Making Fuel from Carbon Dioxide, the perfect answer??

[ljjhouser]

I do like the idea. But there are still no projections and discussion of the down sides of this production. There always are some. Cost projections and production ability? Would it deplete the atmosphere of most or all co2? It is wishful thinking if there is no discussion of all the problems.
That is where we are with EV vehicles - lithium mining problems, grid problems, cost vs value of cars with depleted batteries, etc.

New idea. Good. Let's hear about all the advantages and disavantages. We should be careful about investing resources in chasing dreams. They could have just as easy talked about problems and how we could overcome them.

Looks too good to be true? Don't know. I hope it is the perfect answer. And if it is, how much can our government invest after all the substities for ev. Or are we too far down the ev road to change?

I appreciate the info. It is interesting. And it is what we needed 10 years ago, New Ideas. and Better Ideas.

 

[Roadworthy]

This does not make sense. If you extract and break down CO2 you get carbon and oxygen. Oxygen may be a carbon neutral fuel but carbon is not - and by itself oxygen is not a fuel. It seems there are a few pieces of the chemistry missing from the article. And somehow this makes a liquid you can burn for fuel but emit no carbon? There HAS to be hydrogen involved here somewhere. Could they really be extracting micro particles of plastic from the air? Unicorn farts maybe?

 

[MossRoad]

This does not make sense. If you extract and break down CO2 you get carbon and oxygen. Oxygen may be a carbon neutral fuel but carbon is not - and by itself oxygen is not a fuel. It seems there are a few pieces of the chemistry missing from the article. And somehow this makes a liquid you can burn for fuel but emit no carbon? There HAS to be hydrogen involved here somewhere. Could they really be extracting micro particles of plastic from the air? Unicorn farts maybe?

Nope. You have it incorrect. It DOES make liquid that you can burn for fuel and it DOES re-emit the carbon that it captured back into the environment. But it doesn't add any new carbon to the environment. It recirculates the carbon in a loop.

Think of firewood. Tree absorbs carbon and holds it in the wood. Fire burns the wood and carbon is released. Another tree absorbs the carbon and holds it. Another fire burns it and releases it. It's carbon neutral in that it's just using the carbon over and over again. It's not making any new carbon, and it's not reducing any old carbon. It's just recirculating it over and over again. (lets leave out the particulate matter, ashes, etc., for sake of this discussion).

This thing in the video is doing the same thing. It sucks carbon from the air that was put there by burning fossil fuels. They use the carbon to make fuel. They burn the fuel to make power and that releases the carbon again. Then they suck it in again and the process repeats. There's no net reduction or amplification of carbon into the air. It's just recirculated through this process loop.

Make sense now?

 

[MossRoad]

Interesting. Could use any energy source to generate electricity, and make fuel from co2. Did i miss where the hydrogen came from?

I think they said water, but could be mistaken.

 

[Patrick Herd]

It all comes back to using heaps of electricity...
Direct air capture of CO2 needs a heap of energy: In rough numbers, there's around 420ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere presently or 0.042%
So to get 1kg of CO2 out of the atmosphere you need to move around 2381kg (1977 cubic metres) of air through your "first machine" using a rather energy hungry compressor. (this doesn't separate the CO2 from that air mind you)

In order to then make synthetic hydrocarbons you need hydrogen gas as a feedstock. The only low or non carbon emitting method of making H2 is electrolysis of water again needing lots of electricity. Not super efficient either, 1kWh of electricity gives you around 0.75kWh equivalent of hydrogen and 0.25kWh of waste heat.

I've seen Porsche claiming that they are going to build a synthetic fuel plant that will be capable of selling at USD $2/litre but I'll believe it when I see it.

Transport wise, with maybe the exception of aviation it's going to be far more cost effective to use that electricity directly. Whether that be trains with overhead cables, battery electric vehicles, or even trucks with overhead wires.

 

[mikester]

Video

Technology | Video

www.bnnbloomberg.ca

This seems like the perfect answer to the fuel crisis. Why are we not seeing this being scaled up and built in every country??

When you are paying $1,000.00 per gallon of gas at the pumps they will be at the commercialization stage and start selling their fuel made from CO2

 

[3Ts]

Nope. You have it incorrect. It DOES make liquid that you can burn for fuel and it DOES re-emit the carbon that it captured back into the environment. But it doesn't add any new carbon to the environment. It recirculates the carbon in a loop.

Think of firewood. Tree absorbs carbon and holds it in the wood. Fire burns the wood and carbon is released. Another tree absorbs the carbon and holds it. Another fire burns it and releases it. It's carbon neutral in that it's just using the carbon over and over again. It's not making any new carbon, and it's not reducing any old carbon. It's just recirculating it over and over again. (lets leave out the particulate matter, ashes, etc., for sake of this discussion).

This thing in the video is doing the same thing. It sucks carbon from the air that was put there by burning fossil fuels. They use the carbon to make fuel. They burn the fuel to make power and that releases the carbon again. Then they suck it in again and the process repeats. There's no net reduction or amplification of carbon into the air. It's just recirculated through this process loop.

Make sense now?

Interesting! Sounds like a perpetual motion machine. - - Just requires some additional energy input.

 

[Spike56]

Appears you'd have to process a lot of air to extract enough for fuel. I have to pay for Nitrogen for my hay field. Why not extract that from the Air ? Answer: It is tremendously complicated to extract and create a usable form for farms, and expensive to do so. ​

Table of Elements and Compounds in Air​

Below is the composition of air in percent by volume, at sea level at 15 C and 101325 Pa.

• Nitrogen -- N2 -- 78.084%
• Oxygen -- O2 -- 20.9476%
• Argon -- Ar -- 0.934%
• Carbon Dioxide -- CO2 -- 0.04%
• Neon -- Ne -- 0.001818%
• Methane -- CH4 -- 0.0002%
• Helium -- He -- 0.000524%
• Krypton -- Kr -- 0.000114%
• Hydrogen -- H2 -- 0.00005%
• Xenon -- Xe -- 0.0000087%
• Ozone -- O3 -- 0.000007%
• Nitrogen Dioxide -- NO2 -- 0.000002%
• Iodine -- I2 -- 0.000001%
• Carbon Monoxide -- CO -- trace
• Ammonia -- NH3 -- trace

 

[cqaigy2]

When you are paying $1,000.00 per gallon of gas at the pumps they will be at the commercialization stage and start selling their fuel made from CO2

Is that the projected break even point for their product, $1000.00 per gallon?

 

[MossRoad]

Think about it for a bit.

They're planning on generating electricity from sunlight and wind, to suck air, to extract carbon, to convert to diesel fuel, so we could continue to drive ICE based vehicles without further additions of carbon to the atmosphere.

Eliminates need to make batteries.
Eliminates need to build charging infrastructure.
Eliminates need to stop and charge.
Eliminates problems with people that don't have access to on-street or apartment complex charging.
Eliminates converting the entire trucking industry to electric.

However, if the technology pans out (and apparently it works), then they'd have to see what the cost of each gallon of fuel will be compared to the electric alternatives we seem headed for and the rising prices of oil.

One can only wait and see.