Company researching turning air into fuel...

Hi all I was looking through my newsletter that I get from Globalspec and they have an article about a UK company that extracts carbon dioxide from the air combines it with hydrogen and creates a synthetic fuel to be used in a gasoline fuel reactor ,I think the project is still in early days but it is a mind blowing achievement and I hope it gets off the ground..Company is called Air Fuel Synthesis

TextCompany Turns Air into Fuel Obtaining fuel from thin air would be a true feat of renewable energy engineering. It's a bit more complicated than that, but a small company in the UK is manufacturing synthetic gasoline from air. Carbon dioxide extracted from air is mixed with hydrogen from an electrolysis process, forming a tank-ready fuel in a gasoline fuel reactor. Phys.org reports that the pilot system has already produced synthetic fuel, and that the company plans a 1 tpd capacity facility by 2014. If process power is sourced from wind, tidal, or solar energy systems, the fuel will be virtually carbon-neutral. More from Alternative & Renewable Energy…

Well hope this thread gets the juices flowing let me know what you think thanks.

reply to post by cookiemonster32


Two thoughts .. TANSTAAFL and the First law of thermodynamics is more than a suggestion. Whatever "fuel" produced by this process will contain less energy than what it took to transform the CO2 and Hydrogen into that fuel.

reply to post by SirMike


I have no idea how the process works but they did want to use renewable energy to convert the co2 and hydrogen so they are not burning fossil fuels to create this which is good.

Cookiemonster,

Did you forget to post a link for your quote?

Originally posted by SirMike
reply to post by cookiemonster32

 

Two thoughts .. TANSTAAFL and the First law of thermodynamics is more than a suggestion. Whatever "fuel" produced by this process will contain less energy than what it took to transform the CO2 and Hydrogen into that fuel.

I don't see any suggestion otherwise. The quote refers to using wind, tidal or solar power to process the fuel.

This could still be useful even if the efficiency is low, because if solar power during the day can be turned into fuel, you can put the fuel in your car and drive at night from that solar energy...which is nice. You can sort of do that now with hydrogen, except that is pretty inefficient, so it will be interesting to see how efficient they can make this technology.

I would love to see new sources of energy be discovered (if they haven't been already), but I would think any new source of energy is going to have to be profitable for the governments or else they will not let it see the light of day.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


The economics of this process just wont work.

The Rosco Wind Complex in Texas, is the world’s largest at 781 MW. At a 25%capacity factor, it will generate about 1.7 billion KWH’s in a year. If a gallon of gasoline has 125,000 BTU’s and this process is 40% efficient (on the very high side for an estimate), the entire output of the world’s largest wind farm will produce 19 million gallons of gasoline per year. To put this in comparison, the US consumes on average 367 million gallons per day so the entire yearly output of this process when powered by the world’s largest wind farm produces just 5% of our daily gasoline consumption.

The math (and by extension the economics) just don’t cut it.

reply to post by SirMike

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On the other hand, plants do this all the time with a bit of sunlight and water.

Maybe they found some breakthrough catalyst you can lower the energy barrier for swapping the oxygen for hydrogen and then separate and burn the oxygen again (you'd need something to oxidize though) to get a lot of your energy back?

reply to post by asciikewl


Catalysts dont reduce the amount of energy a reaction takes, it just speeds up the rate at which it occurs.

Here the story and link the OP left out.

British company claims biggest engine advance since the jet

The heat exchanger technology could also be incorporated into a new jet engine design that could cut 5 to 10 percent - or $10 (6.25 pounds)-20 billion - off airline fuel bills.

That would be significant in an industry where incremental efficiency gains of one percent or so, from improvements in wing design for instance, are big news.

This technology is still a few years from production.

Hi sorry sorry my bad I made this thread and then went to bed forgot to post the link
www.airfuelsynthesis.com...
And to the people that are posting that its not profitable and that it won't work because of the first law of thermodynamics...I don't care that its not profitable it's only going to hurt the oil barons in their pocket excuse me while I shed a tear and as far as I am concerned rules and laws were made to be broken and they were written by hide bound fossilized scientists 100 yrs ago things have changed since then... My post concerns the fact that they have created fuel out of thin air which is magic as far as I am concerned.

Originally posted by SirMike
The math (and by extension the economics) just don’t cut it.

Since there's not an infinite supply of oil, even if the economics don't work out immediately, at some point, they will. Re-run the numbers with oil at higher prices. It may take some time to get there, but it will.

Originally posted by SirMike
reply to post by asciikewl

 

Catalysts dont reduce the amount of energy a reaction takes, it just speeds up the rate at which it occurs.

Catalysts can increase overall yield leading to more energy or less wasted energy in a reaction. Although there is energy used/expended from the catalysts in most cases. However, I don't think this really matters in this scenario.

Just pointing out silly semantics.

sounds to me it just another method of creating hho gas ? kinda like how people make hydrogen generators i think correct me if im wrong, but i dont see the point of mixing pure hydrogen with carbon ?? hydrogen alone could be used as a fuel ?

Originally posted by cookiemonster32
Hi sorry sorry my bad I made this thread and then went to bed forgot to post the link
www.airfuelsynthesis.com...
And to the people that are posting that its not profitable and that it won't work because of the first law of thermodynamics...I don't care that its not profitable it's only going to hurt the oil barons in their pocket excuse me while I shed a tear and as far as I am concerned rules and laws were made to be broken and they were written by hide bound fossilized scientists 100 yrs ago things have changed since then... My post concerns the fact that they have created fuel out of thin air which is magic as far as I am concerned.

It's only magic if you don't understand the process. And if it's not economically viable than it's not only pointless, but will fail at "hurting the oil barons".

When it does become economically viable, we have far more to worry about than "the barons" as it is a clear indicator our lust for energy is hitting or encroaching on a very thick brick wall. To note, when oil becomes scarce, not just energy is need for worry, but all the plastics and chemicals also produced from the oil industry.

The day people are praising to come, may be bittersweet indeed.

Originally posted by MrDarkPhoenix
sounds to me it just another method of creating hho gas ? kinda like how people make hydrogen generators i think correct me if im wrong, but i dont see the point of mixing pure hydrogen with carbon ?? hydrogen alone could be used as a fuel ?

"HHO Gas" is just an ignorant take on hydrolysis, which has been around for over a century. The idea of this has multiple benefits. 1 being that solar energy collection is sometimes much more efficient in places that are not accessible or scarcely populated. If there is a solar array in the desert, the transportation of electrical load over long distances makes it nearly infeasible. Although, there are operations in the emirates that are using HVDC to get around this, typical AC infrastructure cannot handle load transfer over long distance without losing a major amount of energy in the form of heat. The normal grid will see a 4-12% loss getting to consumers homes. (Based off recollection) So by being able to store it in a easily handled form of fuel, such as this, it has many benefits. Especially if the energy loss in hydrolysis and the subsequent reaction, is made up by the added energy collection of a solar array in places normally considered unfeasible (due to load transfer).

2, would be that hydrogen is horrible to store, transfer, and in most cases use. Although, 2 is kind of eliminated by the simple fact that hydrogen has no economically sustainable method of synthesis right now. It's simply used in pet projects by people who think it somehow is going to usher in a 'green' economy, while making little practical sense.

i did not mean to sound ignorant, i was remembering information i seen on a energy documentary i seen online

As to the fuel not being able to keep up with the demand and it not being viable people will just have to get rid of their massive gas guzzlers that drink the stuff by the gallon and just drive smaller cars the days of the v8 are long gone in my opinion.