October 19, 2023

Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Head Office: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, President & CEO: Shinji Shimomura; hereinafter “SHI”) has successfully produced FT synthetic*1 fuel from synthesis gas with an admixture of 20% carbon dioxide (CO2).

Through this research, we have established technology for producing liquid fuel, using CO2 emitted from power plants, factories, and other sources as a raw material. Applications in areas such as carbon neutral liquid fuels (kerosene, SAF (jet fuel), diesel gas oil etc.) for realizing a decarbonized society can be expected by using CO2 derived from the atmosphere or biomass, and CO2-free hydrogen as a raw material.

In most conventional cases of FT synthesis (GTL process), the raw material has been synthesis gas produced by steam reforming of natural gas, mainly containing methane together with steam. However there were issues with this approach such as a drop in partial pressure of synthesis gas when CO2 enters the reaction system, and a decarbonation unit has been required to remove CO2 at the stage before the FT reactor.
With the aim of realizing a two-stage synthetic fuel process, consisting of a reverse shift reactor (reactor for producing carbon monoxide (CO) from CO2) and a FT reactor, while using CO2 and hydrogen as raw materials, SHI recently succeeded in producing synthetic liquid fuel from synthesis gas containing 20% CO2 by using a new catalyst developed independently by SHI.

Going forward, we will continue optimizing the reaction and catalysts, and scaling up in order to achieve fuel synthesis using CO2 and hydrogen produced by SHI’s biomass power plants, or synthesis gas produced by SHI’s gasifiers, as raw materials.
Also, this development has being carried out with the cooperation of the Gunma Prefectural Industrial Technology Center.

*1) FT (Fischer Tropsch) synthesis is a reaction which synthesizes liquid fuels (liquid hydrocarbons) from synthesis gas made of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2). The technology was established by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in the 1920s. There are high expectations that the process using CO2 as a raw material will be a promising technology for carbon recycling, together with methane, methanol, DME synthesis, and the like.