gas composition using H2 and steam allowed for producing syngas with constant composition and, subsequently, enabled stable syncrude production, despite variable inlet concentrations of CH4 and CO2. The dynamic control allows for shifting from a net high energy-intensive, hydrogen-consuming, CO2-based process scheme to a net less energy-intensive CH4-based process scheme. The interchangeable nature of operation demonstrates that utilization of multiple renewable carbon sources can be integrated with direct electrification of syngas manufacturing, enabling production of synthetic fuels at high capacity with flexible carbon constituent. In addition, this feature enables grid balancing by using stored CH4, CO2, or a mixture thereof to regulate plant-scale power offtake through flexible carbon utilization.