The European Green Deal aims at a 90% reduction in transport emissions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The main leverage of road, rail, aviation, and waterborne transport is increasing the share of renewable fuels. SUN-to-LIQUID II addresses this challenge with an integrated solar-thermochemical pathway that has the potential to produce sustainable and cost-effective fuels at the scale of future demand directly from sunlight, water and CO2. The primary objective is to achieve a record-high energy conversion of 15% - a 3-fold increase of the state of the art - by bringing novel concepts (TRL 2) and lab-scale developments (TRL 3) to the field (TRL 4-5). To this end, the aims are the optimization of a high-flux solar concentrating heliostat & tower system, the development and integration of novel 3D structured reactants and implementation of high-temperature heat recovery within the solar-thermochemical system. Detailed scale-up and constraint analyses and a commercial exploitation of the solar-thermochemical fuel technology strategy complement the key objectives for the way forward. Through a 48-months 5.7-MEuros valued action, SUN-to-LIQUID II will demonstrate on-sun the viability of the integrated solar fuel pathway on a 50-kW scale, and will create a conceptual design of a next-generation commercial multi-megawatt-scale solar plant. Gathering three research organisations, two industry partners and one SME from five European countries, the highly complementary consortium builds on its unique expertise and unique state-of-the-art research facilities. As a result, five expected outcomes of HORIZON-CL5-2022-D3-03-07 are achieved with research, development and demonstration of the SUN-to-LIQUID II technology, and with the system analyses providing the evidence for a pathway towards cost-effective and deep GHG emission reduction especially for aviation, with technical scalability to production potentials beyond projected future demand.

Solid Oxide Cells are efficient ways to convert variable electricity from renewables in green hydrogen. At the same time, they can be used in a reversible mode to enable the use of other sources (e.g. methane, bio-methane) to match a variable energy production with continuous and guaranteed production of hydrogen for contracted end uses. Switch will focus on the development of this specific solution and realize a mostly green and always secured production of hydrogen, heat and power. Core of the system is a reversible Solid Oxide module based on anode supported electrolyte, supported by an advanced fuel processing unit able to manage steam generation and methane reforming reactions at high efficiency and a purification unit to guarantee highly pure hydrogen in compliance with the main industrial and automotive standards. SWITCH project focuses on the demonstration of a 25kW (SOFC)/75kW (SOEC) system operating in a relevant industrial environment for at least 5000 hrs. Part of the activities will be focused on