6 ms·

Fuel from the sky: Cheap hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight

37 points by joak 4y ago

joak 4y ago
Excerpt: «Putting 50 GT of CO2 into the atmosphere every year isn’t easy or cheap. Coal, oil, and gas are buried deep underground in ever-diminishing pockets of ever-diminishing quality. By contrast, CO2 is present in air everywhere, and too much of it.»
- joak 4y ago
  «If we want to pave the world with DAC synthetic fuel plants, we’re going to have to engineer them to deliver ludicrous profits»
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Good idea, would have preferred SMR for power though. Anyways, Atmospheric Processors like in Aliens? F..K YEAH!
- distortionfield 4y ago
  Agreed, it doesn’t even seem worth considering solar given the scales necessary but people are fearful creatures.
- joak 4y ago
  Solar is a lot cheaper though. Curtailment is the key word. The production of solar electricity has to be curtailed everyday when the amount of kWh produced exceeds the demand and cannot be stored. Those kWh are free.
dctoedt 4y ago
A few years ago the U.S. Navy reportedly was experimenting with producing jet fuel from air and seawater aboard aircraft carriers, using the electrical power from the carriers' nuclear reactors. I wasn't able to find anything recent about the project. https://patentyogi.com/aircraft/us-navy-plans-produce-jet-fuel-seawater-board-aircraft-carriers/ https://patentyogi.com/aircraft/us-navy-plans-produce-jet-fu... Also: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1902335116 https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1902335116
- distortionfield 4y ago
  My thought was similar for land based versions of this too. Their quote about the engineering difficulties being soluble in cheap electricity seems like coupling this to nuclear is a no brainer (assuming the US government can streamline nuclear in the coming decade like it has teased)
  - joak 4y ago
    Solar is a lot cheaper than nuclear though: Everyday the production of solar electricity has to be curtailed when the amount of kWh produced exceeds the demand. Those kWh in excess, by definition cannot be sold and are hence free (as in free beer)
andreareina 4y ago
Do they actually address how it’s going to be “cheap”? Stopped reading because I couldn’t find it and given it’s the big issue you’d think they’d put it front and center.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Stopped reading at "carbon capture". It does not make sense at this point. There just isn't a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere (currently ~400ppm), and it is a very unreactive molecule. Any method of extracting it from the atmosphere is fighting against entropy and adding energy to molecules would be extremely inefficient. We should use all the renewable energy we have to reduce the emissions from our grid first. For a more near-term possible mitigation of global warming, geoengineering approaches such as reflective aerosol particles make much more sense.
  - kumarvvr 4y ago
    From the atmosphere, sure. But, if they can succeed in building a viable conversion system, then hot exhaust from factories or other sources can be used instead of air. It could be a closed source system too, for example, in industrial applications that need a lot of heat. An almost closed cycle system may be viable. I have no information about the speed of the reaction, but I guess systems can be scaled. Also, a good amount of heat is produced in the sabatier reaction process itself, which can be used for other systems. Conversion of atmospheric CO2 to usable fuel can become a cheap battery for solar plants. Edit: Such a system already exists, even if as an idea. https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/24/exytron-the-worlds-first-power-to-gas-system-with-integrated-co2-collection-and-reuse https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/24/exytron-the-...
    - andreareina 4y ago
      The article is talking about atmospheric capture even if it doesn’t use those exact words.
  - joak 4y ago
    They are not here to mitigate global warming. They plan to make big money. There is a market for natural gas, they have a precise estimate of costs (including carbon capture) and their costs are lower than fracking. No new tech. No big upfront investments. Just deploy and get rich.
fuzzfactor 4y ago
I like that rendering of the 1MW system. And you can see they are making progress in the lab on the technologies for each of the modules, with some very accomplished operators. There is a lot of advanced back-of-the-envelope math and toward the end it says they can estimate breaking even with about 500 of the 1MW systems delivered. Now when you make 500 of anything you really can not make money on every single one, and what the world really needs most of all is the carbon capture. What I would like to see built is the 1MW scale carbon capture unit in the rendering, and expect it would take fewer than the full array of solar cells to operate. That little system could give out some real numbers itself, and de-risk decision-making for the other modules at that scale. Even if there is no salable fuel output to offset operating costs, this would be the ideal demo and at least it would be actually removing atmospheric CO2 each time it was functioning. And it would cost less to build and be faster to do than one of the hundreds of complete 1MW fuel-producing systems they are going to be building ASAP anyway.
amitprayal 4y ago
This will lead to global cooling crisis
- bamboozled 4y ago
  As a skier, this is my dream :)
floppiplopp 4y ago
It's a scam.

37 points by joak 4y ago

joak 4y ago

Excerpt: «Putting 50 GT of CO2 into the atmosphere every year isn’t easy or cheap. Coal, oil, and gas are buried deep underground in ever-diminishing pockets of ever-diminishing quality. By contrast, CO2 is present in air everywhere, and too much of it.»

joak 4y ago
«If we want to pave the world with DAC synthetic fuel plants, we’re going to have to engineer them to deliver ludicrous profits»

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

Good idea, would have preferred SMR for power though. Anyways, Atmospheric Processors like in Aliens? F..K YEAH!

distortionfield 4y ago
Agreed, it doesn’t even seem worth considering solar given the scales necessary but people are fearful creatures.
joak 4y ago
Solar is a lot cheaper though. Curtailment is the key word. The production of solar electricity has to be curtailed everyday when the amount of kWh produced exceeds the demand and cannot be stored. Those kWh are free.

dctoedt 4y ago

A few years ago the U.S. Navy reportedly was experimenting with producing jet fuel from air and seawater aboard aircraft carriers, using the electrical power from the carriers' nuclear reactors. I wasn't able to find anything recent about the project. https://patentyogi.com/aircraft/us-navy-plans-produce-jet-fuel-seawater-board-aircraft-carriers/ https://patentyogi.com/aircraft/us-navy-plans-produce-jet-fu... Also: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1902335116 https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1902335116

distortionfield 4y ago
My thought was similar for land based versions of this too. Their quote about the engineering difficulties being soluble in cheap electricity seems like coupling this to nuclear is a no brainer (assuming the US government can streamline nuclear in the coming decade like it has teased)
- joak 4y ago
  Solar is a lot cheaper than nuclear though: Everyday the production of solar electricity has to be curtailed when the amount of kWh produced exceeds the demand. Those kWh in excess, by definition cannot be sold and are hence free (as in free beer)

andreareina 4y ago

Do they actually address how it’s going to be “cheap”? Stopped reading because I couldn’t find it and given it’s the big issue you’d think they’d put it front and center.

alwayslikethis 4y ago
Stopped reading at "carbon capture". It does not make sense at this point. There just isn't a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere (currently ~400ppm), and it is a very unreactive molecule. Any method of extracting it from the atmosphere is fighting against entropy and adding energy to molecules would be extremely inefficient. We should use all the renewable energy we have to reduce the emissions from our grid first. For a more near-term possible mitigation of global warming, geoengineering approaches such as reflective aerosol particles make much more sense.
- kumarvvr 4y ago
  From the atmosphere, sure. But, if they can succeed in building a viable conversion system, then hot exhaust from factories or other sources can be used instead of air. It could be a closed source system too, for example, in industrial applications that need a lot of heat. An almost closed cycle system may be viable. I have no information about the speed of the reaction, but I guess systems can be scaled. Also, a good amount of heat is produced in the sabatier reaction process itself, which can be used for other systems. Conversion of atmospheric CO2 to usable fuel can become a cheap battery for solar plants. Edit: Such a system already exists, even if as an idea. https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/24/exytron-the-worlds-first-power-to-gas-system-with-integrated-co2-collection-and-reuse https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/7/24/exytron-the-...
  - andreareina 4y ago
    The article is talking about atmospheric capture even if it doesn’t use those exact words.
- joak 4y ago
  They are not here to mitigate global warming. They plan to make big money. There is a market for natural gas, they have a precise estimate of costs (including carbon capture) and their costs are lower than fracking. No new tech. No big upfront investments. Just deploy and get rich.

fuzzfactor 4y ago

I like that rendering of the 1MW system. And you can see they are making progress in the lab on the technologies for each of the modules, with some very accomplished operators. There is a lot of advanced back-of-the-envelope math and toward the end it says they can estimate breaking even with about 500 of the 1MW systems delivered. Now when you make 500 of anything you really can not make money on every single one, and what the world really needs most of all is the carbon capture. What I would like to see built is the 1MW scale carbon capture unit in the rendering, and expect it would take fewer than the full array of solar cells to operate. That little system could give out some real numbers itself, and de-risk decision-making for the other modules at that scale. Even if there is no salable fuel output to offset operating costs, this would be the ideal demo and at least it would be actually removing atmospheric CO2 each time it was functioning. And it would cost less to build and be faster to do than one of the hundreds of complete 1MW fuel-producing systems they are going to be building ASAP anyway.

amitprayal 4y ago

This will lead to global cooling crisis

bamboozled 4y ago
As a skier, this is my dream :)

floppiplopp 4y ago

It's a scam.