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1) How much of this fuel could be made at scale — how much of the type of agricultural waste they use is available worldwide? 2) Petrol is great for passenger

1) How much of this fuel could be made at scale — how much of the type of agricultural waste they use is available worldwide? 2) Petrol is great for passenger cars, but the world runs on diesel and fuels that are more or less equivalent to diesel, like Jet-1A. Can they make that?

pfdietz 4y ago
Companies have made drop-in compatible jet fuel from biomass. https://www.virent.com/ https://www.virent.com/
- marcus0x62 4y ago
  Does that work with the process described in the article, can it be done at scale, how much does it cost? While I hear about a couple of these breakthrough alternate fuels a year, I’ve yet to see a single one that doesn’t fall down on at least one of those areas. The first one isn’t a deal-killer — you could have an alternate fuel product for petrol and a different one for fuel oils, but if they can’t be made economically at scale, these technologies are useless for all but niche purposes.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    I don't know what the process in the article is, so I cannot answer that question. We can conclude the Virent process is not competitive at current prices (or else it would be done more widely.) The more relevant question is would it be cheap enough to work in a world without fossil fuel net CO2 emission. It would have to be cheaper than obtaining the fuel from oil, followed by direct air capture and sequestration of CO2, for zero net emission.
firecall 4y ago
You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil!
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  Not as useful as one would hope. The world produces 20M tons of vegetable oil vs 4B tons of petroleum.
  - folmar 4y ago
    20 M is rapeseed alone, the total is slightly more than 200 M.
theshrike79 4y ago
The global agricultural waste production isn't enough to run the current amount of vehicles on compressed biogas - never mind this synthetic stuff. It's an amazing option among others though. CBG is easy to produce locally and gasoline powered vehicles can be modded to use it quite cheaply as long as you can fit the CBG tanks somewhere.

pfdietz 4y ago

Companies have made drop-in compatible jet fuel from biomass. https://www.virent.com/ https://www.virent.com/

marcus0x62 4y ago
Does that work with the process described in the article, can it be done at scale, how much does it cost? While I hear about a couple of these breakthrough alternate fuels a year, I’ve yet to see a single one that doesn’t fall down on at least one of those areas. The first one isn’t a deal-killer — you could have an alternate fuel product for petrol and a different one for fuel oils, but if they can’t be made economically at scale, these technologies are useless for all but niche purposes.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  I don't know what the process in the article is, so I cannot answer that question. We can conclude the Virent process is not competitive at current prices (or else it would be done more widely.) The more relevant question is would it be cheap enough to work in a world without fossil fuel net CO2 emission. It would have to be cheaper than obtaining the fuel from oil, followed by direct air capture and sequestration of CO2, for zero net emission.

firecall 4y ago

You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil!

thinkcontext 4y ago
Not as useful as one would hope. The world produces 20M tons of vegetable oil vs 4B tons of petroleum.
- folmar 4y ago
  20 M is rapeseed alone, the total is slightly more than 200 M.

theshrike79 4y ago

The global agricultural waste production isn't enough to run the current amount of vehicles on compressed biogas - never mind this synthetic stuff. It's an amazing option among others though. CBG is easy to produce locally and gasoline powered vehicles can be modded to use it quite cheaply as long as you can fit the CBG tanks somewhere.