Researchers at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) have developed a plant for the production of synthetic fuel from used cooking oil. Conventional cars and trucks could be refueled with the climate-neutral fuel, said project manager Prof. Thomas Willner.
What is special about the system is its efficiency: Only one kilowatt hour of electricity is required to produce one liter of fuel. In order to let a car drive 100 kilometers, around five kilowatt hours of electricity are required. An electric car, on the other hand, consumes around 15 kilowatt hours on this route, says Willner’s colleague Prof. Anika Sievers.
The READi-PtL (Reactive Distillation Power to Liquid) project will soon be used commercially. The Hamburg company Nexxoil wants to build a first production facility in the Hamburg area by the end of the year, and a second next year in Bavaria, as managing director Thorsten Dunker said. Another cooperation partner of the HAW project is the Schleswig-Holstein waste disposal company KBS (Krebs Brüggen Secondary Raw Materials/Großenaspe). It is currently supplying the used grease from which Willner and Sievers produce around two tons of fuel per week. In the future, the Hamburg process engineers also want to use plastic waste as a raw material for their oil substitute.
READi-PtL Nexxoil
