Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigacione Quimicas

CSIC is the largest multidisciplinary public research organization in Spain, with 123 research institutes distributed throughout Spain, alongside a delegation in Brussels. In E-TANDEM, CSIC participates through the Institute of Chemical Technology (ITQ), a Joint Research Centre of CSIC and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), located in Valencia, Spain. ITQ is a Severo Ochoa Excellence Research Center in Spain which hosts ca. 35 staff scientists, more than 150 PhD and postdoctoral researchers and lab technicians. Research activities integrate the fields of materials science and catalysis through an integrated approach. Its staff conforms a highly qualified and multidisciplinary team of specialists in the design, synthesis, and development of innovative functional materials for chemical technologies, with focus on the sustainable production of energy vectors and platform chemicals.

In cooperation with other partners (MPG, UCT), CSIC was directly involved in the achievement of preliminary proof-of-principle results, and intellectual property rights, on new tandem catalysis conversion routes towards renewable higher oxygenate compounds. These have served as the foundation for the new conversion concepts proposed in E-TANDEM. Partnering with other academic and industrial colleagues, with expertises covering a wider scope of technical areas, from renewable power conversion, to process design, fuel formulation and benchmarking and process techno-economic and environmental assessments, was a natural next step to explore how the new findings could nucleate new formulations and production concepts for advanced liquid e-fuels. The project’s objectives are fully aligned to CSIC’s strategic research on the development of innovative catalytic materials and processes for an efficient production of energy vectors and platform chemicals with minimum carbon footprint. Through the coordination of, and participation in, this collective research effort, CSIC ambitions to showcase the technological significance of its fundamental research in the critical area of the energy transition.

CSIC coordinates activities within E-TANDEM (Dr. Gonzalo Prieto) and acts a link to the Stakeholders Board set up for the project, which includes representatives from CO₂ sourcing industries, heavy duty engine manufacturers, major renewable fuel producers, as well as e-fuel promotion entities in EU and overseas. Next to coordination tasks, CSIC is involved in technical tasks which revolve around the development of new catalyst materials and tandem catalytic processes for the production of higher-oxygenate e-fuels, as well as on the development of catalytic routes to effectively eliminate organic impurities in water recycle streams, as required to showcase process integration.