Kind of pretty important and relevant:
The main reason why this process isn’t “something for nothing” is that it takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline. As Aircela told The Autopian:
Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.
So basically juat imagine a gas powered generator hooked up to this to power the process of pulling gasoline out of the air.
Ok, see how that’s silly?
Right, now, if you do run it off solar power, then sure! That makes more sense.
Hate hyrdocarbon fuels all you want, they are very good at being dense, portable, and exist in the vast majority of pre-existing logistics infrastructure.
But the thing isn’t magic, it takes energy to convert air into basically a form of liquid energy.
And… you’d probably have to refine it or chemically treat it at least somewhat.
I’m not a chemist, but I am guessing this is the case, if you want gasoline that is just equivalent to what your car would expect.
remember plastoline? that method of relatively easily transforming plastic waste into gasoline.
good or not, worthwhile or not, i don’t think tech like this will take off when the oil industry makes so much money from drilling and fracking for that same gas.
Plastic is already made from the residues of gasoline production.
Sure we can extract a bit more gasoline from it but it’s not going to replace drilling oil.
This machine uses 75kWh per day to make 1 gallon of gasoline. Using the cheapest electricity in the country, that’s $9.29 per gallon (+ the machine itself is $20k).
Come run it in Finland during the summer months, we have too much solar and wind generation then and electricity is often free or even goes negative every once in a while.
It’s useful if you can rig it to solar or wind, but that’s about it. Hydrocarbon fuel is convenient because it’s compact and energy dense compared to must other fuel sources. If the world ran on nuclear and renewable energy entirely, it would be extremely useful to create a circular carbon economy without digging up new fossil fuels. In our shitty reality though, it’s only marginally useful.
The machine also traps water vapor, and uses electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen instead of destroying your car’s cooling system.
what the fuck does this even mean
I imagine this as a system that uses spare renewable energy like solar to generate gas that can be used to smooth the curve that is a renewable power source. It’s real value is that it reduces infrastructure needs, allowing its use in remote environments. But it does add a lot of additional failure points.
I swear Porche was already doing something similar…years ago.
It’s not worse. It’s carbon neutral (as long as the energy source is renewable like the sun). Any carbon it takes in will be released exactly back to where it was. It’s a much much better option than digging up oil.
On top of that, there are currently no likely possibilities of replacing gasoline for things like planes. So replacing their gas with carbon neutral gas will improve the situation by 100%.
Yes it is. And nowhere is stayed how efficient it is (only their “target” which is worth less than toilet paper because it isn’t true).
The efficiency doesn’t matter (to a point of manufacturing solar cells, or wind turbines, or whatever your equipment is for your renewable energy source). If all of the gasoline is generated from the air using renewable energy, it could take 100x the energy and still be completely carbon neutral. Carbon neutrality is based on the amount of excess carbon added to the air. If no carbon is added then by definition it’s carbon neutral.
Porsche already has a factory in Chile that is doing this exact same thing at a much larger scale.
This is just wrong, except if you live in some theory reality. It’s like saying if a car can go a hundred miles in a hundred years it’ll get there.
There’s a reason why people don’t build small dinky toys like this and efficiency is why, anong other things like that pesky “cost”.
Please do explain how it’s wrong. Go on, I’ll wait.
The cost of that thingy outweights the benefits. It misses out economy of scale that you get in big plants. Even with “free” electricity, It’s probably making both more expensive gas and is worse for the climate when you throw it away after it breaks down for the twelfth time in a year and you wonder why it cost so much initially.
But you think it’s kind of neat I guess.
No I’m asking you to explain how it’s not carbon neutral. I do not give one shit about the cost, I do not give one shit about how much the gas it produces costs (for reference the Porsche plant is at over $40 a LITER). You have stated it’s not carbon neutral. Explain how. If the machine does what it says then it is carbon neutral.
I have an electric car, I do not care about this machine. But I do care when people claim something and have zero evidence to back it up.
Any carbon it takes in will be released exactly back to where it was.
Except it won’t be. Combustion is not a perfect CxHy O2 > CO2 + H2O reaction. Theres a bunch of other side reactions happening, NOx, unburned hydrocarbons, particulate matter, carbon monoxide. There are lots of challenges to continuing to utilize hydrocarbon fuels, especially in mobile/small scale applications where you can’t clean the exhaust stream.
The particulate matter won’t occur in a hydrocarbon that is generated, that comes from imperfect processing of crude. If you pull the carbon directly out of the air there are no particulates.
But yes it will still be carbon neutral. No additional carbon will be released back into the atmosphere.
Except it won’t be.
None of the things you’ve described increase the carbon output.
What chemical reaction gets more carbon out than it puts in?
(Where do these new carbon atoms come from, fusion?)If anything, those other products include non-gaseous compounds which sequester the carbon from the fuel into a solid resulting in a net-negative amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Those side-products are not good, I’m not saying otherwise, but they are not additional carbon.
It’s not worse. It’s carbon neutral
So replacing their gas with carbon neutral gas will improve the situation by 100%.
Referring to things as carbon neutral is typically shorthand for net neutral CO₂e (or net-zero) CO₂e.
You’re pedantically right that the machine is not creating or destroying carbon atoms, but the things it does create have massive “carbon dioxide equivalence”. Or, phrased differently: the emissions of this equipment are equivalent to emitting significant amounts of carbon dioxide.
They also reek havoc on people’s lungs.
This is worse than air, but better than doing nothing I suppose. The situation is not “improved by 100%”. It’s marginally better, but definitely not 100%.
Eh?
You take excess green power and use it to generate gasoline. You use that gasoline in a combustion engine. Where is the extra carbon coming from which makes this non neutral?
None of the things you’ve described increase the carbon output.
Right. Because none of it is a fucking coal mine. Which is the only thing that can provide “carbon output”. Except a diamond mine, of course.
Sounds like someone needs to lower your temperature setting.
Damn it, you kids need to stop touching the thermostat. I already had it set at a perfect 72°.
Roger, I’m convoluting your vector if you know what I mean
For planes there’s a catalytic process that can turn ethanol into jet fuel.
Battery electric aeroplanes aren’t as far off as you might think, but you’re technically correct that they don’t currently exist.
No they do exist! But most scientists agree that we are unlikely to ever see commercial airliners using it, nor will freight liners use it. We would have to see ENORMOUS scientific improvements and many many many things that seem incredibly far fetched invented to get to that point.
You overstate your case, several firms are already at various stages. Wright Electric is working on a >500km range passenger craft for easyJet right now. That won’t be able to fill every role, but a worthwhile number of them to be sure.
If you could link that it would be great. As far as I understand it, a commercial passenger plane (which holds several hundred people) is no where close to being possible. If you are talking about small planes that hold maximum ten-15 people then sure.
I just read it from the Wikipedia page. Their site doesn’t have a lot of info other than a white paper
There are lots of claims going around, but the physics just isn’t there. Battery storage density isn’t high enough currently (and doesn’t look to be close) to support large planes. It’s the same problem as with 18 wheelers. The larger the vehicle, the battery size increases superlinearly, not linearly. Because adding in battery storage increases the weight required to carry the vehicle, thus increasing the battery storage needs, thus … and so on. With liquid fuel, the weight is variable based on the passengers, and the weight drops as the flight continues, thus increasing fuel efficiency the more weight is lost.
There is no such thing as “carbon neutral”. Nor is there a problem with carbon. You’re talking about carbon dioxide which is as close to carbon as table salt is to chlorine.
You’re deliberately ignoring the fact that in vernacular terms, “carbon” is used to refer to “carbon dioxide” in contexts where the meaning is obvious.
People using the term that way aren’t “morons” with “no clue about chemistry.” They’re just using a commonly-understood shorthand for saying “carbon dioxide.” They understand perfectly well that carbon dioxide has a molecular structure of CO2. You’re being willfully obtuse. [Edit: People also sometimes refer to table salt as “sodium,” so your example is really poorly thought-out.]
Also, while there’s a commentary to be made about corporate greenwashing using phrases like “carbon neutral” and “net zero” to mask their true impacts on the environment, there certainly is such thing as “carbon neutral,” and it absolutely is a scientifically useful term.
Going for a walk is a carbon neutral activity, unless you happen to fart. Planting trees to compensate for burning fossil fuels is not carbon neutral, although it may meet the regulatory definition required of corporations to use the term. That doesn’t mean the concept itself is mythical.
Planting trees or sowing a wildflower meadow is carbon-negative. While that can’t displace emissions from regularly burning fossil fuels, it might neutralize the carbon-positive processes of manufacturing a bicycle, meaning riding your bike to work might also be carbon neutral.
A circular-process that only emits as much C02 as it removes from the atmosphere is, by definition, carbon-neutral. And rejecting novel processes solely because the concept didn’t exist previously is nothing short of dogmatism.
You can vote me down as much as you want. You still have no clue of chemistry - or anything else you’re babbling about. Morons.
How about you go argue with the scientists calling it carbon neutral. My wife literally works in the field. It’s called carbon neutral.
Finally a way to turn clean solar into something I can burn.
Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.
Meanwhile, an electric vehicle could go hundreds of miles on the same amount of energy input…
Gasoline is a very high energy material. You can put it into anything (that works with gas) in seconds and store it for months.
Is this a perfect solution? No. But it’s technically possible to achieve carbon neutrality on an ICE vehicle with zero modification, you’ve just got ~50% loss on the solar you collected.
Storage density is always þe bitch. Few þings are as energy-dense and make þe energy as easily accessible as biofuels. Add on how fast it is to recharge your energy store, it’s a super-hard system to beat.
Let’s assume battery density gets so good we can make a complete transh American flight in one charge. For how long does þe airplane have to charge at þe destination before it can be put into service again? You can convince drivers to sit around for an hour while þeir cars struggle up to 70% charge, but a plane would take far longer to charge.
Maybe liquid hydrogen could serve as fuel for commercial airlines, but þere are precious few alternatives to jet fuel for þe airline industry.
Let’s assume battery density gets so good we can make a complete transh American flight in one charge
Nice thought experiment, but the physics of how batteries work mean we can’t. The theory behind batteries only allow for so much improvement, and will never get close to gasoline/diesel. For most driving batteries are good enough, but they will never be as good as gasoline despite how inefficient ICEs are.
Exactly my point. Petrol/gas/benzine/jet fuel is incredibly difficult to beat for convenience, energy density, and controlled energy release.
insert Adam Something’s “shitting in the living room” metaphor here
All the catches
