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One way to think about it is that the extra steps allow you to pack solar energy into a much more compact, rapidly transferred energy storage medium. Batteries
by camtarn 16y ago
One way to think about it is that the extra steps allow you to pack solar energy into a much more compact, rapidly transferred energy storage medium. Batteries are expensive, comparatively low energy density, and either take a while to charge or require battery swap stations. Liquid fuel is high energy density and can be pumped rapidly, shipped via tanker to remote locations without any connection to the electric grid, or even carried in a really cheap container such as a plastic bottle.
- oelewapperke 16y agoYeah, given what sort of stories one reads about science at most internet sites you'd think we'd actually have a way to turn electricity + H2O + CO2 into oil (and sugar, and bread, and proteins, and plastics, and so on and so forth). But we don't. We do not have anything remotely resembling a reasonable option to do this. There's Fisher-Tropsch, but it's horrifically inefficient. So we're dependent on plants to do the work for us. In reality we don't know at all how to efficiently make molecules that have more than 4-5 atoms in them. Oil has hundreds to thousands, depending on the oil. Sugar only has a few dozen (depending on the sugar, starting at 20, going up to several hundred). Kinda pathetic really.