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A brave new world of fossil fuels on demand - The Globe and Mail
- quanticle 16y agoI don't know. Solar powered, hydrocarbon energy that's fully backwards compatible with today's energy transport infrastructure? Sounds too good to be true.
- ph0rque 16y agoSo 25k gallons (of gasoline, presumably) = ~900MWh, which is the energy they claim can be harvested from one acre annually, once production reaches commercial levels. On average, each acre receives 5800 MWh per per acre annually. This comes out to ~16% efficiency. The big question is the cost per watt of this technology. Of course, there's the added benefit of removing CO2 from the air...
- 1053r 16y agoThey claim it at $30/barrel, (42 gallons in a barrel according to google calculator), which makes it about $0.7142 per gallon of produced fuel (wholesale). Factor in distribution and retailing markups and taxes and you are probably going to double it or more, but still. Cheap gasoline limited only by area (not even land area, since presumably you could produce this in sea water) and sunlight? Sounds too good to be true. Anyone have a corroborating source other than the globe and mail?
- ph0rque 16y agoTo take your analysis further, $0.71 per gallon of gasoline comes out to $0.02 per kWh... even with 100% markup, $0.04/kWh is very cheap energy. You're right, it sounds too good to be true.
- Retric 16y agoPower plants are only 40% efficient at best and cars are lucky to be 20% so it's really about the same cost as an electric car. PS: Not that I think it's accurate; 16% efficiency is not bad for a solar cell, suggesting you can get a bio fuel plant close to that is a hard sell IMO.
- stcredzero 16y agocars are lucky to be 20% so it's really about the same cost as an electric car. Except that your range is going to be a whole lot better and the maintenance costs for your storage device are a whole lot smaller.
- Retric 16y agoAt 16% efficiency you almost don't need to use sunlight. 900MWh * 0.07$/kwh = 63,000 U.S. dollars vs 3$ * 25k = ~75,000$ worth of gas.
- stcredzero 16y agoThis comes out to ~16% efficiency. The big question is the cost per watt of this technology. It's very hard to beat liquid hydrocarbons as a portable energy source. 16% efficiency is fantastic when you take the form factor into account. Add in the fact that our established infrastructure already can consume, process, convert, and transport this stuff, and you have a winner. Remember, portability brings a whole raft of additional requirements and challenges.
- streety 16y agoThey talk about producing 10k gallons of ethanol and then about scaling that up to 25k gallons. You're looking at 557 MWh adjusting for ethanol and an adjusted efficiency of ~9%.
- jal278 16y agosell corn futures?
- CWuestefeld 16y agoNo, buy a farm so that you can get in on the increase in subsidies.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoSounds like a hoax. The claim is extreme - an organism can't actually exist entirely on CO2 as claimed. What else is false? All of it?
- Symmetry 16y agoGenerally, whether or not the science that goes into a newspaper article is good the science that comes out is bad. "No feedstock" is very different from "no nutrients" but the way the article was written makes me think that the reporter didn't know or didn't care about that distinction. So it might very well be a hoax, but we really can't take the article as any sort of evidence.
- grammaton 16y agoLong on hype, short on proof and details. Also, releasing tons of genetically engineered microorganisms into the wild - what could possibly go wrong?
- Symmetry 16y agoI'm pretty sure this would be a matter of having lots of genetically engineered microorganisms in tanks rather than in the wild. Hard to collect the oil otherwise.
- smogzer 16y agoDear google please buy/support this tech and release it as opensource. Signed, We.