NextFuel Industrialising eSMR to Supply the Next Shipping Fuels

Summary

The basis of our innovation is to pilot a novel approach to producing methanol, never before piloted beyond our project partners lab scale prototype, where we use an electrically heated stream methane reformer (eSMR) instead of present firing of natural gas in the fired reformer (used in conventional methanol synthesis). The scientific background of the innovation is solid. We have a successful lab prototype and many publications describing parts of the work in journals including Science. The eSMR technology can allow very compact reactor designs, up to 100 times smaller than current SMR plants, which combined with higher energy efficiency and no directly associated CO2 emission, makes the eSMR reactor extremely commercially attractive for synthesis gas production. The technology is also well suited to add additional hydrogen and CO2 to increase production. The cost-efficient (we target a similar cost level as biogas) and scalable (in addition relevance or thousands of biogas sites, we can scale through adding hydrogen and CO2) solution can be built as a realistic alternative to fossil methanol production. In the project Topsoe delivers the process plant to Gasnor (both a biogas owner and Norway´s largest provider of LNG) that in turn want to market sustainable ship fuels. We have a first customer in the project, that are currently building two feeder container vessels running on methanol (one of Europe´s leading ship owners Wilhelmsen, participating through their sustainable shipping unit TOPEKA). With the assistance on leading research groups covering both optimizing resource streams (NTNU) and ecosystem simulations (CERTH), we develop a comprehensive plan to pathways of bringing eSMR-based plant designs to efficient and widespread use in Europa.

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