 Introduce you to the next talk. It's gonna be by Jonas Geisler. He's gonna talk about power to X and Dive a little bit into carbon capturing and utilization. So I'm especially interested in this since you know Our planet is burning and we are trying really hard to save it. So I hope Jonas can give us some hints about how that might be possible. So please give a warm welcome to Jonas. Thank you Yeah, hi A warm welcome from my side as well to my talk and yeah as already announced I will talk about how to make things from electricity or power to X and the outline of my talk is first What is the idea behind power to X and what does this mysterious X might stand for? Then I want to talk about carbon capture and utilization like a group of techniques which fall under this large word of power to X Then I will want to talk about the energy sector a little and the chemistry sector so where this could be applied and and Why this might make sense to do this so in the hopefully very near future So yeah, the phrase power to X Basically the idea is when we are generating renewable energy We produce at certain times sufficient electricity at certain times not sufficient electricity and at other times surplus Electricity and this surplus electricity the idea was what to do with it like we have it. We have it as a resource do something with it and There is where the first word you will find when you're searching for power to X terms comes into the game Which is the trivial solution? Which is sorry power to value so make something valuable and We'll see later on that the idea of using surplus energy won't be enough, but that's basically the idea by the way power in that case usually is electricity so Not that you're confused power refers always to to electricity Then when we got this idea like power to value We can ask us the question like what do we need and there comes the next group of terms we can use Into play and the first one I want to present you is power to power. So now you might think that's Stupid we have power. Why should we do something to make power? But that's basically referring to all the energy storage things like Storing to make the grid stable for times where we don't have sufficient electricity supply and use it then The next is heat heat is One of the main fields besides electricity where we put energy in so why not make heat with that power? third one mobility Same thing. We have a certain Field where we need a lot of energy. Let's bring electricity to that field The next thing chemicals that will be something I will talk a lot about Because carbon capture and utilization is mainly about chemicals yeah, can we Use that electricity to produce chemicals in a efficient way and in a renewable way And the last term one might find is food in that field one might find more terms But this is basically what is the most common? So maybe we can also use it to produce some food Yeah Now we have Our needs in a basic the question is now what products can we actually make? And there we come to a very often heard term power to gas This mainly refers to methane and a hydrogen where we have the another terms power to methane power to hydrogen So let's produce gases which are storing energy for us and we can apply them for certain things Very similar a power to fuel or power to liquid which is essentially the same like when referring to fuels By that term we very often think of liquid fuels and when we're referring of liquids We very often think of fuel applications. So that's that's rather similar And the next one would be sun gas Sun gas is The mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen which is very often used in chemical industry. So I will talk about that later Power to syngas Yeah, is what's meant with that You can find power to ammonia ammonia is one of the chemicals we are producing in very large scale and Which is very energy demanding. We're burning a lot of fossil fuels to make ammonia And the last one I want to show you is protein Which is a rather interesting idea as well to make proteins directly using that energy by some some chemistry Now how they are interconnected. So all these three energy applications refer mainly to gas and fuel a little to syngas the chemicals of course Like when we're speaking of chemical products, that's all chemistry and food is mainly ammonia due to virtualize a production and Protein but I won't talk too much about food ammonia and and proteins I will mention ammonia at some a certain point, but that's not the focus of the talk Now is that new and I would say no, that's just like modern bus wording cause power to power we have since a Long time. This is a hydro pump station from the 30s Power to heat you might know such devices from your grandparents power to mobility You this is a bus from the 40s and power to chemicals This is a Chloralkali electrolyzer. So producing chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide solution from the 1920s So we have power to whatever already the thing is just in times of climate change and An increasing amount of renewable energy it becomes more interesting and new technologies could be implemented But the general power to something terms are nothing really new Now coming more to carbon capture and utilization What we are doing in our energy sector usually is we take fossil carbon Then we make some fuels out of it We make one of those fields of energy we are using and in the end we end up with a CO2 and water if we think of the chemical sector We're doing the same we're making commodity chemicals. So like the large-scale chemicals produced in really Megaton scale Worldwide and from those we're producing all the fancy products We have around us and at the end of the life Hopefully we burn them or we degrade them to CO2 and water because if we don't do that We end up with waste which is even more problematic usually So This is very linear. We're coming from fossil fuels and we come going to see you to and water And I guess that's not very new to you But carbon capture and utilization now means that I'd capture this CO2 and water again, and I utilize it and make exactly that fuels and commodity chemicals to Have a circle like no more CO2 should be produced, but we are just driving it in a circle Very important from the beginning we are not reducing CO2 as long as we are not producing way more products as The products are already there, and we're just bringing new products. We're just lowering the amount of new CO2 emitted to make that clear a lot of Startups say something like negative CO2 emissions by carbon capture and utilization You need to really look into the detail if they store somewhere the carbon or if they really do Yeah Carbon capture and utilization and then they usually have no negative emissions, but I come to that later again as well Now this looks nice, but till now it's a perpetual mobile So of course we need to put in the renewable energy and we could either do that directly by putting it into the energy sectors and using this energy there Or we could just drive that cycle around by putting it into capturing CO2 from point sources We can't avoid or from the dive from the air around us Which is a little more complicated because the concentration is very low, but still possible And also possible on a large scale and in the end hopefully we get rid of this fossil carbon But just having this cycle ongoing When we look at exactly the same thing from another point of view We come to For example this energy scale and we see Different carbon products and the and oxygen Combined have a certain energy level stored within the chemical bonds and What we usually do when we when we burn them which happens at a certain point as I said We kick them over the activation barrier and then we throw them all the way down the hill till we end up with C2 and water which is really what for chemists C2 and water is quite stable So we're really down at the bottom of the energy somehow Which is good because we wanted to get this energy out of the reaction But which also is a problem because now we need to bring that back up again And the question is how could we do that? How does that work? Can we just heat up C2 and water and All our nice products fall out again. That's sadly not that easy and at first I want to talk about techniques which Are already like ever technology readiness level very high So which are could be implemented in large-scale reactions kind of already like minor optimizations still needed, but but we could do that today and therefore We take apart the water and the CO2 part and the first step we make water electrolysis Just to remind you like water electrolysis you put two electrodes into a salt solution you apply electricity and from The anode you will have Oxygen evolving and from the cathode you will have hydrogen evolving so far so easy Like for chemists, we know that Optimizing that is not that easy, but it's known technology. We can still make it better, but it's out there So now we have hydrogen and oxygen like we already produced the oxygen We put in in the beginning now we want to have our product and therefore we combine this Hydrogen and CO2 and then we go over certain reactions Which are downhill in energy? So? We are getting energy out of that again But why because the products are uphill that is because we put in more hydrogen from the beginning to produce again water So we're splitting water and using that water to reduce the CO2 to our products and we perform water at the same time now you might have seen such pictures In in school at a certain time when people were talking about catalysts And a catalyst from what I hear from people who tell me what they heard in school is this strange things which makes erection fast Or some some people or I still remember the thing that lowers the activation barrier But what does actually happen there and I want to make the experiment to get you a better glimpse of what a catalyzed reaction looks like by visualizing it and Therefore we take this picture. We have that very nice catalyst surface, which is very ordered And which is not the reality for the experts This is also not the outcome of some a simulation or whatever It's just a visualization how such a reaction could look like in the Microscale on the surface for for single molecules and atoms and Now this CO2 is a linear molecule Somewhere in the gas phase or in a liquid phase Which makes it more complex, but we just looking at the CO2 here Above this catalyst surface and if we have the right material material what could happen is that the CO2 absorbs to the to one surface atom or to a group of surface atoms and You already see that I drawn the CO2 molecule bent So it's not linear anymore and that might be already one step where the activation barrier is reduced because we it's now Accessible for reactions from some angles which were not there before and the electric electron density is different and all that So that might be more reactive than before just by absorbing it to that surface Now we want to react it this with Hydrogen now we so we put in a hydrogen molecule and some catalysts for example are capable of splitting that hydrogen molecule where it would never happen in normal cases and This might look like this so before a form something we call surface hydride So we have single hydrogen atoms sitting on the surface And they are split it up at a rather low temperatures And now we have that in very close proximity on the surface And what could happen is that one of the hydrogen atoms just jumps to one of the oxygen atoms and we formed a Surface carbonyl group this carbonyl group already is our first reaction We have reduced carbon dioxide to something not really useful yet, but we already did it Next step the the other hydrogen could jump to the very same oxygen So This is not stable. This oxygen has three bonds in that case This should in most of the cases break apart and this is exactly what happens and we form Water which is in the gas phase and we have carbon monoxide Still bound to the surface And now we could do all kinds of things so if this surface keeps that CEO Utsurped we can react it further and make One carbon containing small molecules like methane methanol all that stuff or We can Have another carbon monoxide at the same surface very close and then something similar could happen like Where the hydrogen atom reacted with the oxygen but the two carbon atoms in a close proximity now react And that's where we form like longer carbon chains, and there we make complex more complex molecules So not really complex still like two carbon atoms three carbon atoms Ten carbon atoms in the chain or something But yeah, we form form a product And the last thing which could happen this catalyst is just not capable to to keep that carbon monoxide on the surface And it desorbs and we produce carbon monoxide, which could also be fine So I Hopefully I could explain you now a little more how this catalyst thing might work and Now the question is what are their reactions which we can use and the first thing you already seen Water electrolysis is in that case the first step You've also already seen the so-called reverse water gas shift reaction where we produce carbon monoxide From CO2 and hydrogen even if it in reality on the real catalyst this might look a little different but Similar to what I've shown you this could happen Now I said carbon monoxide can be a useful product and I come back to the Sinti's gas or sin gas I already mentioned and with this in different mixtures. We can do a lot of things like Mixture one or two to one Produces LPG so liquid petroleum gas. This is what you have in your camping cooker Bottles NAFTA is a certain fraction you usually get when you distill crude oil, which is very useful in chemical industry Diesel which is also something like that if you put in Like two to one you get for example methanol ethanol demythyl ether or gasoline and With a mixture of three to one you end up with methane or so-called SNG Which is synthetic natural gas so? We which means exactly the same basically because Natural gas contains mainly methane synthetic natural natural gas usually is methane so Here we are already Very happy we have a three-step process and we produce all kinds of things we can use The problem is by having a lot of steps in a reaction We multiply the efficiency and there by the efficiency goes down So we are always very happy if we can produce things in few steps so there's for example the reaction of CO2 and Hydrogen to methanol directly on one catalyst in one step So we only have the efficiency loss of one step instead of two steps the reverse water gas shift and the corresponding sin gas reaction So we might have an increase in efficiency by doing that if that reaction is more efficient than the two steps combined Same principle with the subatee reaction there would take CO2 and hydrogen and make directly methane without going two steps One reaction I want to to mention here even if it's not carbon capture and utilization is the harbor Bosch reaction because in principle it works the same we could make the hydrogen from from water electrolysis and react that was nitrogen and There's exactly where the Reduction in producing Ammonia in a way that is more sustainable comes in because Usually the hydrogen and chemical industry today is produced by a lot of fossil fuels So you burn fossil fuels With too little oxygen to fully fully burn it and you get a lot of hydrogen out of there So if we would just use Hydrogen from water electrolysis which is more expensive today But would be way more sustainable Just to give you one further example is I want to point out on this direct methanol synthesis for a second and we form methanol and The picture you see is the George Ola plant in Iceland and it's named after a very interesting person who made the concept of A methanol economy so like basically like our today's economy is a oil economy where we produce nearly everything we have around us from oil He proposes a economy that uses Methanol as the central resource and that's why they called this plant after him because they are producing four kilotons a year of Methanol or at least they have the capacity to do so This might seem not too much when looking at 100 megaton a year Worldwide methanol consumption, but keep in mind That's just one plant and we also don't have just one plant producing methanol today and It's one of the first plans who does exactly that Producing seed from CO2 and water by the use of Quasi renewable energy in form of geothermal energy Producing methanol For the people who are interested a typical catalyst which you could use for this process would be a combination of copper and zinc oxide I'm not sure if they are using it because they for sure don't tell which catalyst they are using But this would be would be something typical one could use Let's go back to this picture where is that a way I showed you all this Steps we're going through in the processes. I've shown you till now These are the processes like I said, which are on on a technology ready readiness level that we could do that today basically But you've seen it's a lot of steps and I told you that a lot of steps sometimes is not good so let's look a little more into the future and could we go like one step and There's something promising and this is actually the field where I'm working in in a more detailed way in my PhD and This is electro catalytic CO2 reduction. So you've seen the same picture as in the slide before where explained water electrolysis So what do we change? We put in CO2 and Then for sure we need to change the catalyst material. I don't know if you really seen that but the color of the one electrode changed and What will happen then when we have the right catalyst? We get directly our renewable carbon product or like yeah hydrocarbon product and What could be those products? The first one formic acid formic acid is a chemical which Has a certain role in chemical industry several kilotons a year It's not too large, but we can produce it that way and Already kind of efficient. It is not like industrial level yet, but but that that works And we can do the carbon monoxide which I also said before that is useful and there I know that Some German companies are right now build trying to build a commercial plan to do exactly that in that step I won't mention companies because I don't want to make stupid advertisements, but there is something going on Other products we could do it could make is methane and ethylene methane again synthetic natural gas and Ethylene it would be the real thing because ethylene is I think the Chemical made from from oil Like the largest chemical made from oil Because we're producing a lot of polyethylene as plastics and we can use it also for all the other kinds of things we as well We has a very large variety To make things out of ethylene But methane and ethylene to be honest are more on a scale where it works in the lab And it's still not really sure if we can bring that to industrial scale, but it might work And yeah, like I said, that's what I'm trying to work on Or being part of large community working on that So Now I've talked a lot about the processes and the chemistry behind it Let's see can we use that and like I said to you I want to talk about the energy sector and Just to give you an estimation Primary energy consumption of the world is something like 600 exajoules a year which equals something like a hundred sixty seven petawatt hours that's what we are using in form of gas and oil and coal and Renewables like all the things we put into the energy sector in the beginning and The three Different things I told you before electricity transport of mobility and heat are Roughly a third of each like in Germany. We need a little more heat Because of cold winters And in in other parts of the world we have a little more electricity. So rough estimation one-third each So now the question is if we can mainly produce renewable energies in the form of electricity How do we bring that into that fields and? We can start with something which is very well known Mechanical storage and pumping up water a hill and we can calculate roughly One kilogram of water. We're pumping uphill for a hundred meters And we roughly come out at something like 0.3 watt hours Which are contained within the water Yeah, more uphill That's something and that's useful. We've seen that people are doing that with hydro pump storage But we might put in more energy and then we can go to terminal energy Storage and Now we take the same kilogram of water and heat it up from 25 degrees roughly room temperature to to to boiling and we see We come to something like 87 kilowatt hours in the same exact same kilogram of water This is rough a Factor of two orders of magnitude So now we can go to chemical storage, which is the thing I'm talking to you since roughly half an hour And there we can put in 3.7 kilowatt hours by splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen This is again something like Two orders of magnitude higher That's the reason basically why you don't see cars Driving around with hydro pump storage because we couldn't just bring in enough water and height Into the into the into the car to make that but we you only have chemicals or electrochemicals driving a car Now when we go to Electrochemical storage, I want to show you this So-called ragoni plot which draws the energy density by weight. So how much energy in one kilogram? Over the energy density by volume how much energy in one liter And if you are not too familiar with the jewels up there There's one mega jewel is something like a quarter kilowatt hour Now let's take the absolute standard Which is lead acid like car batteries Which is down there it's Also has its applications and weight wise it's still the largest energy market just cause lead is heavy But we are still producing mainly lead acid Concerning weight some of you might remember nickel catmium Which is prohibited? Due to the toxic catmium The better thing is a nickel metal hydride. That's what you know from like normal the cylindrical battery-shaped Rechargeable batteries that's nickel metal hydride and then of course lithium ion technology We can bring in a lot of energy into These batteries and you all have that in a whole lot of devices But if that's still not enough We need to go to a different scale And we put all the batteries down there And now we come to hydrogen hydrogen is somewhere in that region And why is it in such a broad region? It's cause we have Hydrogen storage in materials which is essentially a sponge Sucking up hydrogen, but we have that additional material in the storage so it becomes heavier And it's low in the energy density by weight We have the gauges And the at 700 bar compressed and the liquefied so that's what makes up this this square But we see now we're very good in energy density by weight hydrogen is very light But by density we there's still Place above there and there where is where the sea-based Materials come in and for to give you some examples there We have methanol down there We have gasoline up there and that's also why an electric vehicle doesn't drive that far But it's like three times as heavy as a normal car. That's exactly the thing Why gasoline is so good and for my personal perspective? I can't imagine a jet flying with batteries because they would be too heavy We need some some fuel that drives them Which is lighter and denser? So Yeah, that's why the the carbon products are very interesting and Another thing Why carbon products are very interesting is because We know how to handle them. We have a large infrastructure all around the globe to transport them to store them to supply them to the Applications we know what to do. We just need to install Capacities to produce them from a renewable way But where are the downsides if we're looking at the downsides We come to that graph and I really want to Emphasize the work of the group of Andre Bader, which do a really great work in making this life cycle assessments of These technologies and what we see is The global warming impact measured in kilogram Cu2 equivalents so like greenhouse gases in general Coming from certain products we are producing by a carbon capture and utilization technique So we have this orange dotted lines or methane. We have this Violet line is jet fuel and different kinds of things and It's drawn over the global warming impact of the electricity we used to drive that process and The vertical line is fossil diesel So if we are above that line By driving that carbon capture and utilization cycle. We're producing more greenhouse gases Then just using fossil diesel And then we have this No, yeah, did I said a horizontal line? I think I said vertical line the horizontal line is the fossil diesel the the vertical lines are The grid mixes of certain countries the the intermediate grid mixes for example the one right out there at something like 370 Grams you the two equivalent per kilowatt hour. There is the you great mix proposed for 2020 Then we have the you great mix for 2050 which is still not sufficient to produce anything We have switch Switzerland with this which is on the border Of there could be something useful. We have France Which are very low in global warming impact of their electricity because they're using a lot of nuclear power Which is a total different discussion if that is by any means helpful, but but they could do something on that field and As at the best we have Iceland which has really high amount of Green electricity in their grid and we have the wind benchmark which is the technology was which is also not zero because we were producing for example a lot of concrete to be to to build the wind mill and that produces a lot of co2 But it's still the best technology. We have Global global warming impact wise So yeah, it makes only sense if we have a lot of very green electricity Going to the chemical sector We have a graph that it's slightly more complicated But it essentially says Shows the mass flows From fossil fuels to the 20 largest Chemicals produced from fossil fuels usually which have 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the chemical industry So that's like a model which can refer to basically the whole Chemical industry and they modeled it for these 20 chemicals And we see this fossil fuels are over different processes split up in what I said before ethyl and methanol polyolefins, so plastics Aromatics I didn't speak a lot about them, but or essentially not an ammonia Which is not a carbon base, but as I said we put in a lot of fossil fuels to to produce it Now what is the alternative of this thing, which is the proposal proposed mass flows so like the size of the line refers to a mass flow To this mass flows for which are proposed for 2030 for by just using fossil fuels on I Said when I showed you methanol I said something like methanol economy and They made a model. It's again work from from the group of Andre Bardo Where they basically use methanol as the central chemical chemistry because they say this is high in Technology readiness level so we could do that right away, but if you see that right The outcome should be the same like we're producing a certain amount of chemicals in 2030 maybe and Not Should not depend on on the way we produce it how much we need of it So actually we can scale that down here so if we make that and capture the carbon dioxide And use hydrogen by the way here the hydrogen you see the hydrogen mass flow going in this comes from water This is why a lot of water comes out of this reaction, which is the gray part On the top right part of the this methanol pathway And we would need to put in even more water and split it at the beginning cause some of the water For sure ends up in our products. That's why we are doing that So we would need to put in a whole lot of water To make that and we would have massive mass flow. So we would have a By many factors or by a huge factor larger chemical industry if we would do that Because we would also need plants to capture the carbon dioxide and so on and so on and Now the exact same question does that make sense and Here is two models. So I showed you the High TRL model, which is again technology readiness level. So can we do it today? Or is it something we could do maybe in future and the orange area is the we can Can maybe do that today? Area and it's the same graph plus as I shown you in the in the Electricity part or in the sorry in the energy part just the other way round like zero that time is on the on the right side And we see like again, we would need to have a whole lot of Renewable electricity, which is really clean not not a grid mix from today Yeah, now we can Come to another graphics like how much electricity would we need to do that? And this graph shows like the the different lines the colored lines are different Global warming impacts of the electricity I put in so zero would be the best Thinkable so I have zero emission electricity I put in so I go down that line and It's drawn over the additional electricity We need so how much do we need to install extra to what we have today? And on the sides the scales is cradled to grave greenhouse emissions, which is from my side the meaningful Thing because that says like how much greenhouse gases do I emit? From producing the chemical till degrading or burning it at the end of their life so how much extras you too comes out and The other side is cradled to gate which is more interesting for a company like I Take co2 and Make something with it. How much do I? produce from starting to my Factory gate where I ship the product and that's also why cradled to gate emissions can be Negative so we can store co2 there and they cannot be negative when we're looking at cradled to grave at least not if we're burning the product in the end of the lifetime and We see we need a lot of electricity The scale down there is in pet award hours and Just to give you a number the today's generation of electricity in total so not renewable electricity Electricity in total is something like 24 pet award hours So we would essentially need the same amount of electricity as we are producing today to Produce the chemicals in future in a renewable way keeping in mind that we also need the renewable electricity to make To make heat and mobility And there is the point where I say like There is this is nice technology and we can do a lot with that But The question is So from my point of view we cannot Reach that so we need definitely to reduce so we need to reduce in all the other ways We need to reduce chemicals we need to reduce all Kinds of energy usage and that on a severe level because we just don't have enough energy to make that or we are not from my perspective not able to produce in a sufficient timescale enough electricity to do so but we could still do something and Keep our like luxury level at least at some level for the next time and the next generations And at the end I would just want to show you very briefly where I think this energy might come from And I want to show you that map And this map is the basically the sun shining on the earth like the in in what per square meter Is that that colored scale? And there's a reason there's two reasons why I put that map the way you see it first because it's Anyway useful to change perspective from time to time and not be in the center of the world and the other thing is that Today it's very often that The southern hemisphere depends on the northern hemisphere for a lot of reasons But in that case we depend on the southern hemisphere and we want to make that in a social and fair way and not in a New colonial way we essentially need to go to them and ask them. Would you please generate? Energy-carrying products for us because we need them other ways Otherwise our society will break apart because of this drop in luxury We can't just can't afford for our society a society and what I would do in in large scale is putting there down there concentrate Solar power plants which are really able to produce very high amounts of electricity in a fairly easy way on on on small small scale and you can produce like all day and night if you because you can store the heat in in the in the liquid salt And you could place like plants there which produce for example methanol and ship it to us like yeah in in that way and Yeah, with that I think I have some few minutes left, but I'm already At the end of the talk and I thank you for your kind attention But for the questions, I want to just start something you see the source here Climate clock a clock.net to just show you how severe the discussion is Yeah, and with that again. Thank you for your attention and I'm happy to try to answer your questions all right Since there's a longer break after this talk we can take a couple of questions So if you have a question for Jonas, please come to one of the two microphones in the room and ask a brief and concise question So we can Be quick about it, but maybe there are actually no questions Or maybe one. Yeah Right go ahead great talk How are we gonna capture all the co2 because that's infrastructure isn't there yet There is info so the infrastructure is not there But the technology is there especially when concerning point sources Like going to some factory which produces co2 there We need to keep in mind that deal between Renewable electricity like what is the footprint of our electricity and what are we producing but we have some processes like? For example concrete production were inherently in the process We are producing co2 that could be one option and there are some startups around the world who are making direct air capture And who are quite efficiently? especially if they have Heat source or weight he was heat source around They can very efficiently capture already today very pure co2 from from ambient air around us So the technology is there the infrastructure is not All right, then we're just gonna take that last question, please You mentioned that we need about the same amount of electrical energy that we have today for this power to x so What amount of power of electricity do we have renewable installed today? I actually have no idea about the worldwide Installed electricity. I know that we are in Germany where we always say we are very good Where we actually are not like our footprint is something around 450 if you remember the scale before that's on the far outside end of this graphs in like the intermediate value over the year Yeah, I think there there is one page I can recommend to you electricity map where they collect data like this and you can see like how green is the electricity in different countries But yeah, basically, I don't know I know that the Chinese are producing a whole lot of renewable energies Even if they are still building coal plants, but they are really going on on with that. So It's getting better, but it's still way too slow Yeah All right. Thank you so much for taking the questions. Thanks for the great talk and that concludes our Q&A session Thanks, Jonas