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Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#31

Post by monk_e_boy »

rmcginnis wrote: post #10
__sy__ wrote: post #6

I've been super curious about alternatives to the Sabatier reaction. Nice work! Maybe I'd encourage you to think of yourself less as a fuel company and more as a chemical precursor one. Outside of combustion, there are a ton of other use cases in need of synthetic pathways.

Thanks! We are also going to make carbon negative building materials to remove CO2 that has already been emitted. Really anything now made from petroleum is potentially replaceable with air mined CO2 and renewable electricity. Will start with gasoline.

Automatic factory on Mars?

Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#33

Post by ineedasername »

twright wrote: post #15

This is really cool, I have a two questions the last one maybe a bit sillier than the first: - I'm not a chemist, maybe you said this implicitly, but roughly at what rate would this capture a kilogram of carbon? - Why did you choose the name 'Prometheus' the titan who created man, gave us fire, and as punishment for the latter part, had his liver eaten out by a vulture every day for eternity?

He wasn't quite punished for eternity, just for a very long time until Hercules set him free. Not sure what that means for the company, but if I worked there I wouldn't want to be the company's equivalent of the liver.

Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#34

Post by Damorian »

docker_up wrote: post #29
Damorian wrote: post #19

How could the math possibly work out on this? If a gallon of gas holds 33.70 kWh of energy, and you can get cheap electricity for $0.1/kWh, you're looking at $3.37/gallon if you have a magical process that converts with 100% efficiency. Even if you hit your efficiency goal, which would be impressive, who is paying $7/gallon for gas? Just buy an electric car. This can only possibly be useful when all of the oil is gon…

Don't skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck is going to be. Electric cars can't compete against gasoline cars until the price hits about $6/gallon. And considering that crude prices are relatively low, but gas in CA is almost $4/gallon in the Bay Area, it doesn't take much time for normal rates to hit $6/gallon in the next 10 years or so. At that price, it becomes more economic and that's the time frame…

What? They compete today with significantly lower fuel cost. You see 100+ mpge on every electric car I know of today, you're looking at half-1/3 the per mile cost in an electric car. That more than makes up for the higher upfront cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, with cars you can go buy right now, today.

Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#35

Post by rmcginnis »

twright wrote: post #15

This is really cool, I have a two questions the last one maybe a bit sillier than the first: - I'm not a chemist, maybe you said this implicitly, but roughly at what rate would this capture a kilogram of carbon? - Why did you choose the name 'Prometheus' the titan who created man, gave us fire, and as punishment for the latter part, had his liver eaten out by a vulture every day for eternity?

First question - each ton of CO2 captured is equivalent to approx. 113 gallons of renewable gasoline. If we replace all fossil gasoline in the US, for example, that's approx. 140 billion gallons, equivalent to approx. 1.2 Gigatons of CO2. You can more than double that for the world. If we include all liquid fuels (including heating), it's larger still. It's a hugely significant CO2 emissions reduction.

Second question - I chose Prometheus because the story is that he gave us fire, and we have a responsibility to use it well. So far, not so good, but now we can do better. I imagine him saying "here's fire, don't screw it up".

Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#37

Post by mshron »

Damorian wrote: post #19

How could the math possibly work out on this? If a gallon of gas holds 33.70 kWh of energy, and you can get cheap electricity for $0.1/kWh, you're looking at $3.37/gallon if you have a magical process that converts with 100% efficiency. Even if you hit your efficiency goal, which would be impressive, who is paying $7/gallon for gas? Just buy an electric car. This can only possibly be useful when all of the oil is gon…

Solar is already down to $0.065/kWh for industrial applications [1]. That's $3.90/gallon at today's prices, and solar prices continue to fall.

The DOE's 2020 targets came three years ahead of schedule. Their 2030 target is $0.04/kWh [2], which would work out to $2.40/gallon. Mix in the fact that a bunch of countries (and US states) have implemented carbon taxes and you've got yourself a good long term investment.

[1] http://solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html [2] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/2020-utility-scal...

Re: Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

#40

Post by tofof »

mrguyorama wrote: post #28

Would you be willing to share vague details of your roadmap? Specifically; How many barrels of ready to burn gasoline are you outputting per day in 6 months? 1 year? 3 years? The fact that the general fuel is going to be sold and re-burned means this is at best carbon neutral, so from a cynical environmentalist point of view, what's the point? This can't help anyone unless you pump the synth-gas into the ground and s…

...the general fuel is going to be sold and re-burned means this is at best carbon neutral, so from a cynical environmentalist point of view, what's the point? This can't help anyone unless you pump the synth-gas into the ground and sequester it...

The status quo today is that we are removing carbon from the ground and putting it into the air. This replaces those fuels that currently come out of the ground. It's still a big win, even if it's technically only carbon neutral.

Even electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral, because they're mostly charged by coal power.

Also: you suggest the synth-gas should be pumped into the ground. What would be the point of converting the carbon dioxide to alcohol to gasoline and spending electricity to do it? At a minimum you could just pump at the alcohol stage.

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