New green fuel plant for aircrafts

The "big" planes have the problem of how much they weigh and it is not feasible to fly them with the additional weight of electric batteries. The most reasonable alternative is to fly on ecological clean fuels.

Aviation generates 2.5% of carbon dioxide emissions and technicians, among other ways, prioritize the achievement of non-polluting fuels to solve this problem.

That is why in Germany they have inaugurated a small plant to manufacture an environmentally friendly fuel made of synthetic kerosene for airplanes, so that they can fly without worrying about CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

To produce it, they first generate hydrogen using water and electricity from four nearby wind farms. And then they combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide to make kerosene.

And when that fuel is burned in the aircraft engine, it emits the same carbon dioxide that was used in the production process to generate the fuel, and that is why it is said to be “carbon neutral”.

This is a small prototype plant to demonstrate the feasibility of the process and to be able to make larger ones in the future. It only produces 8 barrels of fuel a day (336 gallons of fuel) and it takes 3 weeks production to be able to load the fuel that a medium-sized aircraft needs.

To get an idea of the total needs, 95,000 million gallons were consumed in the world in 2019 (before the pandemic), and the objective of the European Union is that in 2030 the consumption of ecological fuel is 0.7% of the total, to reach 28% of the total in 2050.

The biggest issue is price, plus the new manufacturing capabilities needed.

This small plant estimates to sell its fuel for about 5 euros a liter, which is several times higher than what “normal” and polluting kerosene costs today.

To make it cheaper, they have to build larger and more efficient manufacturing plants that have very cheap solar energy (Germany is not the best location) in countries where there is a lot of sun.

In the end, we will have to reach compromise situations, assimilating that there will be more expensive things than what we’ve had up until now and that polluting cannot be cheap, and what is most important to me: that we cannot afford to do so. Green fuel for airplanes will be imposed sooner rather than later

Our descendants have the right to receive a decent world.