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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)

#141
post #130
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The current cost of carbon capture is about $120 per ton I don't know where you got this from (citation?), but I am sure this is not the cost of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere via "technology" (trees - arguably yes).

Carbon Engineering claims it will be between US$94 and $232.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/06/calgary-company-can-ca...

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

#142

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…

Hi, Rob from Prometheus here! Most of the skepticism about CO2 removal from the air is focused on "carbon sequestration and storage" or CSS, which is mitigation of emissions from fossil fuel by putting CO2 into the ground, for example. Turning CO2 from the air into useful products like fuels and building materials is much more capable of scaling because these products have value independently from regulations or carb…

Hi Rob! Is it possible to produce gasoline through atmospheric CO2 capture for less than traditional methods? Will CO2 capture be competitive in real costs?

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

#143

OK, I was curious so just did some math. Gasoline has energy density of 34.2 MJ/L, or 9.5 kWh/L[1]. Its retail price is about $3/gallon, or $0.8/L. So, assuming 100% efficiency, the energy source for making gasoline should be ~$0.084/kWh to break even. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates 2022's solar/wind generation cost at $73.7 and $55.8 per MWh [2], or $0.0737 and $0.0558 per kWh. Assuming wind power…

A couple of issues with your numbers. 1) you are basing yourself on average grid prices in the US and the local cost of petrol. You should instead be looking at dedicated clean energy installations that you'd be using 100% for fuel production in places where that are optimal/ideal to do so. 2) those petrol costs exclude taxation that would apply in e.g. the EU. Current prices in e.g. Germany for a liter of petrol are around 1.20 euros. Much more in e.g. the Netherlands, which taxes much more aggressively. Bottom line is that petrol is really expensive already in a lot of places and not likely to get cheaper when people are getting worried about global warming.

So, petrol is a lot more expensive in a lot of places and clean energy is a lot less expensive in a lot of places. I'd say, we have about a 3-6x margin of error here. And that's just at the current rates.

Luckily, clean energy cost is dropping rapidly and projected to continue to do so for quite some time. The EIA's estimates appear to be averages for the US in the context of grid electricity. There are already places in the world where those prices are far lower (i.e. by magnitudes) and projected to drop even further.

Solar grid prices in places like e.g. Dubai, would be something like 0.024$/kwh. That number might already be obsolete. So, well below what you seem to consider the break even point. Even at 30% efficiency (as opposed to your 100%) this is starting to look pretty feasible. The Prometheus founder seems to be suggesting 60% is the efficiency rate elsewhere in this thread.

Boom economically viable right now in Dubai. A region well known for its dependence on crude oil exports. How cheap would this have to get for them to not bother pumping oil out of the ground anymore at all? Incidentally, they are already using solar to power those pumps (burning oil/gas to do the same is already uneconomical). They could be producing petrol with that energy directly instead. You have to wonder at what point that starts making more sense and what that would do the global oil/gas markets. I think it's more a question of volumes/scale than cost.

So, this is not "an incredible engineering challenge" but a simple matter of how soon the cost lines cross and economies of scale. Depending on your point of view, this may already be cheap enough right now. The point is kind of moot because by the time production is ramped up to the point where this has meaningful impact, energy cost per kwh will have come down much further whereas crude oil and associated taxes are not anywhere near as likely to go down or even stay the same. I'm guessing ramping this up will take quite a bit of time (2-3 decades?). In the process, economies of scale, will impact the pricing some more.

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

#144
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’s not thermodynamically possible to recapture carbon from the air without using more energy than was obtained by burning it in the first place.

Almost literally every bit of energy that we have on Earth comes from our Sun in one form or another. Obviously this method does not break that law. It uses power from the sun to do some chemistry. Like everything else in most other solar systems in the universe.

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

#145
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might find this youtube channel interesting: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng/vid... He has run a gasoline engine on a whole slew of fuels, including some that may be surprising, such as isopropyl alcohol, various solvents, crude oil, and a 50% diesel gas mix. Gasoline engines can also run on pure propane, but the fuel pump, tank, and some other parts do need to be replaced. I guess the po…

Thats a low compression mower engine. Modern automobile engines are indeed quite sensitive to predetonation from slower ignition times offered by most alternatives without being designed for them.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Rob from Prometheus here! Most of the skepticism about CO2 removal from the air is focused on "carbon sequestration and storage" or CSS, which is mitigation of emissions from fossil fuel by putting CO2 into the ground, for example. Turning CO2 from the air into useful products like fuels and building materials is much more capable of scaling because these products have value independently from regulations or carb…

Hi Rob! Is it possible to produce gasoline through atmospheric CO2 capture for less than traditional methods? Will CO2 capture be competitive in real costs?

I cannot see how you could take CO2 and make gasoline out of it using less energy than what the gasoline contains. At best, you will need to supply that energy via something like solar panels. Then it becomes a question of efficiency: how many Watts of gasoline can you produce per Watt of electricity you have? My guess is, not many.

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

#147
post #122

Hi HN! I'm Rob, founder of Prometheus. Just saw this, catching up now and will try to answer any questions.

Hi Rob. Why bother trying to extract CO2 out of "thin air" when there are far more concentrated sources available, for example exhaust of existing power plants (100,000 ppm CO2, instead of 400 ppm)? There are even streams of pure CO2 being vented to the atmosphere, eg: https://thewest.com.au/business/energy/woodsides-browse-lng-...

Point sources won't scale to the size of the problem. Easier initially, but to replace fossil fuels for transportation and heating, will need to get the CO2 from the air.

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

#148
post #44

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.

Sea and air transport, as well as remote-location generation, and several industrial processes, rely on or benefit greatly from fuel or hydrocarbon-based inputs.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why not just build electric trains?

Which of the issues do you think that addresses?

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not thermodynamically possible to recapture carbon from the air without using more energy than was obtained by burning it the first place.

Thermodynamically, no. But is that the question? We're a long way away from consuming so much energy we thermodynamically scorch the Earth, right? It seems like they want to know if you can be mostly carbon neutral and generate existing fuels. If that's the case, then if you have access to a cheap form of renewable energy -- huge amounts of geothermal, tidal, or solar -- you could generate a ton of something-like-gas…

It is the question. You need to break up the CO2 molecule and reconstitute it as gasoline. That will take more energy than the gasoline had initially. So you have a process where you take say solar energy and convert it into gasoline chemical bonds. Great, what is your efficiency of this process? Because if it is close to 100%, great. But chances are it is much closer to 0, at which point you’d be better off just using that electricity for something else.
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