Title
HEU UPTOME

CoPED ID
cfc443a8-00ca-40c8-a476-07bb2ca93d9e

Status
Active


Value
£1,292,710

Start Date
Nov. 1, 2022

End Date
Oct. 31, 2025

Description

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It is a great challenge to upgrade decentralized CO2 point-sources to production sites for renewable fuels. These CO2 sources can be related for example to production of biogas in anaerobic digestion plants. UP-TO-ME targets a ground-breaking change in decentralized Power-to-Methanol production for hard to electrify applications, like marine vessels. The potential of producing renewable methanol, only by utilizing the CO2 content of biogas in Europe is 128 Mt/a. UP-TO-ME concept is based on a hybrid process which combines the capture of CO2 with the synthesis to methanol in a fully autonomous, unmanned plant. The process comprises 3D-printed reactors and column packings designed using highly advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics. The fully automated, self-learning and self-optimizing control system allows production at fluctuating conditions by combining dynamical plant models and Artificial Intelligence. The aim of UP-TO-ME to provide self-optimizing control even for off-grid-operation is very challenging and, to our knowledge, has not yet been achieved anywhere for comparable plants. The ability of a remote plant to adapt itself to varying boundary conditions such as availability of renewable energies (e.g., from weather forecasts) or on the availability of CO2 from a fluctuating source, open unforeseen possibilities for distributed production. Currently, so-called blue methanol originating from natural gas, is used in limited cases as a marine fuel. However, the quality requirements of a renewable marine methanol fuel, especially considering water content, organic and sulfur impurities originating from P2X production, are not known. UP-TO-ME will assess experimentally the suitability of the produced fuel on a marine type of engine and provide ranges for fuel specifications and max limits for impurities for this to become a sustainable marine fuel.

Subjects by relevance
  1. Renewable energy sources
  2. Biogas
  3. Carbon dioxide
  4. Fuels
  5. Methanol
  6. Carbon capture and storage
  7. Computational fluid dynamics

Extracted key phrases
  1. Renewable marine methanol fuel
  2. HEU UPTOME
  3. Decentralized CO2 point
  4. Methanol production
  5. Great challenge
  6. Sustainable marine fuel
  7. Renewable fuel
  8. Co2 source
  9. Production site
  10. Renewable methanol
  11. P2X production
  12. Anaerobic digestion plant
  13. Decentralized Power
  14. Dynamical plant model
  15. Fuel specification

Related Pages

UKRI project entry

UK Project Locations