151–160 of 291 posts
that entire article can be reduced to "nanotubes" since its a YC company though maybe we could get the underlying story?
I emailed Rob this afternoon to set up a Launch HN thread, where people will be able to ask whatever they want. Hopefully he can show up to answer some of the comments in the current thread too, since people are obviously interested.
Eg this doesn't seem fully credible, but is responsive https://www.terrapass.com/product/productindividuals-familie...
This will be nice for legacy cars, but I would prefer my Tesla to pretty much any ICE car. Even if it was running on solar powered gasoline. The quiet, the torque, the instantaneous acceleration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are missing the point; this is a fuel production system that effectively removes the need to capture carbon: i.e. the notion of turning air into something you put in the ground too offset the carbon we are removing from it to burn. I agree that is not a valid economical proposition other than making people feel slightly less guilty about burning fossil fuels. It's actually a rather dumb idea since you are taking…
>You are missing the point; this is a fuel production system that effectively removes the need to capture carbon No... the first step in the proposed process is to capture the CO2 from the air, what I describe in point 6 of my comment. >You seem to be arguing that it can't be done because 'numbers' No... It can be done. But it should not be done. Because 'numbers' tell you there are other things that should be done i…
You're using numbers to categorically dismiss what seems to be a pretty well reasoned case for doing this as "impossible" because 'numbers' for various carbon capturing schemes.
If you are capturing carbon, you might as well do it in a form where you can actually utilize it for fuel. That's a pretty nice proposition. Prometheus seems to be one of several startups with some plans for making this happen.
You're saying they are wasting time. I'm saying that layering the cost that you outline on top of the existing fossil fuel production cost only makes their value proposition even more attractive than it already is without doing that. Bottom line is anything that reduces the amount of oil we pump up and burn is a good thing. Carbon capture schemes seem more like an excuse to drag our heels doing that than something that is actually likely to produce results on a timescale that isn't measured in centuries.
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?
http://energyskeptic.com/2016/electrification-of-freight-rai...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Then start with point sources initially.
Considering a good portion of transportation and basically all of the heating can be replaced by electricity directly, you will not need to go beyond point sources anyway.
Is this more efficient and different compared to biofuel production using corn? Both convert carbon in the air to carbon in a liquid fuel. Biofuels require the production of fertilizers etc. This membrane would require some energy source. The membrane would have to consume less energy than corn fertilizer / unit fuel produced to be effective. I wonder how this is less a gimmick compared to biofuel.
The main question that I do not see addressed, is how many Joules of energy does the process need to make 1 Joule worth of liquid fuel. If we need for example 2J of energy to make 1J worth of gasoline, then it means that we need to double the installation rate of renewable production facilities (wind, solar, biofuels), while the global energy demand increases. This makes it completely infeasible (and I did not consid…
Because gasoline is a premium energy source, if we can produce it from photovoltaic sources, we can effectively mark-up photovoltaic electricity. In the long-term, that would make it economical to greatly expand our photovoltaic capacity. The cost equivalence Prometheus is aiming for is: Market price of 1 gallon of gasoline > cost to produce 1 gallon of gasoline using renewable energy.
Another factor is that Prometheus production works in remote areas where transmission losses for electricity are high (i.e., remote hydroelectric plants).
The concept itself of fuel synthesis is exciting and well-established, if publicly obscure, dating to the early 1960s, and being based on even older industrial-scale WWII technology.
http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA539765
Robin Paul Bushore, "Synthetic Fuel Generation Capabilities of Nuclear Power Plants with Applications to Naval Ship Technology", 1977
https://calhoun.nps.edu/public/bitstream/handle/10945/18307/...
John Michael Galle-Bishop, "Nuclear Tanker Producing Liquid Fuels From Air and Water", 2011
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/76359/82393200...
Steinberg, M., and Beller, M., "Liquid Fuel Synthesis Using Nuclear Power in a Mobile Energy Depot System," Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 8, pg 159, June 1965.
Additional references:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...
Discussion of Heather Willauer, et al, US Navy Research Lab studies:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy...
And a number of further past mentions:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=fischer-tropsc...
Curious. Why not focusing on extracting more gas from low-quality crude oil? This would save much more.