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The highlight of the opening ceremony for the new EFuel-Haru Oni plant in Punta Arenas, Chile, was the refueling of a gentian blue Porsche 911 with the completely new, almost carbon-neutral fuel by none other than Barbara Frenkel, Head of Procurement at Porsche AG. Less than five seconds later, the XNUMX performed a small drift. At the wheel sat Michael Steiner, Research and Development Director at Porsche, who had also traveled to Chile for the occasion.
eFuels: rethinking fuel
Actually, he was only supposed to do one or two laps around the base of the gigantic wind turbine for the waiting press people and photographers. But Steiner is a car enthusiast and a Porsche 911 is one Porsche 911. Seeing that there was no audience on the other side of the wind turbine, he decided without further ado to do an elegant drift behind the turbine. This little moment sums up what's happening on the shores of the Strait of Magellan, in windswept Patagonia. Porsche has invested in the company HIF (Highly Innovative Fuels), which built this industrial eFuel plant as one of the first in the world to produce gasoline in a completely new way.
A few years ago, Porsche began searching for a synthetic fuel that would enable combustion engines to be operated with virtually no CO₂ emissions. True to Ferry Porsche's words that he couldn't find the sports car he dreamed of and so decided to build it himself, the sports car manufacturer couldn't find the eFuel he dreamed of either. Porsche invested more than 100 million US dollars and brought its project management know-how and extensive experience with high-performance engines to support HIF in the development of eFuels.
Plant near Punta Arenas
The plant is located near Punta Arenas – a place where wind turbines run at peak power up to four times more often than in the windiest places in Germany. To produce eFuel, the first step is to break down water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. The latter is released to the atmosphere. "It's like a synthetic tree," explains one of the engineers in Chile. The hydrogen is then combined with CO2, which would otherwise remain in the atmosphere, to form methanol. In a final process, gasoline is produced from the methanol.
Even if the final product were to be shipped all the way back to Europe at the expected industrial scales, the CO2 emissions produced would be extremely small - especially in relation to the amount of CO2 that is removed from the atmosphere in the production of the fuel. Even though Porsche is still committed to electromobility and is aiming for more than 2030 percent of its new deliveries to be fully electric in 80, many of the Porsche vehicles produced over the years are still on the road. With the fuel produced in this pilot plant, the engines of these cars can run well into the future without the need for fossil fuels.
approx. 1,3 billion vehicles with combustion engines
More importantly, as Steiner puts it, “It's not just about Porsche. Today, around 1,3 billion vehicles with internal combustion engines are on the roads worldwide. According to the forecasts, this number will not decrease significantly in the next 15 years, despite the upswing in electromobility.” And so at the opening event, not only cars were discussed, but also a lot about the need for this regenerative fuel in aviation and shipping spoken.
Initially, however, all of the 130.000 liters produced annually in Haru Oni will be used for the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and other lighthouse projects worldwide, such as the Porsche Experience Center. Haru Oni is expected to produce 2026 million liters of fuel in 55, and ten times that amount just two years later. Haru Oni is a sign of hope in the fight against climate change, for a more sustainable future - and perhaps also accompanied by the sonorous accompaniment of a six-cylinder boxer engine.
Of course, that wasn't the end of it!
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