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Interesting. I kind of err on skepticism based on previous attempts ala "Electric cars were tried in 60's, it will never work". It is worth trying and retrying

Interesting. I kind of err on skepticism based on previous attempts ala "Electric cars were tried in 60's, it will never work". It is worth trying and retrying old attempts at a problem, since a lot of underlying technologies, economics and affordability change rapidly. There is probably a whole host of old attempts that might be worth revisiting today in a startup context. Apparently, Twelve is a new spinoff/rebranding from Opus-12 here in Berkeley which I had heard of, opus-12.com URL now points to Twelve.com, but certain pages are still accessible: https://opus-12.com/press https://opus-12.com/press

qayxc 5y ago
> I kind of err on skepticism based on previous attempts There's a very powerful yet simple tool that helps with that: just ask yourself "what has changed?". In your electric vehicle example it was battery technology that made all the difference. The Fischer-Tropsch process hasn't changed in the past 100 years and neither has the underlying physics and chemistry or its efficiency (edit: efficiency improved with new catalysts and technology, but not as dramatically as with batteries). The reason synthetic fuels didn't take off is that they're more expensive to produce than crude oil can be extracted and refined. This is still true today, but the AF has a different problem statement than the economy of fuel production - it's the economy of fuel logistics - a subtle, yet important difference. As long as Twelve's concept relies on syngas from water, it won't be any better in terms of that, though (if the area of operations includes deserts and dry land). Otherwise there's no fundamentally new technology or breakthroughs required here. It's just a matter of finding creative ways to get the required hydrogen, really (in terms of improved fuel logistics, not necessarily cost vs fossil fuels).

qayxc 5y ago

> I kind of err on skepticism based on previous attempts There's a very powerful yet simple tool that helps with that: just ask yourself "what has changed?". In your electric vehicle example it was battery technology that made all the difference. The Fischer-Tropsch process hasn't changed in the past 100 years and neither has the underlying physics and chemistry or its efficiency (edit: efficiency improved with new catalysts and technology, but not as dramatically as with batteries). The reason synthetic fuels didn't take off is that they're more expensive to produce than crude oil can be extracted and refined. This is still true today, but the AF has a different problem statement than the economy of fuel production - it's the economy of fuel logistics - a subtle, yet important difference. As long as Twelve's concept relies on syngas from water, it won't be any better in terms of that, though (if the area of operations includes deserts and dry land). Otherwise there's no fundamentally new technology or breakthroughs required here. It's just a matter of finding creative ways to get the required hydrogen, really (in terms of improved fuel logistics, not necessarily cost vs fossil fuels).