IFEU | ēQATOR Project

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IFEU (Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg) was founded as an independent, non-profit research institute in 1978. Today, IFEU is organized as a non-profit limited company and is one of the leading environmental think tanks in Germany.

More than 100 employees from different disciplines work at IFEU. IFEU is politically neutral and independent in terms of research and finance. The institute seeks answers to urgent environmental and sustainability questions in a scientific, independent, practical, transdisciplinary, creative, and holistic manner.

During the more than 45 years, several thousand studies and projects have been conducted on circular economy, on the sustainable and environmentally friendly design of products, processes, and material flows, on the transition towards a bioeconomy within planetary boundaries, on future-oriented mobility and transport, and on a successful energy transition. IFEU undertakes research and provides a goal-oriented consultancy service worldwide and on behalf of many national and international clients. For the ēQATOR project Nils Rettenmaier works together with Sonja Haertlé, Hanna Karg and Guido Reinhardt.

Learn more about IFEU's contribution to the ēQATOR project by reading the interview below, in which Nils Rettenmaier explains the role of the organization within the project and the vision and goals that shape the development of
ēQATOR reactor technologies.

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© Susanne Lencinas

Nils Rettenmaier

INTERVIEW

Please introduce yourself and your role in the project.

Hello, I'm Nils Rettenmaier. I'm a senior project manager and senior scientist at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) in Heidelberg, Germany. Within the ēQATOR project I am leading the work package on integrated sustainability assessment, which is a collaborative work package in which IFEU is responsible for the life cycle assessment and for the integrated sustainability assessment at the end.

How did you learn about the project and become a project partner?

I was contacted by Elias Klem from the University of Stuttgart because I have been collaborating with him before in another EU funded project and he thought that our expertise would be beneficial also in the case of ēQATOR.

What's your organization's role in the project and what expertise do you bring to the table?

IFEU is responsible for the work package on sustainability assessment and IFEU has been doing many environmental assessments and also sustainability assessments in the past, we look back on more than 45 years of history, thousands of studies. I'm based in the Department of Biomass and Food and we've been working a lot on biogas, other bioenergy carriers, bio based materials, but also food and textiles. And as such, I think our expertise fits very well to the ēQATOR project, which converts biogas into methanol. And so we were asked to perform the tasks on life cycle assessment, which quantifies the environmental impacts of the system and also the social aspects of the system.

How is your organization collaborating with other partners in the project?

Together with our partners from NextChem, who are responsible for the techno-economic assessment, we have all dimensions of sustainability covered in this work package. And then, finally, we will perform an integrated assessment to identify the synergies, the trade-offs between the three dimensions. So, within the work package, it's mainly NextChem. They have the huge tasks also in work package 4 to collect all the data from the other partners to model the process in the process simulation software and the output of those models is actually the mass and energy balances, which will then form the basis for our life cycle assessment, the social life cycle assessment and also the techno-economic assessment. So, we are very much linked to the activities of NextChem. And they are also responsible for the TA within the work package, and we have a very good collaboration with them, but also with all the other partners, which basically contribute their data.

How do your project activities contribute to the goal of the project to achieve a cost competitive renewable methanol production with near zero CO2 emissions?

The work package on sustainability assessment is keeping close track of all the developments that are being made from the technical partners and we can give them quick feedback on how the environmental or the economic or the social impact will develop. Through this feedback we can, a little bit at least, steer the technical developments so that they don't only get the results in the end of our assessment, but also in-between, which could help to identify either technical procedures or other inputs or other process configurations that are more beneficial both in terms of economy and environmental performance.

Regarding your task, what do you expect are or will be the greatest challenges during the project?

So far, the collaboration in the project is really outstanding. We have had a very good start of our activities, and we are confident that we can perform our analysis. The next step will be an update of the mass and energy balances, but that will basically come only by the end of this year, so we are very confident. We already have presented preliminary results at one of our last meetings, so I'm very confident that we can fulfil all our tasks within the given time.

If you had one wish regarding the project, what would that be?

Well, of course I hope that the project will be successful, because it can have a significant contribution to the electrification of the chemical industry. I don't know whether this process, that we're investigating in ēQATOR, will be built in the end - or will be established at large scale. I'm not sure about that, but indirectly, through the developments with the heated reactors, I think we could make a big contribution to all the efforts that are being made today regarding the electrification of the chemical industry. And that is really needed from a sustainability point of view and a climate point of view.

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