Unveiling a new class of synthetic fuels

Will they revolutionize the clean transport of the future?

11-Jul-2024 - Researchers from RWTH, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, and ETH Zurich have now presented groundbreaking advancements in synthetic fuels. Their study, which has the potential to revolutionize clean transportation, has been published in Nature Energy under the following ...

Almost all chemicals burden the planet

More than 99 percent of the most widely produced chemicals aren’t sustainable

04-Feb-2022 - For the first time, researchers at ETH Zurich have calculated in absolute figures the extent to which the production of chemicals is currently interfering with nature worldwide – and the results are staggering. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, the new method also takes land use and ...

Making Aircraft Fuel From Sunlight and Air

The technology is now sufficiently mature for use in industrial applications

08-Nov-2021 - Scientists at ETH Zurich have built a plant that can produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels from sunlight and air. The next goal will be to take this technology to industrial scale and achieve competitiveness. In a paper published in the scientific journal "Nature", researchers from Zurich and ...

Putting climate-positive business ideas into practice

Start-ups made carbon-​neutral fuels and turning carbon dioxide into stone

14-Jan-2021 - More and more ETH Zurich researchers are taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. By launching spin-​offs, they hope to turn their lab findings into solutions that can help stem the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is no shortage of evidence for what the Fifth Assessment Report of the ...

How the chemical industry can meet the climate goals

07-Apr-2020 - ETH researchers analysed various possibilities for reducing the net CO2 emissions of the chemical industry to zero. Their conclusion? The chemical industry can in fact have a carbon-​neutral future. Switzerland’s Federal Council has decided that the country should become carbon-​neutral by 2050. ...

New solar mini-refinery

Carbon-neutral fuel made from sunlight and air: Two spin-offs already founded

17-Jun-2019 - Researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a novel technology that produces liquid hydrocarbon fuels exclusively from sunlight and air. For the first time worldwide they demonstrate the entire thermochemical process chain under real field conditions. The new solar mini-refinery is located on the ...

Recycling carbon dioxide from the ocean

Floating power plants

11-Jun-2019 - Paper, tin cans, glass - the world recycles as much as possible. So why not declare the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) a recycling product as well? Liquid fuels based on carbon will continue to play an important role in the future - despite international efforts to reduce them. So it seems ...

Gasoline from a nanoreactor

09-Apr-2015 - Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and ETH Zurich have developed a miniscule chemical reactor in the lab that could one day be used to produce gasoline and diesel more sustainable and cost-effectively than today. By specifically modifying nanometre-sized, porous zeolite crystals, ...

Sunlight to jet fuel

30-Apr-2014 - A European consortium with the participation of ETH Zurich has experimentally demonstrated the first ever production of jet fuel via a thermochemical process using concentrated solar energy. Researchers from ETH Zurich conducted the EU funded project Solarjet together with the German Aerospace ...

Is trash the solution to tackling climate change?

Waste-based biofuel could cut global emissions by over 80 percent

02-Oct-2009 - Converting the trash that fills the world's landfills into biofuel may be the answer to both the growing energy crisis and to tackling carbon emissions, claim scientists in Singapore and Switzerland. New research published in Global Change Biology: Bioenergy, reveals how replacing gasoline with ...