Maritime transport accounts for 13.5% of transport emissions in the EU, prompting ambitious regulatory measures such as the FuelEU Maritime initiative and the International Maritime Organization’s decarbonization goals. These frameworks target significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, aiming for up to an 80% intensity reduction by 2050 within the EU and net-zero emissions globally by the same year, while promoting the adoption of low-carbon and renewable fuels. In this context, renewable fuels like electro-Marine Gasoil (e-MGO) offer promising pathways to decarbonize the maritime transport sector.

Aligned with these objectives, the SUPORT project aims to develop innovative technologies to generate new green synthetic fuel to decarbonise the maritime transport by revalorising emitted CO₂ by different chemical processes. Specifically, the fuel will be produced from CO₂ captured from the biogas of the water treatment plant present in the port of Barcelona, using a combination of Solid Oxide Co-electrolyser and Fischer-Tropsch catalytic processes that define the complete Power-to-fuel route.

An important milestone in the project was recently reached by the researchers of the Sustainable Fuels group at IREC, who successfully produced synthetic MGO (e-MGO) through Fischer-Tropsch.

This achievement demonstrates the performance of the pilot-scale Fischer-Tropsch project system, featuring a fixed-bed reactor operating with up to 100 g of catalyst. The future challenge is scaling up the process to produce a sufficient amount of fuel for meaningful testing in maritime transport, ensuring its feasibility in real-world applications.

The SUPORT project consortium is formed by IREC, joining efforts from two departments (Nanoionics and Fuel Cells and Energy Storage, Harvesting and Catalysis) ; CIMNE-CENIT, CETAQUA, Aigües de Barcelona and Autoritat Portuària de Barcelona.

Acknowledgements (in Spanish)

Este contrato es parte del proyecto PLEC2022-009250, financiado por MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 y por la Unión Europea “NextGenerationEU/PRTR”.