THE CHEAT SHEET. Blue Crude and the future of fuel

It’s a kind of synthetic diesel, or e-diesel, developed by cleantech firm Sunfire and carmaker Audi at a lab in Dresden, Germany.

Not exactly. In fact, this form of diesel is made out of air, water and green electric energy, and hence is much more eco-friendly than its namesake.

Believe me. The process by which the Audi team invented Blue Crude is fairly simple. First, they used renewable energy to split water molecules into oxygen and pure hydrogen. They then gathered CO2 from a biogas plant. The two are mixed under very hot and high-pressure conditions. Voila! Here cometh a liquid they could refine into bio-diesel.

Pretty good, if one is to believe the researchers. The energy efficiency rate is suitably high, 70 per cent. Evidently, synthetic fuel has fewer contaminants that regular diesel has. Audi says e-diesel can mix with regular diesel or can function as a standalone fuel. The first batch of the fuel is already out.

Johanna Wanka, Germany’s federal minister of education and research, test-drove Blue Crude and was reportedly impressed with its performance it. She called it “a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources”.

As things stand now, the Dresden plant is producing only about 160 litres a day. So this is not going to create any ripples in the oil market. But Audi and Sunfire have plans to build a bigger factory; they think production costs will come down as they scale up and they can price the e-diesel between €1 and €1.5 a litre. But this is dependent on the cost of renewable power. Currently, a litre of diesel in Europe costs over €1.5 , so this means business, and the environmental benefits are obvious.

That’s a long way away. Audi says this is still purely a research project and its commercialisation will take years, but it has already introduced similar synthetic fuel in the form of compressed natural gas that is used in its Audi A3 g-tron cars.

Yes they are, as things stand now. But some experts suggest that if e-diesel and similar inventions can become safer, cleaner and more efficient alternative to fossil fuels, they can give electric cars a run for their money.

You can say so. Internal combustion engines have been powering cars and other vehicles for the past 150 years, and this is one of the most perfected and accepted technologies yet. Of course, it has contributed significantly to air pollution. In EU, where Audi is based, the transport sector has the second biggest greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, there have been many attempts to find efficient replacements to the fire pot that is the internal combustion engine. Many scientists said the arrival of the lithium ion (Li-ion) battery marked a tipping point against the combustion engine. But we are yet to see a great leap forward in this direction.

Now, e-diesel reportedly can reduce pollution puffing in combustion engines, if the technology goes mass and mainstream.

But look at the brighter side. As Wanka put it, if we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources. Further, this will put the fundamentals of the “green economy” in place.

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