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Producing fuels from 1,500 degrees of solar heat
THE WORLD’S first industrial plant using solar heat to make fuels has been opened in Germany. Using a vast array of mirrors that focus the sun’s heat onto a tower, the technology’s developer Synhelion plans to use its process to produce greener fuel for planes, ships and cars, and even low-carbon cement.
Using a vast array of mirrors that focus the sun’s heat onto a tower, the technology’s developer Synhelion plans to use its process to produce greener fuel for planes, ships and cars, and even low-carbon cement. Synhelion was founded in 2016 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, sparked by what the company founders describe as a crazy idea they had: what if they could reverse combustion and turn carbon dioxide and water back into fuel? This is then piped down the tower to a Fischer-Tropsch unit which converts it into a synthetic crude which a refinery would then process into kerosene for planes, diesel or methanol for ships and trucks, and petrol for cars.
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