Power-to-Gas with High Efficiency

Within the EU Project HELMETH, Efficiency of Methane Gas Production from Renewable Electricity Increased to more than 75 Percent due to Thermal Linking of Chemical Processes

Power-to-Gas mit hohem Wirkungsgrad — The demonstrator facility of the HELMETH project combines methanation (left) and electrolysis (right) with an efficiency of 76 percent. (Photo: sunfire GmbH)

The natural gas network may serve as a buffer for weather-dependent electricity from the wind and sun. This requires economically efficient processes to use electricity for the production of chemical energy carriers. The EU project HELMETH coordinated by KIT has now made an important step. It has demonstrated that high-temperature electrolysis and methanation can be combined in a power-to-gas process with an efficiency of more than 75 percent.

“For the first time, we used the synergies between electrolysis and methanation and reached an efficiency that exceeds that of standard technologies by about 20%,” says Dimosthenis Trimis of KIT, coordinator of the HELMETH EU project. “Thanks to the large scope of disciplines covered by our consortium, we managed to reach an important milestone for mastering the energy transition.”

Complete text: Press release 009/2018

kes/mle, 05.02.2018