Pilot plant for e-kerosene is being built in the Main metropolis
The world’s largest production facility for climate-neutral e-kerosene is being built near Frankfurt Airport. An important step towards the energy transition?
Wiesbaden – Because batteries are too heavy and fuel cells are not powerful enough, aviation relies on climate-neutral fuels. An important technology will be used in the future Frankfurt tested. not far from Frankfurt airports construction of what is expected to be the world’s largest production facility for synthetic aviation fuel is to begin before the end of this year.
The operator Ineratec will use the infrastructure of the Frankfurt-Höchst chemical industrial park and use the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced there together with hydrogen from green electricity for the production of e-kerosene. This is reported by the German Press Agency.
With an expected annual capacity of 3,500 tons of kerosene precursor, the plant is around ten times larger than the Ineratec pilot project from 2021 in Werlte, Lower Saxony. The company from Karlsruhe invested around 30 million euros in the industrial park, as Philipp Engelkamp recently said in Wiesbaden. In a sub-area, a research project by the Competence Center for Climate and Noise Protection in Air Traffic (CENA) simulates the fact that green electricity, as with wind turbines, is only available with natural fluctuations.
Frankfurt Airport: Tarek Al-Wazir emphasizes the need for climate-neutral fuels
Hesse’s Economics and Transport Minister Tarek Al-Wazir (Greens) confirmed the need for climate-neutral fuels for air and sea transport. For technical reasons, direct electrification as in cars will not be possible for decades to come. However, the quantities produced in the pilot plant in Frankfurt are far from sufficient to cover the fuel requirements at Frankfurt Airport. With around 4.7 million tons of kerosene per year, it accounts for around a quarter of the entire energy requirement in Hesse, reports the dpa. It’s more about gaining experience for the mass production of e-kerosene.
“The aim of the pilot plant is to produce synthetic kerosene on a larger scale than before in order to gain experience for mass production. And every tonne of non-fossil fuel produced sustainably is valuable in more ways than one. Because not only CO2 emissions are saved. Burning also produces fewer air pollutants,” said Al-Wazir, according to a statement by the state of Hesse.
According to Engelkamp, this production should take place in regions of the world where renewable energy is available in large quantities and at very low cost, such as in deserts. A price of around one euro per liter was aimed for. Synthetic kerosene currently costs many times more than the fossil product.
Frankfurt Airport: Is power-to-liquid kerosene the future?
According to dpa, power-to-liquid kerosene (PtL) may be burned in aircraft engines and mixed up to half with fossil kerosene. In Germany, a blending rate of 0.5 percent will apply from 2026, which will increase to 2.0 percent by 2030. There are no corresponding requirements in the EU, but there are corresponding plans in the Commission’s proposal “Fit for 55” for climate change. (ter/dpa)
A new boarding gate was recently completed at Frankfurt Airport, however it WILL NOT be needed at this time. The reason: Air traffic has decreased due to the Ukraine war and the corona pandemic, instead of more as planned.