2024-02-08 01:02:23
The Repsol Tech Lab is a facility with high ceilings, polished floors and pristine laboratories. It bears little resemblance to the kitchen stove of a restaurant during rush hour. But, in the end, both in the research center that the energy company has in the Madrid town of Móstoles and in the kitchen of any restaurant, what they work on is formulating and “cooking” recipes. In the case of Repsol, that of new biofuels that help in the process of decarbonization of the economy.
Because as the company defends and repeats Claudia Isarte, scientist and person in charge of the design of these fuels at the Spanish multinational, biofuels are “an immediate solution because they are compatible with existing vehicles and storage systems without the need for modifications.”
Formulating the recipe for a new biofuel takes time and money – Repsol invests between 60 and 70 million annually in it. Although the starting point is always the same: that the concentration of CO2 necessary for life does not increase. Like any fuel, biofuels emit CO2 when burned by an engine. However, Isarte explains during a media visit to the technology center, “to compensate for these emissions, what is done is to previously remove the CO2 that they are going to emit to make them neutral in emissions.” In the case of synthetic biofuels, by previously capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. In the advanced case, it is the organic waste that is used for its production such as used cooking oil, agricultural prunings or biomass that previously captures the CO2 that will later be re-emitted when transformed into fuel.
Formulation laboratory
The selection of these raw materials is basic for the development of a biofuel. Not all of them are worth it. As Aurora Macías, manager of the fluids and formulation laboratory at the Repsol Tech Lab, explains, the first thing to do is “know them well, study their composition and choose the appropriate process to transform them into biofuel.” Some, such as used vegetable oil, are easy to transform into renewable diesel and provide great performance, practically one liter of fuel for each one of used oil. But others that do not have caloric value or other necessary characteristics are discarded.
Once the formulation laboratory manages to transform this raw material into oil that can be converted into a biofuel, the next phase of the process is to test its production in the pilot plants that Repsol has in the Tech Lab. In these facilities, the company can reproduce on a scale of 1 to a million any petrochemical process that it will later develop in its large complexes to see the problems that may arise when mass producing biofuel with the chosen raw material. What they do, as Mercedes Ayala, responsible for these pilot plants, says very graphically, is “test the iron” to see how a production process with a new raw material affects them. In this way, Repsol tests the adjustments that it will then have to make in its plants.
Pilot plant
Between pilot plants and production complexes there are also intermediate steps. The company, for example, will launch an experimental center in Bilbao in 2025 to produce synthetic biofuels by combining CO2 removed from the atmosphere and green hydrogen that plans to produce 2,000 tons per year. A very limited quantity compared to the 250,000 tons of advanced biofuel that will leave Cartagena starting this year, where the company will inaugurate the first plant of this type.
When Repsol has the recipe for a new fuel ready, the time comes to test it. To do this, the Tech Lab has an engine laboratory in which the fuel is tested in the engines of all types of vehicles: cars, motorcycles, boats, agricultural machinery… In the engines that are in each of the Cells in this department – including one for the Honda motorcycle team’s competition cells – are tested for performance, emissions… The objective, as Isarte explains, is “to achieve that its performance is exactly the same as that of a conventional fuel.” . To do this, Repsol researchers also have an experimental car that a robot drives on a test bench in which they can simulate real driving conditions and the most adverse weather conditions and that carry out long test runs of 24 hours for days and more. days. They also have research engines that they subject to extreme conditions.
At the end of this long process, Repsol obtains the 100% renewable fuels that they already sell in 61 of their service stations, which they hope will be more than 600 before the end of the year. It is a process that does not stop and that allows it to periodically put new products on the market such as the 100% renewable gasoline that it has begun to market in three of its service stations in Madrid.
#stoves #biofuels #future #cooked