E-fuels

There is no alternative to hydrocarbon-based fuels for the armed forces due to their ease of use and high energy density. This is why fossil diesel and fossil paraffin form the backbone of the armed forces' energy supply today. The fuel requirement in wartime is 20 to 60 litres per day per soldier (averaged across all branches of the armed forces). Fuel logistics ties up forces. 60% of all casualties and injuries suffered by NATO forces in Afghanistan were caused by logistics, with a focus on fuel logistics. This is where synthetic drop-in fuels come into play, which can be produced anywhere from electricity, water and CO2 and can be used in existing logistics systems, vehicles and aircraft thanks to their properties. Rheinmetall's Giga-PtX project vision is a network of several hundred decentralised, large-scale production plants for synthetic fuel with a unit size of up to 50 MW. Each plant combines the components of energy generation, hydrogen and CO2 supply and fuel synthesis locally.

Ideally, the plants are installed in close proximity to military units or pipeline systems. Using renewable energy, several thousand tonnes of fuel can be synthesised per plant each year. Thanks to this concept, no expansion of the electrical grid is required. The CO2 can be obtained at short notice from point sources (power plants, cement works, biogenic sources), so that direct air capture is not absolutely necessary. The dispersion of the plants makes them more difficult to attack. Due to the moderate plant size, the technology can be scaled up quickly and then realised at low risk by replicating a tried and tested prototype plant. Together with its technology partner INERATEC, Rheinmetall already offers the basis for a "ready to scale" and subsequently "ready to replicate" solution, so that an urgent problem on the way to resilience and war capability of the armed forces can be solved.