Construction of cyan/green hydrogen-based renewable synthetic fuel production plant

▲Officials attending the signing ceremony pose for a commemorative photo.

Biofriends Inc. (CEO Won-jun Cho), a carbon-neutral eco-friendly energy company, announced on the 15th that it signed a contract with Unitel Technology Co., Ltd., a Chicago design company and overseas business technology cooperation partner, for the first time in Korea for commercial production of renewable fuels.

This project is about the business feasibility of a project to produce clean hydrogen using biogas or renewable energy sources (solar light) in California, USA, and synthesize it with captured CO₂ to manufacture e-methanol and eDME, as well as a production plant with an annual capacity of 30,000 tons. The detailed design for construction has begun.

Biofriends predicted that the domestic e-methanol and eDME market would open after 2026, and decided to lead the project with the goal of starting construction of e-methanol and eDME plants in 2024 and commercial production in 2026. With a total production scale of 30,000 tons, it aims for commercial production as a low-carbon fuel production plant produced from CO₂ collected domestically.

e-methanol and eDME are low-carbon fuels that replace fossil fuels, which are conventional fuels for internal combustion engines, and are considered fuels necessary to reduce greenhouse gases, and are expected to be used as fuels for large-scale transportation such as railroads and ships. In Korea, it is used as an intermediate bridge fuel on the road to carbon neutrality, and in particular, it is planned to promote technology development and commercialization, considering that it will be advantageous to convert the engine of a small ship using a diesel engine to an eDME engine. 

In Korea, it plans to manufacture from cyan hydrogen (hydrogen without carbon emission) using biogas or natural gas in the early stages, and will carry out the feasibility of the project at the same time as it expects to explode at the time of introducing clean hydrogen.

Won-jun Cho, CEO of Biofriends, said, "eFuel still has many issues to be resolved to secure economic feasibility, but it is a business that humanity must solve at the crossroads of the low-carbon fuel era and carbon-neutral society." We will approach the eco-friendly energy market with fuel and expand to businesses such as e-gasoline and e-diesel in the future.”

BioFriends stressed that while eco-friendly energy vehicles such as electric and hydrogen cars are not expected to replace the fuel used in internal combustion engines by 2050, they hope to replace it with a new energy source that can reduce greenhouse gases such as if it were an eco-friendly vehicle fuel and commercialize it early.

Source: Insight Energy News

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