Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 291 posts

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

#51

Post by peteretep »

natch wrote: post #44
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #36

I strongly suspect that manufacturing hydrocarbon fuel out of air, water, and electricity is going to be a pretty significant part of the fight against climate change. The reason is fundamentally political. Newly industrialized countries have a lot of vital economic activity dependent on internal combustion engines, and cannot afford the luxury of replacing them with alternatives. The West does not have the political…

>I strongly suspect that manufacturing hydrocarbon fuel out of air, water, and electricity If you already have electricity, that is all the energy you need. There is no need to use it to produce a toxic, polluting fuel that is used in highly inefficient internal combustion engines. Simply use electric motors, which are way more efficient.

> If you already have electricity, that is all the energy you need

If you can store and transport it better than gasoline can be stored and transported, which ... so far you can’t.

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

#52

Post by rhinoceraptor »

natch wrote: post #44
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #36

I strongly suspect that manufacturing hydrocarbon fuel out of air, water, and electricity is going to be a pretty significant part of the fight against climate change. The reason is fundamentally political. Newly industrialized countries have a lot of vital economic activity dependent on internal combustion engines, and cannot afford the luxury of replacing them with alternatives. The West does not have the political…

>I strongly suspect that manufacturing hydrocarbon fuel out of air, water, and electricity If you already have electricity, that is all the energy you need. There is no need to use it to produce a toxic, polluting fuel that is used in highly inefficient internal combustion engines. Simply use electric motors, which are way more efficient.

Electric motors are efficient, but current battery tech is not. Hydrocarbon fuels will probably always win for weight to energy efficiency.

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

#53

Post by rhinoceraptor »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #36

I strongly suspect that manufacturing hydrocarbon fuel out of air, water, and electricity is going to be a pretty significant part of the fight against climate change. The reason is fundamentally political. Newly industrialized countries have a lot of vital economic activity dependent on internal combustion engines, and cannot afford the luxury of replacing them with alternatives. The West does not have the political…

It also creates a useful product to offset the development of carbon capture.

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

#54

Post by rhinoceraptor »

apo wrote: post #33

Converting carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons consumes energy. If the product is simply burned for fuel, I can see no benefit to this effort at all. Energy will have been consumed and carbon will be re-released. What am I missing here? All I can see is a battery in the form of gasoline. And its efficiency remains to be seen - assuming the process actually works and can scale.

That's exactly the point, we could keep using existing planes, trains, cars, ships, trucks, etc. without releasing new carbon.

Electric cars are just now practical and available for most people, but without radically improved battery tech we can't make practical electric airlines for example.

Plus, it makes carbon capture tech cheaper.

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

#55

Post by jessriedel »

tathougies wrote: post #18
js2 wrote: post #4

There's no way this is a net energy producer right? So it only makes sense if it's powered by carbon-free sources? Basically this has two uses then: - As a stop gap till batteries and electric vehicles take over from ICE. Although if it generates carbon-neutral jet fuel that would be very useful. - Maybe as a carbon capture device, except that gasoline doesn't seem like a great way to store excess carbon. Although th…

Batteries have the disadvantage that they require heavy resource extraction and wear out. The advantage of hydrocarbon fuel is that it is basically instantly fillable (no charging), doesn't decrease in capacity (or minimally I suppose), and energy density. The use here is that we could use a renewable energy source, like solar, and then use the hydrocarbon generated as an energy transfer medium rather than fuel itsel…

> The advantage of hydrocarbon fuel is that it is basically instantly fillable (no charging), doesn't decrease in capacity (or minimally I suppose), and energy density.

That first property can be mimicked by batteries without too much trouble. Just standardize them and make them swappable at the fill-up station, like propane tanks. There are financing complications with this (who owns the batteries, etc.), but it's do-able and it's already been tested by at least one now-failed start-up.

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

#56

Post by Gibbon1 »

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…

One thing not considered much on a balance sheet basis, there are a number of different costs. Capital, maintenance, energy, insurance, and taxes/fines/fees.

Battery electric cars exceed or will eventually exceed gasoline/diesel powered cars on a capital, maintence, and energy cost basis.

That sets up a situation where there'll be no market for synth gasoline because the capital and maintenance costs exceeds the energy cost.

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

#57

Post by RenRav »

There is a water plant called Azolla that actually captured so much co2 long ago that many think it triggered an ice age. Why not incentivize natural carbon sequestration and just produce huge fields of this stuff everywhere? I would hope we find a fish that likes eating it, or find a way to convert it into other animal feed, if nothing else. I don't think carbon tax credits or whatever they are called are enough for someone to justify making an actual sequestration-only operation.

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

#58

Post by apo »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #54
apo wrote: post #33

Converting carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons consumes energy. If the product is simply burned for fuel, I can see no benefit to this effort at all. Energy will have been consumed and carbon will be re-released. What am I missing here? All I can see is a battery in the form of gasoline. And its efficiency remains to be seen - assuming the process actually works and can scale.

That's exactly the point, we could keep using existing planes, trains, cars, ships, trucks, etc. without releasing new carbon. Electric cars are just now practical and available for most people, but without radically improved battery tech we can't make practical electric airlines for example. Plus, it makes carbon capture tech cheaper.

In that case, carbon capture to produce organic chemical feedstocks makes a lot more sense than burning for fuel. Given that there's no information about what the process entails, it's hard to draw many conclusions.

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

#59

Post by rad_gruchalski »

jessriedel wrote: post #55
tathougies wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries have the disadvantage that they require heavy resource extraction and wear out. The advantage of hydrocarbon fuel is that it is basically instantly fillable (no charging), doesn't decrease in capacity (or minimally I suppose), and energy density. The use here is that we could use a renewable energy source, like solar, and then use the hydrocarbon generated as an energy transfer medium rather than fuel itsel…

> The advantage of hydrocarbon fuel is that it is basically instantly fillable (no charging), doesn't decrease in capacity (or minimally I suppose), and energy density. That first property can be mimicked by batteries without too much trouble. Just standardize them and make them swappable at the fill-up station, like propane tanks. There are financing complications with this (who owns the batteries, etc.), but it's d…

NIO does battery swapping in China.

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

#60

Post by ForHackernews »

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. >…

It has to be both. If we want to have any hope, we have to dramatically cut emissions AND we also have to invent magic new carbon-scrubbing technology and deploy it at a global scale in the next 30 years or so.

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

> As you can see, in either scenario, global emissions must peak and begin declining immediately. For a medium chance to avoid 1.5 degrees, the world has to zero out net carbon emissions by 2050 or so — for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065.

> After that, emissions have to go negative. Humanity has to start burying a lot more carbon than it throws up into the atmosphere. There are several ways to sequester greenhouse gases, from reforestation to soil enrichment to cow backpacks, but the backbone of the envisioned negative emissions is BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.

> BECCS — raising, harvesting, and burning biomass for energy, while capturing and burying the carbon emissions — is unproven at scale. Thus far, most demonstration plants of any size attaching CCS to fossil fuel facilities have been over-budget disasters. What if we can’t rely on it? What if it never pans out?

> "If we want to avoid depending on unproven technology becoming available," the authors say, "emissions would need to be reduced even more rapidly."

> Check out that middle graphic. If we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026.

(emphasis mine)

Post reply on HN