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A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

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Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#21

Post by fourseventy »

erik_landerholm wrote: post #7
rayiner wrote: post #5

This is really, fundamentally important technology. Emissions reduction will not work: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nations-are-not-r... > The authors of the report stated in a press release that the kind of drastic, large-scale action the planet desperately needs has yet to be seen, even though global emissions have reached record levels at 53.5 billion metric tons in 2017, with no signs of peaking. >…

+100000 I couldn't agree more. I saw some real interesting research a few years ago about artificial leaves. I really wish one of these billionaires would stop building giant rockets and solve carbon recapture first. Apparently, our government isn't interested in it.

You mean like the guy who started an electric car company and is responsible for pushing the mass adoption of electric cars forward by at least a decade?

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#22

Post by kondro »

Hasz wrote: post #12

Soooooo many questions. Gasoline is a distillate made up of several hydrocarbons -- is he synthesizing all of them, or just octane? What about additives, like anti-knock agents? Plans for diesel? No amount of fancy CNTs gets around thermodynamics. CO2 and H20 are far more stable, thermodynamically, than octane, it's partially why octane is a good fuel. Where does the extra energy come from? What is the efficiency of…

And even if you could only replace 95% of the volume of gasoline with renewable-sourced options, is it suddenly a bad idea?

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#23

Post by Hasz »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #17
Hasz wrote: post #12

Soooooo many questions. Gasoline is a distillate made up of several hydrocarbons -- is he synthesizing all of them, or just octane? What about additives, like anti-knock agents? Plans for diesel? No amount of fancy CNTs gets around thermodynamics. CO2 and H20 are far more stable, thermodynamically, than octane, it's partially why octane is a good fuel. Where does the extra energy come from? What is the efficiency of…

Your car doesn't need a mix of lots of hydrocarbons, it would run fine on pure hexane. Gasoline is a mix because it's made from natural crude which is also a mix... and there's not a strong reason to purify it further.

I imagine the engine is optimized to run on "average" gasoline for a given octane level, tuning compression ratio, spark timing, air mixture, etc.

I'm not an ICE engineer, so I would love to know how much of a performance change can be expected from this guy's machine.

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#24

Post by hairytrog »

rayiner wrote: post #16
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do today's "carbon recapture" methods need to grow? What's the timeline on them looking like? P.S. The first Google result for carbon recapture is titled "“Direct air capture” of carbon dioxide won't solve climate change" P.P.S From Wikipedia with a cited source: capturing and compressing CO2 and other system costs are estimated to increase the cost per watt-hour energy produced by 21–91% for fossil fuel pow…

The author of the article (who does not appear to be an expert in anything) overlooks that renewables only address part of the emissions picture. Even if the U.S. switched tomorrow to 100% renewables and 100% electric vehicles (including trains, cars, planes, and ships), and you ignore the CO2 emissions of making all those new power plants and vehicles, U.S. usage would only go down by 3.5 gigaton: https://www.epa.go…

You should read about process heat from nuclear. There's several companies aiming to do this: https://usnc.com/MMR.html

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#25

Post by b_tterc_p »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

After reading this article, all I can say is ... ugh. What I really wanted to know was "Where does the energy come from?", and the article didn't answer that at all. The world doesn't really have a "carbon" problem, it has an energy problem, and right now carbon fuels are the cheapest, most abundant source of energy. Even if you somehow got carbon capture to work, you're still going to have to power it - with solar,…

I’m sure a lot of places have excess energy production that batteries can’t store. Gas is relatively easy to transport long distances. Seems like a variety of ways to decrease fossil fuel outputs seem likely. Then, at a future state, you could just do this as a way to terraform the planet (if that’s the right term?) back to a pre industrial state, as much as possible

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#26

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Hasz wrote: post #12

Soooooo many questions. Gasoline is a distillate made up of several hydrocarbons -- is he synthesizing all of them, or just octane? What about additives, like anti-knock agents? Plans for diesel? No amount of fancy CNTs gets around thermodynamics. CO2 and H20 are far more stable, thermodynamically, than octane, it's partially why octane is a good fuel. Where does the extra energy come from? What is the efficiency of…

>Where does the extra energy come from?

It doesn't particularly matter. Centralized clean energy production is often significantly easier to solve than figuring out clean alternatives to gasoline use. Especially when the problem with clean alternatives to gasoline is political - it's hard for the US to ban ICE engines in China, but it's significantly easier to sell them carbon-neutral gasoline.

>What is the efficiency of the conversion?

Generally speaking it's pretty atrocious. I don't remember exact numbers the last time I looked into things, but the sense I got is that it's roughly an order of magnitude away from economic viability at current prices.

Also, a significant switch to carbon-neutral fuel would be a significant bump up in electricity and energy consumption. So it's not a cure-all, we'd still need a massive investment in low-carbon energy production.

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#27

Post by seandougall »

cagenut wrote: post #3

that entire article can be reduced to "nanotubes" since its a YC company though maybe we could get the underlying story?

“Nanotubes + marketing budget”?

In all seriousness, I hope there’s more to it than that. I just can’t help feeling like nanoscale carbon is the blockchain of chemistry.

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#28

Post by mises »

erik_landerholm wrote: post #7
rayiner wrote: post #5

This is really, fundamentally important technology. Emissions reduction will not work: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nations-are-not-r... > The authors of the report stated in a press release that the kind of drastic, large-scale action the planet desperately needs has yet to be seen, even though global emissions have reached record levels at 53.5 billion metric tons in 2017, with no signs of peaking. >…

+100000 I couldn't agree more. I saw some real interesting research a few years ago about artificial leaves. I really wish one of these billionaires would stop building giant rockets and solve carbon recapture first. Apparently, our government isn't interested in it.

You mean like Bill Gates, who is spending billions on this? Or Jeff Bezos?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/gates-bezos-and-other-invest...

Re: A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)

#29

Post by b_tterc_p »

bifrost wrote: post #8
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

After reading this article, all I can say is ... ugh. What I really wanted to know was "Where does the energy come from?", and the article didn't answer that at all. The world doesn't really have a "carbon" problem, it has an energy problem, and right now carbon fuels are the cheapest, most abundant source of energy. Even if you somehow got carbon capture to work, you're still going to have to power it - with solar,…

At the end of the day - does it matter where it came from? They could be like Tesla and build a solar arm, or a wind farm, or do geothermal. You could pull it out of the grid and it'd still be better for the environment than pulling it out of the ground. TBH saying the world doesn't have a carbon problem contradicts all of the people fighting greenhouse gas emission based climate change so I'm curious as to your logi…

The logic is that you need to power the carbon extraction, and right now we use fossil fuels for power, so you wouldn’t be able to net reduce fossil fuels because you would be burning more than you extract.

I think it’s naive though. There is a theoretical point at which it’s economical to just build excess renewable energy production and use the extra power to repair the climate.

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