Why synthetic fuels are an (exhaust) pipe dream
A number of recent stories in the media suggest the internal combustion engine may still have a future thanks synthetic fuels obtained from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
Luxury car companies such as Lamborghini or Porsche claim that such fuels could allow them to continue selling their vehicles beyond the deadlines proposed by governments in their main markets, arguing that these are clean technologies that do not produce harmful emissions. In fact, a factory is being built in Chile, Haru Oni, which aims to manufacture 130,000 liters of synthetic fuel this year from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, and aims for 550 million liters in 2026.
Meanwhile, as part of its decarbonization strategy, Amazon has just announced an agreement with Infinium, a company that manufactures what it euphemistically calls “electrofuels”, to cover approximately eight million kilometers of its diesel vans using these fuels.
It’s certainly an interesting idea: a clean and sustainably obtained fuel that could theoretically replace gasoline and diesel without modifying internal combustion engines, and using the logistics distribution networks without having to modify them, so as — in the case of hydrogen — to be able to store liquids at very low temperatures.
