Producing hydrogen from ethanol and capturing and storing CO2 are technologies that can be exploited and exported by the country.
Brazil has a set of opportunities in this current period of energy transition that is unique and the country must know how to exploit and export this knowledge to the world, he said at the Wednesday (16/11) the scientific director of the Research Center for Innovation in Gases of Greenhouse Effect (RCGI), Julio Meneghini.
He was one of the participants in the panel “Energy Transition: What does it mean for Brazil”, promoted by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, during the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change in 2022 (COP27). “The issue of using different local solutions that will eventually be exported and used elsewhere in this energy transition phase will be what will allow us to manage to limit ourselves to the increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade in relation to those emissions at the time of the Revolution Industrial”, stated Meneghini.
“Brazil has opportunities, opportunities and opportunities. You just need to know how to explore them.” The Paris Agreement, negotiated in 2015, states that signatory countries must strive to ensure that the increase in global temperature does not exceed 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels – but maintains the ambition of limiting the rise to 1 .5 °C and thus reduce the impacts of climate change. Sponsored by the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) and by Shell, the RCGI focuses its research on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting Brazil in complying with the NDCs, the “contributions nationally determined”, which are the voluntary emission reduction targets for each country until 2030 in the agreement.
The integration of different technologies should be Brazil’s main challenge in the Brazilian decarbonization process. “We have enormous potential in the matter of offshore wind energy generation, which, together with the pre-salt layer and the ability to store carbon in salt caverns in the pre-salt layer itself and in the reservoirs, makes Brazil the eventual leader in this field. area. By joining the on land part [on land] and in the ocean [no ocean], without a doubt we will become a leader”, said the researcher, noting that in the terrestrial part there is a favorable mix of energy sources and the development of solutions based on nature, in addition to the possibilities of capturing, using and storing CO2. Meneghini commented that the RCGI will have the first green methanol pilot plant using a new, patented process, which should be ready by the end of next year.
“We are also going to have the first plant for the production of hydrogen from ethanol,” he said. “For the production of 1 kg of hydrogen, we will need 7.6 liters of ethanol, plus 2 kilowatt hours (kWh), which makes this hydrogen extremely competitive.” According to him, with this plant, hydrogen may even have a smaller CO2 emissions footprint than hydrogen produced with electricity from wind and solar energy, when considering the life cycle of the production of the ethanol and if using CO2 carbon capture and storage technology.
The plant at the University of São Paulo (USP), in the city of São Paulo, is being built in partnership with Shell, Raízen, Hytron, in addition to Senai Cimatec. The researcher stated that, starting at the end of June, the pilot plant will produce 5 kilos of hydrogen per hour, which will be used to supply three buses at USP powered by fuel cells.
“Ethanol is the future in the present, because we started from a solution used in the fleet today, which already has an important share in the matrix, with decarbonization potential, and puts Brazil in a super interesting position, but we don’t stop there. The ethanol molecule has an enormous plurality”, said Paula Kovarsky Rotta, vice-president of Strategy, Environment and Sustainability at Raízen, who also participated in the panel, alongside Bárbara Rubim, vice-president of Distributed Generation at the Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Absolar); Fernanda Delgado de Jesus, corporate executive director of the Brazilian Institute of Oil and Gas (IBP); and Davi Bomtempo, executive manager of Environment and Sustainability at CNI, who moderated the debate.
“The idea is to expand the portfolio of renewable products based on this fantastic raw material that is sugarcane. It is the most efficient plant in transforming solar energy into renewable carbon”, highlighted Paula Rotta.
International Consortium
Technological innovation involving renewable energy sources is a key element to zero greenhouse gas emissions, said Luca Corradi, director of innovation network at the Net Zero Technology Centre, based in Aberdeen, Scotland. “We shouldn’t wait for demand to increase to start innovating. We already have the technology to use, you’ve heard that a lot around here, but at the same time we have to accelerate the innovation. Because the technology we have today is in the early stages of maturation. We want it to have lower costs, be more reliable and more effective”, he said at the panel “Net Zero Technology: Barriers and Innovation Priorities”, which also took place within the scope of COP27, on November 16th.
The panel, coordinated by Corradi and in which Julio Meneghini, from RCGI, and researcher Noriko Yoshizawa, from Japan’s National Institute of Science and Advanced Industrial Technology, participated, presented details of the study ‘Closing the Gap: A Global Perspective’, developed by 12 research centers (including the RCGI) from eight countries (Brazil, Australia, Canada, Egypt, Japan, Holland, United Kingdom and United States) over the course of a year, with the aim of identifying the main innovation challenges technology and global priorities for accelerating the energy transition in regions moving from oil and gas producers to integrated zero-GHG emission energy systems. “There is a transition taking place, but it also takes immediate action to reduce emissions from current oil and gas production,” said Corradi. “The atmosphere is one and CO2 knows no borders.”
In addition to renewables, Corradi highlighted the importance of research to reduce the cost of hydrogen production and increase its scale, as well as carbon capture and storage technologies. “[In Brazil], we are working to integrate renewable energies, such as solar and wind, producing biomass from ethanol and then using ethanol to transport hydrogen,” said Meneghini. “It is somehow possible to mitigate the intermittency of wind and solar energy sources so that they are used in electrolysers to produce hydrogen”, said the scientific director of the RCGI. The report ‘Closing the Gap: A Global Perspective’, written under the coordination of the Net Zero Technology Center, can be read at this link.