Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Fuels That Is Not Burned

Advanced Renewable

Tue , 14 May 2024 04:07 WIB

The era of energy transition from fossil to carbon neutral energy will be a win-win for all stakeholders, one of which is if this is done. That is, fossil fuels, both hydrocarbon and coal, are no longer burned, but are used as carriers for clean energy in the form of hydrogen.

Fossil industry stakeholders continue to benefit because the oil, gas and coal they produce can continue to be used until they run out, while the general public who are clean energy stakeholders will also get their clean energy more quickly.

This can be achieved if the use of fossil energy no longer has to be burned, or in other words CO2 from fossils is captured before combustion occurs, known as pre-combustion carbon capture. This solution is a combination of Air Gasification, Steam Gasification, Water Gas Shift (WGS) and Reforming technologies by the Advanced Renewable Organization (ARO) of Indonesia, and intensive algae cultivation by Tagar#PhotosyntheticRegeneration (PR) of United States.

How it works for fossils in the form of coal and hydrocarbons is in the picture below. For coal, it is gasified with air first to produce syngas, then the syngas, which was originally rich in CO and very little H2, is converted completely into H2 through WGS. However, apart from producing hydrogen, the WGS process also produces CO2, so this is where the algae technology mentioned above is playing the role.

CO2 is fed to algae cultivation, and the result is algae slurry - which can be directly fed to the XH2M reactor to produce H2 and CO again via steam gasification, CO is then converted into H2 and CO2 via WGS again, and so on this system runs, continuing to produce hydrogen. Meanwhile, the CO2 is always recaptured and becomes fuel again regeneratively through algae.

For hydrocarbon fuels, both petroleum and natural gas, the process is simpler because it goes straight to reforming and WGS. Initially oil and gas are reformed in the XH2M reactor, to become CO and H2. Then CO is simultaneously reacted in WGS to become H2 and CO2, these are the two final products. However, because we only need H2 as clean fuel, CO2 is captured back for the photosynthesis process of algae cultivation. Is the H2 produced in this way green?

To be fair, it may not be all green but most of it is definitely green. Why is that? For the first H2, the result of coal gasification and the WGS process, or from hydrocarbons that go through reforming and WGS - is disputable. Because actually CO2 still comes out, but we just capture it back completely.

The second portion of algae slurry, through steam gasification and WGS, becomes hydrogen and CO2 from previous recaptured CO2, this one should be completely green. Apart from having no emissions, algae photosynthesis also uses CO2 which is always recaptured and reused - via the Carbon Capture and Utilization or CCU of the system itself.