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Any idea about the round trip efficiency for other synthetic fuels like methane or propane? It's probably awful but may be worth the increased density over hydr

Any idea about the round trip efficiency for other synthetic fuels like methane or propane? It's probably awful but may be worth the increased density over hydrogen.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Or liquid fuels like gasoline or kerosene that don't just boil off if you don't keep them compressed. I'd like to see that analysis.
dTal 5y ago
You can synthesize gasoline, for that matter. You can't really do much better than that for a liquid fuel. I'm surprised there's not more of a market for "green gasoline". It's not that hard to make.
- cogman10 5y ago
  IIRC, wasn't the price point for a bio-gas (made from atmospheric CO2) something like $4/gallon?
  - dTal 5y ago
    If that's true then it's revolutionary. I'm sure that price point makes Americans clutch their pearls, but in Europe gas already costs a lot more than that.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      This article [1] says the cost point is closer to $34 per gallon (back in 2009). [1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652 https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel...
      - dTal 5y ago
        I mean... vegetable oil is 5 bucks a gallon at Wal-Mart and you can run diesel vehicles on it almost unmodified. I'm struggling to see the problem here.
        FPGAhacker 5y ago
        > I’m struggling to see the problem here. The demand curve would push out dramatically.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Mass produced food has a pretty elastic supply.
        dTal 5y ago
        The supply isn't fixed. We already know it's possible to economically produce vegetable oil at 5 bucks a gallon. If demand rose, supply would rise to meet it. If anything, increasing scale would reduce the price. Also, we have a ton of supply for free to start with. All the oil we use right now is still usable for fuel even after it's used up for cooking. Food grade oil is a higher grade product than fuel grade. Most of it is just wasted now. I'm not saying we should build our entire energy infrastructure off vegetable oil. There are probably cheaper, better ways. But the market will sort that out. The point is we don't have to give up oil - we just have to give up digging it up. Biofuel isn't some remote and impractical future tech, it's something we throw away millions of gallons of right now.
trhway 5y ago
Musk/SpaceX is most probably working on efficient production of methane using water, CO2 and electricity for Mars refueling, and one can wonder whether it can get downstream-ed into the Earth economy giving Musk's energy related (solar/storage/etc.) business here.
- polypodiopsi 5y ago
  Dude are you lost in ideology. "downstream-ed [from Mars] into Earth economy" In which world do you live? A Screen Fantasy?
  - trhway 5y ago
    i meant downstream as in feature commits propagation between source repos. As in from SpaceX Mars R&D into Tesla's solar/storage Earth business.
abecedarius 5y ago
https://wimflyc.blogspot.com/2021/02/powerpaste-fuel-of-future.html https://wimflyc.blogspot.com/2021/02/powerpaste-fuel-of-futu... sounds interesting.

Any idea about the round trip efficiency for other synthetic fuels like methane or propane? It's probably awful but may be worth the increased density over hydrogen.

rootusrootus 5y ago

Or liquid fuels like gasoline or kerosene that don't just boil off if you don't keep them compressed. I'd like to see that analysis.

dTal 5y ago

You can synthesize gasoline, for that matter. You can't really do much better than that for a liquid fuel. I'm surprised there's not more of a market for "green gasoline". It's not that hard to make.

cogman10 5y ago
IIRC, wasn't the price point for a bio-gas (made from atmospheric CO2) something like $4/gallon?
- dTal 5y ago
  If that's true then it's revolutionary. I'm sure that price point makes Americans clutch their pearls, but in Europe gas already costs a lot more than that.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    This article [1] says the cost point is closer to $34 per gallon (back in 2009). [1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652 https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel...
    - dTal 5y ago
      I mean... vegetable oil is 5 bucks a gallon at Wal-Mart and you can run diesel vehicles on it almost unmodified. I'm struggling to see the problem here.
      - FPGAhacker 5y ago
        > I’m struggling to see the problem here. The demand curve would push out dramatically.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Mass produced food has a pretty elastic supply.
        dTal 5y ago
        The supply isn't fixed. We already know it's possible to economically produce vegetable oil at 5 bucks a gallon. If demand rose, supply would rise to meet it. If anything, increasing scale would reduce the price. Also, we have a ton of supply for free to start with. All the oil we use right now is still usable for fuel even after it's used up for cooking. Food grade oil is a higher grade product than fuel grade. Most of it is just wasted now. I'm not saying we should build our entire energy infrastructure off vegetable oil. There are probably cheaper, better ways. But the market will sort that out. The point is we don't have to give up oil - we just have to give up digging it up. Biofuel isn't some remote and impractical future tech, it's something we throw away millions of gallons of right now.

trhway 5y ago

Musk/SpaceX is most probably working on efficient production of methane using water, CO2 and electricity for Mars refueling, and one can wonder whether it can get downstream-ed into the Earth economy giving Musk's energy related (solar/storage/etc.) business here.

polypodiopsi 5y ago
Dude are you lost in ideology. "downstream-ed [from Mars] into Earth economy" In which world do you live? A Screen Fantasy?
- trhway 5y ago
  i meant downstream as in feature commits propagation between source repos. As in from SpaceX Mars R&D into Tesla's solar/storage Earth business.

abecedarius 5y ago

https://wimflyc.blogspot.com/2021/02/powerpaste-fuel-of-future.html https://wimflyc.blogspot.com/2021/02/powerpaste-fuel-of-futu... sounds interesting.