Petrol from air breakthrough

bogwalrus

This is amazing;

Air Fuel Synthesis produced the petrol by merging carbon dioxide from air with hydrogen from water using electricity from the National Grid, although it eventually intends to use a renewable source of energy.

The breakthrough was described as a "game changer" by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/company-that-made-petrol-from-air-breakthrough-shudders-at-prospect-of-oil-industry-approaches-8218812.html

krd

"A small British company which has produced the first “petrol from air” said yesterday it would refuse any investment offers from petrochemical companies because of fears the oil industry would take over the firm with the aim of closing it down."

Hmmmm, yes......The One World Government wouldn't want us to be able pull free petrol from the air. Damn them!!!

Two words: not and promising.

""I've been up there and seen it. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting carbon dioxide from it," said Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the IMechE."

Indeed.

"Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said the idea of making petrol from carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere was still a long way from being a commercial reality."

Keith, it's a very long way from reality.

krd

What I believe this is about.

Is high pressure/high temperature chemistry. Water vapour and atmospheric CO2, and you can form hydrocarbons. There's nothing new in the idea.

This is fine for the production of ammonia through the Haber process, but probably useless when it comes to atmospheric CO2, because there isn't much of it in comparison to how much nitrogen there is.

You're talking about a huge amount of energy, and it would be probably easier and more feasible to extract gold from seawater.

Mucco

krd wrote: »

This is fine for the production of ammonia through the Haber process, but probably useless when it comes to atmospheric CO2, because there isn't much of it in comparison to how much nitrogen there is.

You're talking about a huge amount of energy, and it would be probably easier and more feasible to extract gold from seawater.

There are plenty of sources of CO2 - eg brewing, cement factories etc, so that's not a problem. You could also use this with cheap night-time electricity, or as a solution to the renewables intermittency problem.
However, you're right, I would like to see the energy requirements.

krd

Mucco wrote: »

There are plenty of sources of CO2 - eg brewing, cement factories etc, so that's not a problem. You could also use this with cheap night-time electricity, or as a solution to the renewables intermittency problem.
However, you're right, I would like to see the energy requirements.

The energy requirements could possibly be horrendous. But it might be a good way to make fuel oil, if we had a super cheap source of electricity.

What can also be done (and I believe someone in Ireland was trying to do this recently, they may have gone bust trying it) You can put stuff like waste food, and wood chips, paper or other organic waste you can get your hands on, put it in a pressurised tank and cook it with water vapour. The result is you get an oil like substance - you get diesel from junk. Your left over waste may cause a problem in terms of disposal. Without a heavy subsidy it's probably not worthwhile doing.

You could also redirect human feces and make diesel oil from that. It might not smell very pleasant. But in the days before petroleum, and extraction methods for getting oils from plants. Human feces were collected, and boiled for their fats to make soap.

stoneill

It was on that James May program not so lang ago.

This actually shows what you get when you have :

a. Research institutes spinning for PR
b. Science journalists who seem to know nothing about science and less about journalism

If the journalist had actually dug a little, tried to understand what was going on and asked a few intelligent questions we might have got an informative article. However it wouldnt have been as hypey as this. Cost?: way too much Capacity?: far too little Commercial?: never.

Mucco

They're using electricity to make H2, then using this with CO2 to make syn gas (H2 and CO), which can then undergo Fischer-Tropsch to liquid fuels.

I think Shell do something similar using Qatari gas to make a fuel additive (Pearl GTL). It's a ridiculously inefficient process.

From the Air Fuel Synthesis website (edited):

"We need 3.9kg of CO2 to make one kilogram of gasoline.
We need about 30 kilowatts of power to make one kilogram of gasoline.
To make a 1Kg of gasoline we would need about four and a half Kg of water."

The CO2 and H2O will cost next to nothing, so major consumable will be electricity. I don't know costs of FT catalysts.

kW is a unit of power, not energy, maybe they mean kWh.

Google says that 1kg of petrol is about 45 MJ
30kWh is 108 MJ

That's a ratio of 2.4 which is actually not that bad. Imagine using excess wind, or night time nuclear. I don't know the actual economics of this.

Personally, I think that H2 will become a fuel, and then electricity itself once the storage issues are resolved.

krd

Mucco wrote: »

They're using electricity to make H2, then using this with CO2 to make syn gas (H2 and CO), which can then undergo Fischer-Tropsch to liquid fuels.

They may be taking the piss, and doing research of absolutely no value.

People have been building these things for years. The Germans were the first. During the second world war, they tried producing liquid fuels from coal. It's more or less the same process. Their first attempt at a scaled up production plant exploded, killing quiet a few workers (I'm not digging for the number). High pressure chemistry is a tricky thing to do.

What you're essentially trying to do, is form diesel oil, from the same process as nature. Which is putting carbon and water under high pressure. And your long chain hydrocarbons will form. The process in nature is probably not that energy efficient, it doesn't have to be.

Your feedstock just needs to be carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Tap water and household rubbish would be a good source. Condensing CO2 from air probably isn't.

Mr Coldfusion himself, Andrea Rossi, used to be in the diesel from waste business.

krd

This is interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

I had no idea their use had been so wide spread, or that they were so effiecient and you could actaully run a car with them.

They might be a good way to get off the grid, if you were living in a rural area, with access to a lot of cheap would, or turf even. I think during WWII, there were turf powered motor vhayhackals (as the garda say), in Ireland.

SOL

krd wrote: »

You could also redirect human feces and make diesel oil from that. It might not smell very pleasant. But in the days before petroleum, and extraction methods for getting oils from plants. Human feces were collected, and boiled for their fats to make soap.

gonnna need to see something to back this up....


on the otherhand sheep and cow dung are still collected and burned for fuel in many parts of the world...

krd

SOL wrote: »

gonnna need to see something to back this up....

I can't find a good source for yah. But, in European cities, before sewers, people would just dump their crap in the gutter. People would collect the crap, and then boil it. Human feces has a high fat content. Before modern chemistry oils were scarce. Boiling crap would be a good way to get oil for soap making.

Human waste used to be used in all kinds of things from gun powder to dyeing.

I can't remember the period, but before other sources of nitrates were found (bird and bat sh1t mines), by law in France, all household urine has to passed through ash, and a man came around to collect the result. And that is how you make potassium nitrate - or Salt Peter - or gun powder.

on the otherhand sheep and cow dung are still collected and burned for fuel in many parts of the world...

Just shows you how crap life is in many parts of the world.

And it shows you how inefficient cattle are at digesting their food - In China, I don't know if they still do this, probably in rural parts, they make methane from pig crap and use it for fuel to cook with. Cow crap produces a lot of methane too. Which is a reason slurry pits are so dangerous.