Porsche brakes ground on eFuel plant in Chile

Porsche has started construction of a new carbon-neutral eFuel manufacturing plant in Chile.

The plant is being built in collaboration with Siemens Energy as well as a number of international companies. The pilot plant is initially being built north of Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia, and is expected to produce around 130,000 litres of eFuels in 2022. The capacity will then be expanded in two stages to around 55 million litres by 2024, and around 550 million litres by 2026.

The project takes advantage of the perfect climatic conditions for wind energy in the Magallanes province in southern Chile to produce the virtually carbon-neutral fuel using low-cost green wind power. The eFuel is generated by using electrolysers to split water into oxygen and green hydrogen using wind power. CO₂ is then filtered from the air and combined with the green hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which in turn is converted into eFuel.