Our mission
Today’s favorable evolution towards a greener and more sustainable energy production brings out yet another challenge. Short term storage of excess sustainable energy coming from solar or wind is perfectly possible in battery bank systems. Current battery bank systems are a great solution for short term (a coupe of days) storage of green energy. For longer term storage one could opt for more and bigger battery banks but very soon this gets economically not interesting any more and still limits us to a matter of weeks because of the slow draining of all the current battery bank systems regardless of their chemistry.
In most moderate climates around the world there is a period during the year in which green energy production exceeds the demands and exceeds our possibility to store it for that other period in which demands exceeds the production.
Futureal wants to offer a solution for this in terms of mid- to long term storage possibilities of excess renewable energy.
Excess sustainable energy can be stored as a chemical liquid (e.g. methanol, ethanol) and safely stored as such. This is fuel can then be used in e.g. internal combustion engines. Capturing the carbon in our atmosphere and turning into fuel and In this way creating a carbon neutral energy source.
Case study
As an example, we briefly described a possible way to store access energy. Please note that this is just a short example to give a direction of a possible solution. This however has not to be the final solution.
We have an access of energy produced via solar panels. We want to store this energy in a chemical form. Methanol is a good option since it is liquid and a simple molecule that can be combusted.
There is a way to produce methanol out of CO2 and H2, the direct hydrogenation of CO2:
With the excess energy of the solar panels, we can produce H2 via electrolysis of water.
By using a CO2 capture unit, for example, we can take CO2 out of the air and use it for the reaction.
This means we theoretically have a green way to produce methanol with our access energy.
This reaction takes place over an copper-catalyst and has a high selectivity to methanol.
Further research would be needed to determine the exact/best reaction conditions, but this is not done for this short example.
Challenges:
- Small scale implementation
- Carbon source (sustainable)
- Affordable catalyst
