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Chemical engineer with experience in alternative fuels here. The key line is this: "But for it to work, it will have to reduce costs to little more than it cos

• breakyerself 9y ago
  It seems like a bet on the perpetually declining cost of solar. The cheaper solar gets the less efficient the conversion rate for storage needs to be to still be viable.
• DennisP 9y ago
  The point of something like this is that, wherever we continue to use liquid fuels, it'd be nice if they were carbon neutral. Jet aircraft will probably keep using jet fuel for quite a while, for example. But of course we'd need some kind of non-carbon energy source to make the fuel. Right now maybe we get the best bang for the buck by applying those sources to the electric grid, but with a carbon price the market would work that out.
  • hunta2097 9y ago
    I totally agree, imagine a country like Australia which has solar-rich land to spare. The efficiencies might not matter so much in exchange for a constant supply of easily-handled fuel. Or maybe a nuclear-powered site which can convert CO2 into CxHy on an industrial scale. With the added advantage of removing CO2 in the process. You also have the added advantage of not having to ship fuel in from chaotic regions of the world. Shipping produces a significant amount of the world's CO2.
    • extrapickles 9y ago
      The Navy is looking at doing this on their aircraft carriers to fuel aircraft as they have tons of extra electricity production.
      • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        Huh, that’s also a pretty major logistical simplification.
      • castle-bravo 9y ago
        I wonder if they could also extract elements from seawater to assemble munitions. I used to think military spending was wasteful, but the technology is just too fascinating; I get a thrill just from thinking about it.
    • coredog64 9y ago
      In 2008, LANL or ORNL published a paper on exactly that. I can't find my PDF copy, but they were suggesting making use of cheap electricity and waste heat from a nuclear plant to create carbon neutral fuels. ISTR they were calculating that it would be cost competitive with gas at $4 or $5/gallon. Probably not something we'll see in the US in the near future, but certainly possible in countries that levy more taxes on fossil fuels.
      • philipkglass 9y ago
        I believe that you're thinking of LANL's "Green Freedom" concept: http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom... They estimated that it required a pump price of $4.60/gallon for gasoline to be economically viable, given their other assumptions. The authors assumed relatively low cost nuclear power from Generation III reactors. But the Green Freedom concept seems like it would also work with sufficiently cheap large scale renewable electricity production.
    • sien 9y ago
      2.5% of global emissions are from shipping. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/shipping_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/shipping_en
• seszett 9y ago
  > could they fuel their plant with their own product and still have net energy gain? I don't see how this is remotely possible. The synthetic diesel here is just a high-density energy storage medium. It's better than batteries because it's denser and compatible with the majority of today's engines. It's also denser than H2 (which is also just a store) and easier to handle. But the plant here is not producing any energy, it's converting energy (probably electricity) into a form better suited for storage. Solar, wind, nuclear or fusion would be good sources of energy to convert into diesel, at most. It all depends on whether their process is efficient enough to be worth it.
  • aaronblohowiak 9y ago
    to simplify: this is a (potentially) carbon-neutral "liquid battery"
  • jjoonathan 9y ago
    There's a competing technique that has net energy gain and better economics. It does require land and water, though. > [CE's A2F] needs 100 times less land and water than biofuels ... but for it to work, it will have to reduce costs
    • brians 9y ago
      Could you expand on net energy gain?
      • taneq 9y ago
        The process is driven partly by photosynthesis, rather than entirely by electricity.
        • jjoonathan 9y ago
          Right, and there's an argument to be had that corn (or what have you) is a poor solar panel, but it makes up for it by being quite good at reducing CO2. I think the research in TFA is very important -- I'm quite sure we'll be able to beat nature at this game in the long run and projects like this are how we'll figure it out -- but it's worth mentioning we have workable air-to-fuel technology right now but it has been largely abandoned because of the renewed supply of cheap oil.
• sorenjan 9y ago
  Using solar (or other carbon neutral energy sources) to make liquid fuel would probably be of great benefit for a couple of decades at least. Instead of everyone needing to replace their working cars with new electric ones, we can use hydrocarbons as energy storage. This will probably always be more expensive than oil, but where I live more than 60% of the final price is tax, so there's room for politicians to steer consumers towards carbon neutral sources if they became an option. Then there's airplanes, old classic cars, race cars, etc.
• SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago
  > could they fuel their plant with their own product and still have net energy gain? That sounds like free energy / perpetual motion, i.e. physically impossible. Ok, there are inputs, but you don't expect the opposite of combustion to be a net producer of energy.
  • etskinner 9y ago
    I think you're right in this case, but sometimes thermodynamically sound machines can seem like cheating at first glance. Heat pumps[1], for example, can have greater than 100% thermal efficiency (although they do rely on reservoirs of heat to do it). Another example is the vortex tube[2], which can separate a compressed gas into hot and cold streams with no moving parts (and relies on pressure to do it). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube
    • xorfish 9y ago
      Do you know how common heat pumps are in the US?
• eloff 9y ago
  Obviously they have to put in more energy than they get out as per the law of conservation of energy. This is really not likely to compete well with batteries and EVs in terms of efficiency. Its only useful if the government distorts the market with incentives or where the energy density of the produced fuel gives an advantage over batteries (maybe if they produce jet fuel for planes?) I'm dubious that this could ever work for vehicles more efficiently than batteries.
  • maxander 9y ago
    One advantage would be if they can make fuel compatible with presently existing vehicles. Even twenty years from now, gas-powered cars are going to be common, just because gas-powered cars can last for twenty years and upgrading to electric faster than natural replacement is a financial and industrial burden. If you can make a car carbon-neutral while saving the [economic, industrial, environmental] cost of replacing it with an electric, that's a win. Even in the long run, though- gas currently has something like a 100-fold energy density advantage over most batteries. It will likely continue to have uses long into the future.
    • oldcynic 9y ago
      To me that's a big loss. It seems pretty clear we're not fixing this quickly enough and need to go quicker. A2F fuel is still hydrocarbon so will still spit out similar pollutants along with contributing to the associated health impacts. As the second half of the article notes it's far better not to have the pollution in the air in the first place. What about the economic, industrial, and environmental cost of creating and running the A2F infrastructure and process? In 10 years, probably less, most vehicles will have been replaced. Keeping internal combustion viable for +20 years will just avoid the issue and help delay the inevitable switch to renewables; be that electric, fuel cell, or something more exotic. Worst case scenario - in 20 years internal combustion is still pervasive, in part thanks to the adoption of A2F, with both fuels at the pump: oil sourced £2, A2F £2.10. So in 20 years I sincerely hope gas powered cars are not common, and are fast becoming an occasional historic entertainment found in clubs, tracks and preservation societies. Rather like steam trains and horses have perhaps. It could perhaps be very useful for aviation where renewables seem unlikely to make much impact any time soon.
• userbinator 9y ago
  "But for it to work, it will have to reduce costs to little more than it costs to extract oil today, and – even trickier – persuade countries to set a global carbon price.” ...or instead of reducing costs, just wait until oil increases past it.
• anovikov 9y ago
  >could they fuel their plant with their own product and still have net energy gain? Of course not, that would be the perpetuum mobile :) nor they claim that it can. Thing is, energy in form of liquid fuel is whole lot more expensive than in form of say, intermittent electricity from solar panels (which are now dirt cheap).
  • pygy_ 9y ago
    Slightly off topic, but here's a sweet tune named "Perpetuum Mobile" by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra (what I heard immediatley in my head while reading your comment). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E3znZoFnN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E3znZoFnN8
    • dTal 9y ago
      Slightly off topic, but did you know that the Galapagos Penguin is the only species of penguin found North of the equator?
      • taneq 9y ago
        Completely off topic, but did you know that the North Pole is actually magnetically the Earth's south pole?
• ggm 9y ago
  If you are prepared to sink capital into a low emission energy source, then once you have sunk that capital, its opportunity cost, not actual loss cost (absent running costs) to get the energy. In the 'real' world, the fact that you are reducing the wind speed by some fraction, or reduced insolation thermal temps on the ground, and that if you scaled this to one million square miles: those 'it doesnt work' sums don't apply. it doesn't have to be efficient, to be worth doing, if you are prepared to sink capital into a source of energy.
• gwbas1c 9y ago
  I doubt we can use batteries for long term storage of solar energy. Specifically, we need to stockpile in the spring and fall for the winter. That means we need to figure out how to make some kind of chemical fuel when sunlight is abundant and electrical load low.
• dredmorbius 9y ago
  There's an alternative approach: we could consider the cost-basis of fossil fuels, and whether or not that is appropriate. It turns out that the basis and rationale (economic, legal, financial, actual) for the present regime are ... highly suspect. Hotelling's Rule is generally cited by is dismissed by virtually all parties as not describing reality (see for example BP's petroleum pricing data to 1859 in its annual survey of energy). The Rule of Capture is a legal justification for mineral taking that has no justification in the geological reality of the situation, a point recognised by some judges, though to date largely in dissenting opinions. Actual market prices are defined by the marginal extraction price, and in the absence of some cartel or regulatory body artificially constraining extraction rates (Standard Oil, the Seven Sisters, the Texas Railroad Commission, OPEC, Saudi Arabia), prices fall to absurdly low levels so long as there is any capacity to extract above current market demand (as with the $0.02/bbl prices of post-Daisy Bradford #3 oil-strike Texas in 1931, prior to the seizure at force of arms by the Texas and Oklahoma National Guards, and Texas Rangers, of wellhead production, and establishment of a quota system via "certificates of transport" for U.S. oil, and, by virtue of the U.S.'s status as global surplus oil producer, global oil markets, from 1931 - 1972. If we consider the capital stock depletion to formation ratio of oil, which is on the order of about five million to one (years of formation consumed per present year), a fair argument might be made that petroleum and natural gas are very significantly under-priced. A point at which other alternatives become far more viable. (The situation is similar for coal, though the ratio imbalance is somewhat smaller.) See: https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... (PDF)
• dredmorbius 9y ago
  Could they fuel their plant with their own product and still have net energy gain No. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
• ataturk 9y ago
  The answer is obvious: The plant will never fuel itself and have a net energy gain. Nothing has ever worked that way ever before, so why would it this time? They're taking something of lower energy density and creating something of a higher energy density, so you already know the answer to that. But that doesn't mean this technology is without merit. If C02 is a threat to our continued existence, here is a way of potentially fixing the problem.