Air Fuel Synthesis

[Ludicus]

The name says it all-a viable alternative to fossil fuels

Air Fuel Synthesis

[Elfdude]

So essentially using solar energy to convert it at a significant loss to chemical energy? Seems like they're missing a bit of the point but theoretically if we burn what we burned (so to speak) we're not really making any issues worse. Still I must wonder if the energy used to convert the air to fuel would be better used to generate electricity directly. I can't really find much on how they intend to do this.

[Condottiere 40K]

Insane Technology Watch: Making Petrol From Air

There’s always someone out there claiming to have found the latest method of gaining free energy. Or cheap energy, green energy, non-fossil fuel energy. Sometimes people are even right in their claims: fracking has certainly brought us cheaper natural gas than not having fracking would have done. But it does have to be said that most of these claims are nonsense: as with this being reported today, a method of producing petrol (gasoline) from just the air:

A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity.

Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis.

The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before “electrolysing” the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

The company, Air Fuel Syndication, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the chemistry. Each stage is known to work. The problem is the insanity of stringing together those pieces of chemistry in series. It’s rather like a Rube Goldberg machine (Heath Robinson to Brits) where there’s pulleys and golf clubs and strange ratchets to do something very simple in a horrendously complex manner.
The ultimate aim is to power all of this process by solar power. But if that’s what you’re going to do it would be far, far, cheaper to make the methanol by using plants to absorb the sunlight. As we do with the current ethanol program. So that’s the first obvious problem with this idea: it’s even worse than the ethanol boondoggle.
The sodium hydroxide to carbonate then electrolysing to produce CO2: that looks a bit odd but is sensible enough. It’s a standard process for producing pure CO2 on demand.
But the great gaping hole in the idea to me comes in two parts. The first being slightly odd so bear with me. The production of sodium hydroxide in the first place requires vast amounts of energy. And it also has two byproducts: chlorine and hydrogen. So anyone looking at this sequence would immediately decide to get their hydrogen from that sodium hydroxide production not from the electrolysis of water.
The second is that the inefficiency of this system is grotesque. It would be far cheaper to use the electricity in some other manner. In batteries to power electric cars, or to electrolyse water to run fuel cells in cars, or you can, if you really want to, use hydrogen directly in an internal combustion engine.
The system works in its chemistry but it would be a very silly manner indeed of using the energy that the process would require.
The one part I cannot work out at the moment is whether this is a spoof that’s been played upon the Telegraph or whether these people really believe that they’ve got something useful here.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...ol-from-air/2/

[Elfdude]

Well that answered my questions.

[Condottiere 40K]

Cheer up; when we have more fusion power than we know what to do with, 3D printers will extract the carbon directly from the atmosphere and recreate any number of plastic toys you might want to play with.

[Denny Crane!]

Cheer up; when we have more fusion power than we know what to do with, 3D printers will extract the carbon directly from the atmosphere and recreate any number of plastic toys you might want to play with.

3D printing is no more magical than this for energy.

However this was a break through chemically which is marvelous.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Still not worth comparing to something effective like Nuclear Power. Solar Energy is ust too costly and takes up too much space right now to use, let alone this.

[Denny Crane!]

Still not worth comparing to something effective like Nuclear Power. Solar Energy is ust too costly and takes up too much space right now to use, let alone this.

Nuclear, effective? Is that why we could easily build 75 in the UK? Oh thats right, we struggle to build one as does Finland, Canada and rather a lot of other countries and that was before the Fukishima escapade.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Still not worth comparing to something effective like Nuclear Power. Solar Energy is ust too costly and takes up too much space right now to use, let alone this.

I wonder if solar energy is effective in Space?

[Menelik_I]

I wonder if solar energy is effective in Space?

Depends on where are you solar panels in space, in LEO you are better off with solar panels, beyond Jupiter Orbit you are better off with with a Nuclear powerplant.

Also remember that Nuclear has bigger launch costs.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

It takes a long time to build one, but look at the facts, The only Powerplant that outputs more energy than a single nuclear reactor is the Hoover Dam. Just look it up on Wikipedia, it will even tell you that.

[Menelik_I]

First - I want to see the energy balance of this thing first to make a judgement.

Second - Solar panels doesn't grow on threes, unless they build them with slave labor, so gas out of thin with free solar energy is out of My Dear Pony.

[Menelik_I]

First - I want to see the energy balance of this thing first to make a judgement.

Second - Solar panels doesn't grow on threes, unless they build them with slave labor, so gas out of thin with free solar energy is out of My Dear Pony.

[Condottiere 40K]

Sahara as a huge solar power collector.

[Menelik_I]

Sahara as a huge solar power collector.

Which is going to be built using magic Unicorn Turd.

Do you know how much difficult is it to gather the resources to build one massive dam which is something smaller that what you are proposing, now thing about building a massive facility in the middle of a desert and maintaining it function.

[Denny Crane!]

It takes a long time to build one, but look at the facts, The only Powerplant that outputs more energy than a single nuclear reactor is the Hoover Dam. Just look it up on Wikipedia, it will even tell you that.

Takes a long time to build ONE we need dozens, getting ONE when we need FIFTY isn't going to help us. I thought that was abundantly clear and I'm sorry there isn't a wikipedia article to explain that one.

Which is going to be built using magic Unicorn Turd.

Do you know how much difficult is it to gather the resources to build one massive dam which is something smaller that what you are proposing, now thing about building a massive facility in the middle of a desert and maintaining it function.

Perfectly feasible and that comes from experts in the industry, I'm guessing you haven't really examined the topic because the feasability problem does not lie in the panels but in the lines that would carry the power and the capacity/supply/storage problems in national grids.

[Menelik_I]

Perfectly feasible and that comes from experts in the industry, I'm guessing you haven't really examined the topic because the feasability problem does not lie in the panels but in the lines that would carry the power and the capacity/supply/storage problems in national grids.

I think that saying that the facility is in the middle of the desert does include transportation problems, by the way I would want to post you dead trees

[Denny Crane!]

I think that saying that the facility is in the middle of the desert does include transportation problems, by the way I would want to post you dead trees

Hmmm? I thought you seemed focused on supply issues of materials rather than transporting the energy, which is an issue but one that can be overcome, much like storage and intermittency.

Dead trees...?

[Condottiere 40K]

The other option being the Gibraltar Dam, but I feel the Mediterranean has more value as a moat.

[Menelik_I]

The other option being the Gibraltar Dam, but I feel the Mediterranean has more value as a moat.

Better yet lets build the Big Damn Amazon Dam (BDAD), that would give use enough free electricity to produce carbon neutral gas.