The German start-up company ICODOS, a spin-off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), wants to advance the shipping industry in terms of environmental technology and commissioned the world's first production plant for methanol from the wastewater treatment of a municipal sewage treatment plant in the city on the Rhine and Neckar rivers on 24 March 2025. The demonstration plant uses a patented process to purify the biogas produced and convert it into a climate-neutral marine fuel using green hydrogen.
Fully integrated, fully automatic, dynamically operated e-methanol plant. Photo: KIT
According to IMO estimates, the shipping sector contributes around 3 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide each year. This is because the majority of cargo ships still use propulsion diesel fuelled with heavy fuel oil or marine diesel.
The German government is subsidising the plant with a grant of around 1.76 million euros. The consortium operating this first plant consists of ICODOS GmbH, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the research university at KIT and the wastewater disposal company of the city of Mannheim. In the first phase, the plant called "Mannheim 001" will only produce around 50 litres of methanol per day. In the next phase in 2026, the follow-up project currently under construction near Paris will produce 15 times this amount (approx. 750 litres).
The start-up is currently in talks with other wastewater companies, as the large number of wastewater treatment plants in Germany alone means that several million tonnes of green methanol could be produced every year and the compact and scalable plant size makes the process perfect for decentralised implementation, according to one of the co-founders of ICODOS.
This is also necessary. After all, a further and significant upscaling of the project is absolutely essential for the operation of container ships, as cargo ships consume up to 250,000 litres of fuel per day.
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