SUNlight-to-LIQUID - Efficient solar thermochemical synthesis of liquid hydrocarbon fuels using tailored porous-structured materials and heat recuperation

The European Green Deal aims at a 90% reduction in transport emissions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The main leverage of road, rail, aviation, and waterborne transport is increasing the share of renewable fuels.

SUN-to-LIQUID II addresses this challenge with an integrated solar-thermochemical pathway that has the potential to produce sustainable and cost-effective fuels at the scale of future demand directly from sunlight, water and CO2.

The primary objective is to achieve a record-high energy conversion of 15% - a 3-fold increase of the state of the art - by bringing novel concepts (TRL 2) and lab-scale developments (TRL 3) to the field (TRL 4-5).

To this end, the aims are the optimization of a high-flux solar concentrating heliostat & tower system, the development and integration of novel 3D structured reactants and implementation of high-temperature heat recovery within the solar-thermochemical system.

Detailed scale-up and constraint analyses and a commercial exploitation of the solar-thermochemical fuel technology strategy complement the key objectives for the way forward.

Through a 48-months 5.7-MEuros valued action, SUN-to-LIQUID II will demonstrate on-sun the viability of the integrated solar fuel pathway on a 50-kW scale, and will create a conceptual design of a next-generation commercial multi-megawatt-scale solar plant.

Gathering three research organisations, two industry partners and one SME from five European countries, the highly complementary consortium builds on its unique expertise and unique state-of-the-art research facilities.

As a result, five expected outcomes of HORIZON-CL5-2022-D3-03-07 are achieved with research, development and demonstration of the SUN-to-LIQUID II technology, and with the system analyses providing the evidence for a pathway towards cost-effective and deep GHG emission reduction especially for aviation, with technical scalability to production potentials beyond projected future demand.