On 16 June 2025, Empa commissioned a novel methanation plant. The project move-MEGA is the first to demonstrate sorption-enhanced methanation at pilot scale — a technology developed at Empa that makes the Power-to-Gas process more load-flexible and robust. The synthetic methane produced can replace fossil natural gas as a renewable energy carrier. In combination with methane pyrolysis, it can also be used to produce CO₂-negative hydrogen.
The event not only celebrated this technological breakthrough — it also offered fascinating insights into the practical challenges of operating such systems. During the presentations, researchers explained in detail the kinds of problems they had to solve along the way. For example, while the sorption-enhanced reactor continuously removes reaction-water formed during the methanation process, the reactor must be dried once its water adsorption capacity is reached, making it temporarily unavailable for methanation. To ensure continuous operation, the system employs two reactor lines operated in parallel but alternating modes: one actively performing methanation while the other undergoes drying. Due to the sorption-enhanced approach, no product gas conditioning is needed.
The system at Empa is designed as two step process with a first conventional methanation stage and a second sorption-enhances stage. It show, how load-flexibility and robustness of methanation can be improved.
Empa’s move-Mega project is another important step towards building a sustainable energy future, demonstrating that synthetic fuels and hydrogen can play a key role in defossilising the energy system.
The subsequent networking session provided an excellent opportunity to deepen existing contacts, make new connections, and openly discuss regulatory hurdles that still need to be addressed. For example, it became clear that CO₂ from industrial point sources is still not recognised in Switzerland via mass balance approaches, as is possible in the EU. Another topic was the issue that CO₂ emission reductions achieved through eFuels in vehicle fleets currently cannot be attributed to individual vehicles and their owners — a clear obstacle for incentivising the use of defossilised fuels.
