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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)

#201

Post by YjSe2GMQ »

dagss wrote: post #179
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. >…

This article has nothing to do with carbon recapture. The gasoline produced from carbon is then intended for burn... This is simply an alternative electricity/power storage mechanism. But great to reduce emissions but is not intended for negative emissions (for which there is other tech)

Exactly.

Also, the only real solution for stopping warming is geo-engineering. We'll not have enough clean energy to even think about effective (as in - actually making an impact) carbon recapture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

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

#203

Post by anovikov »

This is one of the very few areas where SV traditional 'startup' thing could actually work and make big difference in the energy as well as environmental field. Other might be battery tech but there are too many serious big competitors there with 100 years of experience, and ample self-funding... But CO2 removal producing fuel from electricity is one such field - it's not taken seriously enough by big players who more pretend to be working on it than they are actually working, it's really overlooked, and there are absolutely zero fundamental reasons why it can't work. And it goes hand in hand with renewable energy, to make perfect use of energy overproduced by intermittent sources, straight on site. Solar cells cost almost nothing, but there is lack of transmission capacity, grid is imbalanced, and corrupt permissioning process is hard to navigate through? Just put that thing straight on site and collect the gasoline once a week using a truck.

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

#204

Post by swish_bob »

icelancer wrote: post #186
ForHackernews wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

>> we have to dramatically cut emissions The "we" in this is primarily China and keeping third-world countries from industrializing using the means that the Western world used to get up to speed. It is not the Western countries, as raynier pointed out. As long as we understand the magnitude - and perhaps incredible unfairness - of the problem, then that's fine. But cutting emissions in the United States and Europe is…

>> But cutting emissions in the United States and Europe isn't going to do anything.

You're right, we shouldn't bother doing anything, we should just tell them to clean up their act.

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

#205

Post by thereisnospork »

The $3.00/gallon price doesn't pass the sniff test, please tell me what I'm missing:

1 gallon of gas is 33kwh of energy

1 kwh of electricity, wholesale in the US, is approx 3-8 cents or higher, so 1.65-4.4$/GEG of electricity

CO2 to gas process efficiency electrochemical would be optimistic at 60%

CO2 sequestration from air costs 40-120$/tonne, optimistically estimated from not-yet industrially available technology. That scales by approximately 44/14 or 3x (weight CO2 to CH2) so 120-360$/tonne gasoline. At approx 2.8kg/gal (350 gal/tonne) that is an additional 0.34-1.02$/gal.

So before research amortization, capital, operations, maintenance, transport, and profit I'm seeing an optimistic best-case of a >2$/GEG production cost.

This is of course assuming they can actually do what they are claiming. And that they can do it at scale, at meaningful throughput, and with process stability.

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

#206

Post by scottdupoy »

dagss wrote: post #179
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. >…

This article has nothing to do with carbon recapture. The gasoline produced from carbon is then intended for burn... This is simply an alternative electricity/power storage mechanism. But great to reduce emissions but is not intended for negative emissions (for which there is other tech)

> The gasoline produced from carbon is then intended for burn...

If it's captured from the atmosphere and then burnt then surely it's zero-sum (apart from the energy cost of capture). Is this not better than releasing historically captured fossil fuels with a larger net increase in atmospheric levels?

If the capturing process is net-negative in terms of CO2 emmissions then perhaps we could invest in capturing more than we require for fuel - ie pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere and stockpile it in non-gaseous form. My experience is that people are willing to pay to clear their conscience and feel that they're making a positive climate change impact, but irrationally very resistant to changing their own behaviour.

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

#207

Post by eMSF »

fallingfrog wrote: post #120
zamfi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going after the use case of gasoline as energy storage, not gasoline as primary energy production. The reason, today, that cars are powered by gasoline and not electricity is not the cost of the energy itself, but the cost of storing it. Obviously it would be better to use the electricity directly. But it's hard to get that electricity to a moving car on the road (or a plane in the sky).

It’s not that hard. You can just charge the car inductively with wires in the road, or better yet, just lay tracks for electric trains.

Your "not that hard" solutions don't solve the problem you answered to. You can't move a single (production) car out there with wires in the road, or by laying tracks.

Perhaps it's a bit harder then, after all?

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

#208

Post by Arnt »

bobthepanda wrote: post #181
nordsieck wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> natural gas -> hydrogen and CO2 -> separate out CO2 -> geological CO2 storage. Everything I've seen about H2 tells me that electric cars are just better. Luckily for your theory, it's still possible to do what you want with electric cars - just carbon capture at electric power plants.

Maybe cars, but the weight of batteries is a problem for larger vehicles that need long range, like a bus, truck, or plane. For those hydrogen might be better.

Some buses need long range, such as that from Munich to Baku. That's not the common case: the common case is more like line 59 in Munich, whose route is about 14km long. A lot more people take the 59 to work than take the bus towards Baku.

Trucks: There are different kinds, but you can separate them into "ones that could be replaced by trains" and "ones that don't really need long range" and not be very wrong. There are exceptions, such as sparsely populated areas, but they're tautologically minor.

Planes: Need dense energy, sure.

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

#209

Post by pure-awesome »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #26
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 efficienc…

> 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.

Oh! Is THIS why we're going about this roundabout process? I couldn't understand why we'd want to spend a lot of effort and energy to inefficiently produce fuel, when we could just produce electricity directly.

Honestly, this comment section is the first place where I've seen this kind of thing discussed logically online.

Using hydrogen fuel cells as an example, everywhere else either 1. Misunderstands thermodynamics, and acts like e.g. producing hydrogen and oxygen from water would somehow result in free energy, or 2. Understands it's energy-negative, but don't explain what the actual benefits would be of storing and using the energy in that manner as opposed to any of the alternatives.

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

#210

Post by gnud »

Prometheus, who made humans from clay, and them gave humans fire because he felt compassion for them.

So, named after nothing less than the creator of humans and origin of civilization.

PS: As a punishment for giving fire to humans, Prometheus was chained to a mountain and had his liver picked out by an eagle every day, until Heracles rescued him.

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