Car­bon-neut­ral Mar­ine Fuel from Wastewater

Europe’s approx­im­ately 80,000 sewage treat­ment plants offer con­sid­er­able poten­tial for an innov­at­ive, car­bon-neut­ral pro­cess for the pro­duc­tion of the uni­ver­sal chem­ic­al meth­an­ol.. ICODOS, a start-up foun­ded at the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT), and its part­ners have built an innov­at­ive facil­ity at Mannheim’s sewage treat­ment plant. The facil­ity pur­i­fies the bio­gas pro­duced by the plant and uses green hydro­gen to con­vert it into car­bon-neut­ral fuel for ships. They opened the facil­ity today, March 24, 2025.

Accord­ing to estim­ates by the Inter­na­tion­al Mari­time Organ­iz­a­tion, ship­ping accounts for approx­im­ately 3 per­cent of glob­al green­house gas emis­sions. To reduce those emis­sions, envir­on­ment­ally friendly altern­at­ives to con­ven­tion­al fossil fuels are urgently needed. Today (March 24, 2025) a con­sor­ti­um con­sist­ing of the Insti­tute for Micro Pro­cess Engin­eer­ing and the Insti­tute for Auto­ma­tion and Applied Inform­at­ics at KIT, the KIT spin-off ICODOS, and the Waste Water Depart­ment of the City of Man­nheim began oper­a­tion of a demon­stra­tion plant that uses wastewa­ter as a resource for the pro­duc­tion of car­bon-neut­ral meth­an­ol, a future mar­ine fuel. Dr. Volk­er Wiss­ing, Germany’s Fed­er­al Min­is­ter for Digit­al and Trans­port, pressed the start button.

“We need to keep all of our tech­no­logy options open in order to achieve our cli­mate object­ives. In addi­tion to elec­tri­fic­a­tion and hydro­gen propul­sion, we need cli­mate-friendly fuels for mar­ine ship­ping in par­tic­u­lar, and Ger­many should play a lead­ing role in their research and devel­op­ment. That will be a growth mar­ket in the future,” Wiss­ing said. ​“This is also about mak­ing our coun­try inde­pend­ent from energy imports. Man­nheim 001 shows how eco­nom­ic effi­ciency and cli­mate action can go hand in hand. This pro­ject can serve as an example for many oth­er loc­a­tions in Ger­many and Europe.”

“This new facil­ity is a strik­ing demon­stra­tion of how research and entre­pren­eur­ship can lead to prac­tic­al solu­tions for the suc­cess­ful trans­form­a­tion of our eco­nomy,” said Pro­fess­or Thomas Hirth, KIT’s Vice Pres­id­ent for Trans­fer and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs. ​“The bio­gas it pro­duces dur­ing wastewa­ter treat­ment is a valu­able resource. This is an innov­at­ive approach that shows how avail­able resources can be used in a smart and cli­mate-friendly way.”

“As a light­house pro­ject, Man­nheim 001 is fur­ther proof that cli­mate action and indus­tri­al growth can go hand in hand with new tech­no­lo­gies,” said Mannheim’s may­or, Chris­ti­an Specht, who was also present. ​“With sup­port from Mannheim’s cli­mate fund and in close cooper­a­tion with our waste water depart­ment, it’s show­ing how a start-up from our Mafinex Tech­no­logy Cen­ter can pro­duce green fuel for the ship­ping industry. That’s anoth­er innov­a­tion made in Man­nheim that we can be proud of.”

Innov­at­ive Pro­cess Using Biogas

The Man­nheim 001 demon­stra­tion plant uses a pat­en­ted pro­cess to con­vert bio­gas extrac­ted from wastewa­ter into car­bon-neut­ral meth­an­ol. In the first stage, the bio­gas ori­gin­at­ing in the sewage treat­ment plant is pur­i­fied. The CO₂ it con­tains then reacts with green hydro­gen to pro­duce meth­an­ol, a ver­sat­ile raw mater­i­al that can be used in the chem­ic­al industry or as fuel for ships. ​“With our tech­no­logy, we can extract a high-qual­ity energy car­ri­er from an exist­ing source,” said Dr. Vid­al Vazquez, a co-founder of ICODOS. ​“Sewage plants could pro­duce sev­er­al mil­lion tonnes of renew­able meth­an­ol per year in Ger­many alone.” With its com­pact and scal­able design, the pro­cess is ideal for dis­trib­uted imple­ment­a­tion. ​“Our cur­rent pro­ject shows the pre­vi­ously untapped poten­tial of sewage plants as a core ele­ment of sus­tain­able fuel pro­duc­tion,” Vazquez said. ICODOS is already in dis­cus­sions with oth­er sewage plant oper­at­ors about build­ing fur­ther pro­duc­tion systems.

About ICODOS

ICODOS GmbH, a cli­mate-tech start-up based in Man­nheim, ori­gin­ated in a KIT research pro­ject. It spe­cial­izes in the sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of fuels and chem­ic­als using renew­able sources such as bio­gas and CO₂ in com­bin­a­tion with green elec­tri­city. ICODOS’s goal is to use pro­cess engin­eer­ing and mod­u­lar facil­it­ies to make an eco­nom­ic­ally viable con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change mitigation.