Finding the Right Blend

FUTUR: Each one of you is working on researching new drive technologies. Which drive types do you think will prevail and why?

Uhlmann:

We are working hard on answering this question, particularly with regard to the energy efficiency and climate neutrality of automotive vehicles. Electric mobility has been promoted quite vigorously in Germany in recent years, but without sufficiently considering the necessary infrastructure. The automotive industry was essentially presented with a gift in the form of subsidies for many electric technologies, even those that are not necessarily helpful and, at best, constitute transitional technologies. Hybrid vehicles, for example, consume a lot of resources and make vehicles heavier without being able to run entirely on electricity.

In order to assess the efficiency and environmental compatibility of the various drive technologies, we need to look at their degree of efficiency and CO₂ emissions. We have done that for battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs), fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs), direct hydrogen combustion engines, and combustion engines running on e-fuels and gasoline. Our analyses show that battery-powered electric vehicles have the highest degree of efficiency, followed by fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen direct combustion and e-fuels, on the other hand, would rather be seen as alternative technologies.

Schwarz:

How was this calculated?

Uhlmann:

We started with a mid-range passenger car and calculated its CO₂ emissions both during operation and production. The emissions during production reflect the entire life cycle of a passenger car with an assumed total mileage of 150,000 km. We calculated the emissions during operation based on the electricity required to produce the fuel, taking into account the current electricity mix in Germany. In our analysis of e-fuels, we assumed that 100 percent pure e-fuels would be used – although they are currently only allowed to be added to aviation fuel in minimal quantities.

Schwarz:

That varies. There are currently ten internationally approved production paths for producing SAF, sustainable aviation fuels, and the admixture ratios range from five to 50 percent. This is however more of a political than a technical issue, as a 50 percent admixture ratio has been possible for decades using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Between 50 and 100 percent, it's a question of the right sealing materials and mechanisms in existing airplanes. New airplanes that are being produced today can already fly with 100 percent e-fuels. But an aircraft has an average service life of 30 years. This means that fuels with a lower admixture ratio will still be needed for existing airplanes for another 30 years.

But you already mentioned the infrastructure: How much electricity do we actually have available? We as EDL have been in the application process for an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) for four years, called »LHyVE – Leipzig Hydrogen Value Chain for Europe.« Here, together with VNG AG, ONTRAS Gastransport GmbH, and Stadtwerke Leipzig, we want to realize the entire value chain for the production, storage, transport, distribution, and end use of green hydrogen in the Leipzig region and integrate it through the infrastructure with European projects, cities, and municipalities. More specifically, we plan to produce 50,000 tons of e-fuels and 15,000 tons of green hydrogen per year. If we want to achieve climate neutrality in mobility and logistics, we need green hydrogen. But according to your calculations, it is not green anymore.

Uhlmann:

That is true, fuel cell vehicles or direct hydrogen combustion engines still cause rather high emissions when operated with today’s electricity mix, because hydrogen has to be produced. Can we significantly improve the way we produce it compared to today? If, instead of selling surplus electricity from wind turbines to neighboring countries at a cost, we use it to produce hydrogen with electrolyzers, then perhaps we can.

Schwarz:

It is an illusion to believe that surplus electricity can be fed into electrolyzers. I can explain this to you with a simple calculation: Firstly, as hardly anyone knows, all wind turbine operators receive 95 percent of the remuneration even when their wind turbines are not running. Secondly, the EU requires compliance with a series of complex electricity procurement criteria for the operation of electrolyzers for the production of green hydrogen, which ultimately reduce the operating hours of electrolyzers in Germany to less than 3,000 to 4,500 operating hours per year. However, electrolyzers can in principle run for a good 8,400 hours per year, making them easier to amortize. As a result, the green hydrogen produced in this way is between three and four times more expensive. Nobody currently reimburses you the difference.

Uhlmann:

Exactly, but that is a political or regulatory problem.

Schwarz:

But this narrative of »surplus electricity« has found its way deep into politics, the federal ministries and administration. If you ignore economics, then processes simply do not take place in industry. Then certain technologies are not supported.

Blumenröder:

I agree with you that politics is neglecting power generation and infrastructure. In order to evaluate technologies, we need a perspective that is also comparable in its premises so that it can be used for policy recommendations. Then we would not have this divided approach between technical solutions with their efficiency on the one hand and the political approach of promoting certain technologies on the other. Engineers need to look at the physics. I can only recommend that. Any other approach would be wrong.

Uhlmann:

Let us look at the technical facts, then: We have to live with the electricity mix we have today. Switching to 100 percent renewable energies immediately is unrealistic. That also means that we would have higher operating costs for both fuel cells and direct hydrogen combustion due to the necessary hydrogen production. The manufacturing costs for the vehicles are similar to those for gas-powered cars, even though some different materials are required. I therefore see fuel cell vehicles and direct hydrogen combustion engines as an intermediate solution.

In my view, e-fuels are another alternative technology, but they are currently expensive to produce as they incur high energy costs and can emit large amounts of CO₂. I also do not believe that the current production of e-fuels is sufficient to meet demand, particularly in aviation.

This means: Fully electric vehicles will for the most part be our ultimate goal, but not today and not tomorrow. We have to get there step by step. This becomes clear when you calculate how much electricity we would need if all 45,000,000 vehicles currently on the road in Germany were electric. We have an energy requirement of 100 terawatts in our country. One sixth of that would be needed to power all vehicles with electricity. We simply cannot manage that. That is why we need intermediate technologies.

Schwarz:

We need the intermediate technologies for yet another reason, and that brings us to aviation. Nobody throws away a functioning airplane – you have to factor in its remaining service life. The same applies to the billions of cars currently in use around the world, all of which have a remaining service life that must be taken into account.

Blumenröder:

Perhaps it would help to focus our discussion on the practical applications, because without applications, there is no benefit. Battery-powered electric drives are well suited for use in road traffic, especially in passenger cars and commercial vehicles. This covers 80 to 90 percent of all applications – provided that the necessary infrastructure for charging and, of course, renewable power generation are in place. Considering hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen as an energy carrier is particularly useful in areas where batteries are not ideal due to their weight and charging times. The handling of hydrogen, especially its storage, is very energy-intensive and safety-relevant.

Uhlmann:

When it comes to storage, we are now able to achieve pressures of up to 800 bar using CFRP high-pressure containers. The containers are coated accordingly to ensure that the purity of the hydrogen is maintained. In theory, this solves the problem.

Blumenröder:

In theory, yes. However, there is another technical problem related to the potential poisoning of the fuel cell if the required purity of the hydrogen is not attained. I cannot use impure hydrogen in a PEM fuel cell. Anyone who cannot achieve 99.99997 percent purity cannot use this technological path. No commercial fuel cell system provider is willing to risk losing a tenth of a percent of this purity level. So, using hydrogen in fuel cells will be a very narrow path for application.

Polte:

One point I would like to add regarding OEMs: Behind every drive concept there is actually a new car. Structurally, the vehicles look completely different, even if they may seem similar on the outside. We will not be able to equip all vehicles with a new drive concept in one go, but rather have to keep existing vehicles in mind.

Blumenröder:

Yes, of course. In aviation and road transport, there is an existing fleet that needs to be covered. How-ever, there are other industrial sectors, such as maritime transport, that are taking a much more innovative approach to the issue of existing fleets. Producing hydrogen is necessary and important for a whole range of products, for e-fuels, for direct combustion, for fuel cells. There’s no question about that. But we have to be able to store and transport it. In maritime transport, transporting hydrogen over long distances makes no economic sense.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has defined methanol and ammonia as the fuels of the future for ships. Both fuels offer significant advantages over hydrogen in terms of transport and storage. And their green variants can be burned in fuel cells but also in combustion engines in a CO₂-neutral way. Both fuels are already widely used in the chemical industry and agriculture, and their production is well established on an industrial scale. Almost all Asian companies work with methanol.

Schwarz:

As the »raw materials guy«, I would like to add that ammonia and methanol are both so-called global trading commodities. They have been around for 120 years and there is a global trading system in place. There is a pricing system and there is a functioning market.

Blumenröder:

There are 120 ports around the world where methanol and ammonia are processed. And we are talking about quantities that are beyond our imagination. Global demand for ammonia is around 200,000,000 tons. This makes ammonia one of the most widely produced chemical products in the world.

Uhlmann:

Returning to the automotive sector, what changes would I need to make to the engine and other components in a vehicle in order to use ammonia as a fuel?

Blumenröder:

The piston engine essentially remains unchanged. The engine can be configured so that ammonia can be fed into the intake manifold and enriched with hydrogen, for example. However, ammonia in cars or trucks poses completely different challenges. Ammonia is toxic and corrosive, which requires additional safety measures for the vehicles themselves, but also for the storage and transport of ammonia. The infrastructure for using ammonia as a fuel is still under development.

Polte:

In the short term, battery-powered electric vehicles are a good solution then. We can upgrade the necessary infrastructure relatively easily. For example, many cities are already working with street lamp charging stations for electric vehicles.

Blumenröder:

If we want to achieve a penetration rate of 30 or 40 percent for battery electric vehicles in Europe, we are talking about decades.

Polte:

That is also the information we have. Even just looking at the production of electric motors and axles, the currently available capacity on the market is nowhere near enough to meet the demand.

Schwarz:

We can ramp up market capacities in five to ten years. I would like to throw in a point from the raw materials industry: Where do the metals required to build batteries actually come from? They are not available here in Germany, nor in the EU. If I need different metals in order to switch from existing systems to different ones, I create new demand for these metals. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act requires that, starting in 2030, ten percent of so-called technologically strategic metals be produced in Europe, with 40 percent of the demand in Europe being met from recycling. I do not see sufficient research capacity in this area in Germany. Do we consider the issue of raw material consumption when we are discussing strategies for drive technologies or not?

Uhlmann:

Of course, we have to factor this in. For direct hydrogen combustion, for example, austenitic steels are required, as well as specialized coatings, which we already have mastered today. The technologies for producing these materials are available, there is no question about that. We do, however, need new materials, for example to make electric motors neodymium-free. Neodymium is a rare earth that we want to avoid using as much as possible. This brings us to exactly the point you just mentioned, namely that we need to develop alternative materials.

Schwarz:

For the past 40 years, my career focus aside from the current topic of e-fuels has been on rare earth deposit sites. And that brings me to the question: We now know that implementing certain political guidelines from the last 10 to 15 years in Germany and Europe will at least take longer than was originally thought. You are now talking about neodymium-free engines. How long will it take to develop these materials and produce them in the quantities we need? When do you think these technologies will be available on an industrial scale so that we can also use them to power cars?

Uhlmann:

Do you know the first principle of mechanical engineering?

Schwarz:

No.

Uhlmann:

The basic principle of mechanical engineering is: If you do not start, you will never finish. The problem is that we do not start working on certain things. We act as if everything has to be in place before we can get involved in a technology, instead of researching and developing it in an interdisciplinary way. That’s why I insist, also in politics, that if we want to pursue direct hydrogen combustion, we must think about materials as well.

Blumenröder:

Fundamentally, you are right. However, the issue of materials is the least of our problems when it comes to direct hydrogen combustion. Instead, we should just get on with it! Then we can argue about how to implement hydrogen combustion. We need to choose a combustion process that is actually safe. So far, all engine manufacturers have pursued approaches that work with a pilot injection process, which has the disadvantage of requiring the addition of gasoline or diesel, meaning that CO₂-free combustion cannot be achieved. And that is therefore not supported in European regulations.

Uhlmann:

Then we need to find a technical solution and develop injectors that can inject hydrogen. The technologies are at least already being considered and have been partially implemented. Instead, our problem in Germany is that we often focus politically on just one technology and ignore everything else. We need to break this pattern and start asking ourselves what the logical next steps are and what the timeline should be. Mr. Schwarz, you see potential for e-fuels in aviation. They are already a prerequisite there. But are e-fuels an option for road transport, including for existing vehicles and given the costs involved?

Schwarz:

If we factor in the question of timelines, I see e-fuels as a transitional technology, of course, even in road traffic. They can be produced immediately. If I change the framework conditions that affect the price of electricity, then I can also produce them economically. But then there are still CO₂ emissions. This brings me to a point we have not touched on yet: What do we actually do with the CO₂? And why are we politically opposed to removing CO₂ at point sources and use it as a recyclable material? Other countries already have business models for capturing CO₂ at locations where it is produced in large quantities. Another point: Four years ago, the Americans decided that the Department of Defense would essentially purchase any synthetic kerosene produced using a variety of new technological pathways at any price. And they will now decide which two or three of these new technological pathways’ industrial implementation they will promote on a massive scale. This is technology-neutral funding in a way we do not have here in Germany, but urgently need.

Uhlmann:

That is right, but we need to take different paths of transformation and pursue different technological approaches in order to get to zero-emission drives.

Blumenröder:

»Electric only« will not be the right solution for all future applications either. We will have a blend of different drive technologies, which we will have to think through and implement from cradle to grave if we want to achieve carbon neutral mobility. What this blend will look like will vary depending on the application and infrastructure, but everyone will benefit from the synergies between the different approaches.