3 ms·

I'm not intimately familiar with Fischer-Tropsch, but reading the list of existing plants on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_pr

I'm not intimately familiar with Fischer-Tropsch, but reading the list of existing plants on the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process#Commercialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process#Commer... Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. E.g. natural gas or coal. One is using pulp/paper waste, and the other is using a combination of natural gas and landfill gas. So while the process promises to convert "a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons" it does not seem that anybody is doing that. You are totally right that there is nothing wrong with liquid hydrocarbon fuels, as long as they are sourced from clean energy, but the fact that nobody is doing it even at a small scale seems to indicate to me that it's not (yet?) viable for some reason.

sprash 7y ago
> Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. Recently a plant was demonstrated by DLR in Spain that produced Fuel from air directly only with solar power: https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613_solar-fuel-breakthrough.html https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613... Edit: apparently this converts H2O and liquid CO2 to a "synthesis gas" CO + H which then can easily transformed into any fuel you want via Fische-Tropsch. So the only step that is missing is liquefying CO2 which can be done via conventional solar power using electricity. As far as I see it we have all pieces to the puzzle. Electric cars don't make sense anymore and are actually more harmful to the environment because of all the exotic materials used and the losses from transport of electrical power across the whole country. Also keep in mind that much of the electricity is still produced using coal.

sprash 7y ago

> Virtually all of them are producing synthetic fuel using other fossil fuels. Recently a plant was demonstrated by DLR in Spain that produced Fuel from air directly only with solar power: https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613_solar-fuel-breakthrough.html https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/02/20190613... Edit: apparently this converts H2O and liquid CO2 to a "synthesis gas" CO + H which then can easily transformed into any fuel you want via Fische-Tropsch. So the only step that is missing is liquefying CO2 which can be done via conventional solar power using electricity. As far as I see it we have all pieces to the puzzle. Electric cars don't make sense anymore and are actually more harmful to the environment because of all the exotic materials used and the losses from transport of electrical power across the whole country. Also keep in mind that much of the electricity is still produced using coal.