Syngas is a versatile building block in chemical industry [6,7]. The total global annual use of fossil-derived syngas is approximately 6,000 PJth, which corresponds to 2% of the total primary energy consumption. The largest part of the syngas is used for the synthesis of ammonia for fertiliser production (˜55%), the second largest share is the amount of hydrogen from syngas consumed in oil refining processes (˜24%), and smaller amounts are used for methanol production (12%). Figure 2 shows the present syngas market distribution [8]. Today’s, global use of syngas for the production of transportation fuels in the so-called “gas-to-liquids” processes(GTL) correspond to approx. 500 PJ per year, i.e. from the Fischer-Tropsch processes of Sasol in South Africa and of Shell in Bintulu, Malaysia.
In the future, syngas will become increasingly important for the production of cleaner fuels to comply with the stringent emission standards, e.g. methanol/DME, ethanol, and/or Fischer-Tropsch diesel. Also the future fuels will be ultra-clean designer fuels from BtL processes (second generation biofuels) as well as GtL. Transportation fuels of the first generation directly produced from biomass (e.g. biodiesel, pyrolysis oils) are expected to have only very limited application.