OME as a diesel alternative

OME as a diesel alternative

An alternative to fossil diesel fuel is OME (oxymethylene ether) based on sustainable raw materials. In order to produce components for the non-toxic OME, Jakob Burger, head of the Professorship for Chemical and Thermal Process Engineering, has now set up a demonstration facility at the Straubing Campus for Biotechnology and Sustainability at the Technical University of Munich. Burger and his team have been researching the implementation of synthetic fuels (so-called “SynFuels”) such as OME for some time. The construction of the facility is part of the “Sustainable mobility through synthetic fuels” (Namosyn) project that started in 2019. The consortium includes 39 industrial and research partners and the project has a volume of around 20 million euros. The plant is the first in Europe that can continuously produce OME. It consists of a reactor for OME synthesis, an approximately ten meter high distillation module that separates and purifies OME, and a membrane unit from the project partner DBI Gas- und Umwelttechnik GmbH. Water is the only byproduct of the process. Continuous operation of the entire system is planned for 2021. “The demonstration plant is the last and most important milestone before the industrial implementation of fuel synthesis on a production scale,” says Jakob Burger.