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Other commenters have pointed out that hydrogen may not be feasible, but the other direction -- methanol or higher hydrocarbons, seems way more interesting. Sto
by andrewla 3y ago
Other commenters have pointed out that hydrogen may not be feasible, but the other direction -- methanol or higher hydrocarbons, seems way more interesting. Storage and density are orders of magnitude easier, and since we're synthesizing it from atmospheric component we don't have to be concerned with contaminants, especially sulfur compounds, that plague higher hydrocarbon use.
Even better in a lot of ways would be to move to amorphous carbon; generating coal from atmospheric CO2 would be a huge win in transportability especially around safety and reliability dimensions.
- marcosdumay 3y agoIt's quite hard to create heavy hydrocarbons in a controlled fashion. That company is already full of technical risks. Adding an extra optional one would be crazy. That said, if not them, somebody will probably crack that one problem in time. But it's best done as an independent development.
- joshjob42 3y agoMethane is pretty directly usable. Generally it costs some additional processing to produce higher hydrocarbons, which may be worth doing. But a system that makes pure methane can be used as the first part of some other, optional, system to make other hydrocarbons from that. You don't need additional equipment and processing facilities, which is important for Terraform Industries because it wants the sytem to be as cheap as possible. Making methane is the cheapest way to get a transportable, useful output (hydrogen is notoriously difficult to move around, methane is a lot easier, and of course propane etc is a lot easier still).