Synfuel

funkey_monkey

Just wondering where progress is on this.

I doubt that batteries will be capable of powering planes, trains or large cruise/freight ships so synfuel seems like the only show in town for these options. It can be done, the problem with it is making it feasible.

As they can be made to suit all existing engines should there not be more of a discussion around this option? Surely it would be more efficient to convert the fuel type of the current fleet of vehicles in the world rather than scrapping them all and then digging up half a continent in order to get enough resources to create their replaces which will invariably not run on fossil free power for a very long time.

What am I missing here?

Ubbquittious

It was used during World war 2 in Holland. They used to have buses driving around running off the stuff, There would be a big cylinder on the back with wood burning inside and the gas being sent to the engine. Because all the real fuel was being used for gassing jews.

Requires a spark ignition engine I think and there is a big reduction in horsepower

mikeecho

GTL diesel exists, and Shell /ARAL use a percentage of it in their premium Diesel fuel.

It's the cost that's preventing it from being more common. I mean regular petrol/diesel only costs pennies per litre.
It's all tax

.. all that, and OPEC+.

The countries that pump crude oil, have the biggest refineries.

Markcheese

Oil isn't going to be "gone" it's just getting more expensive to extract,
Renewables will cover most of the electricity bill, and oil will still be used be used for chemicals, plastics and heavy motive power use... I just can't see long range air travel heading to battery or a bio-aviation fuel at scale..

mikeecho

Markcheese wrote: »

Oil isn't going to be "gone" it's just getting more expensive to extract,
Renewables will cover most of the electricity bill, and oil will still be used be used for chemicals, plastics and heavy motive power use... I just can't see long range air travel heading to battery or a bio-aviation fuel at scale..

Oil will be here for a long time.
As for getting more expensive to extract, yes that's true, but it's still cheap.. very cheap ( pre tax)

I think we'll run out of precious metals used in batteries a lot faster than we will run dry of oil.

But I do agree that we should be switching to greener fossil fuels.

GTL diesel is available, but it is expensive.
Pure petrol ie. Aspen fuel is available in lots of hardware stores.. but again it's expensive, about €20 per 5L.

Markcheese

Well there's going to be issues with the consumption of any limited resource,with batteries it's going to come down to recycling ,
Funnily enough one of the biggest consumers of Cobalt is oil refining ,

H3llR4iser

Just a quick remark, if I may: trains don't need batteries nor fuel. They're a prisoner system, prime target for live electrification. Many countries (Japan, Spain, Italy, France and Germany the most prominent) already have almost total electrification on their railways. Some locomotives do have small batteries for brief operation without an aerial line - mostly shunting.

The odd thins is that nobody talks about how relatively easy would be to nearly completely eliminate diesel / thermal powered trains. Literally the "lowest hanging fruit" of the bunch.

mikeecho

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Just a quick remark, if I may: trains don't need batteries nor fuel. They're a prisoner system, prime target for live electrification. Many countries (Japan, Spain, Italy, France and Germany the most prominent) already have almost total electrification on their railways. Some locomotives do have small batteries for brief operation without an aerial line - mostly shunting.

The odd thins is that nobody talks about how relatively easy would be to nearly completely eliminate diesel / thermal powered trains. Literally the "lowest hanging fruit" of the bunch.

How is electricity generated. ?


Maybe we need to build Brand New Hydro-Electric stations.. no that will upset the fish.

Nuclear energy.. not worth a hope with all the protests etc etc

Wind farms.. NIMBY.. lets lodge lots and lots of objections.. please someone think of the kerry snail.

Solar farms.. NIMBY, and im sure i saw a kerry snail somewhere.


and then you have some objection for the sake of objection.



Tis a great little CoUNTry


FFS apple couldn't even build a data centre without massive objections for years on end.

Markcheese

Electrifying the whole network is possible ,but expensive, for the money you could probably build a metro line or two, which would take serious numbers of cars off the road ,and what's the footprint for building a whole new electric system and ,new trains (ditching mid life ones), if there's only a few train movements an hour ,