Audi will turn renewable energy into synthetic diesel

In 2011
Audi announced plans to start energy production using wind farms located in North sea. By feeding this renewable energy back into the grid ,Audi could boast that the energy used by its future electric cars would be completely clean.

However instead of stopping there,Audi looked at turning some of the renewable energy into liquid at turning some of the renewable energy into liquid fuels that could used by more conventional cars.

The first was a synthetic gas chemically similar to natural gas that Audi started producing in 2013 ,called e-gas. This was followed in 2015 by a synthetic gasoline called e-benzin its the term for gasoline in Audi's home market of Germany
Now Audi is preparing to start production of synthetic diesel called-you guessed it-e-diesel.

For e-diesel Audi company with partners Energies I Ernst will construct a plant in Switzerland. The plant will be able to take a lot of energy generated by hydro power as well as CO gas fro the air and turn this into a fuel that can power diesel cars making them almost CO gas neutral

This process works initially using renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis ,essentially the reverse of what goes on in a hydrogen fuel cell. The hydrogen that reacts with CO gas is obtained from the air or bio waste gases

Construction of the laufenburg e-diesel will start in early 2018 and should be completed before the year is out. Its only a pilot plant to test the viability of the technology. Audi estimates that around 100,000 gallons of e-diesel can be produced each year once the plant is up to and running