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

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

#121

Post by jvanderbot »

So, the goal is carbon-neutral gasoline.

Short term, I suppose your target is feel-good gas burning vehicles. Longer term, do you envision this technology being used for clean(er) + carbon neutral municipal power generation, or is the fuel type just wrong for that?

I ask because a stop-gap can easily become permanent, and it'd be unfortunate to continue dumping particulates (pm2.5/10), smog, etc into the air in major cities. One huge benefit of electric vehicles is you can make power where population is scarce, and use it where the population is. You don't get that with burner vehicles.

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

#123

Post by uranium »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #86
rmcginnis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patented, yes. You could do the fuel synthesis in water on a hobby level, and use a thermal still to get something flammable, but you wouldn't be able to use it in an engine. It's pretty fascinating to work on though.

Do you guys not have a landing page / website yet?

https://www.prometheusfuels.com/

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

#124

Post by jandrese »

Long term we need to do this and then pump the resulting alcohol back underground or in some other reservoir where it can be more or less permanently removed from the environment. Basically we've built up an enormous energy debt from carbon that we need to repay to avoid cooking the Earth to death.

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

#125

Post by apo »

rmcginnis wrote: post #115
apo wrote: post #108

I'm skeptical, but fascinated by what you're doing. It sounds like all of the steps of your process are known, except: 1. CO2 fixation uses only electricity - no natural gas or other fossil fuels. It works at room temperature. 2. Distillation of the immediate products (alcohols) is not necessary. A carbon nanotube membrane solves the problem at room temperature through reverse osmosis. Correct? If so, then why target…

We could use the alcohols as fuels directly (in flex fuel vehicles), but this wouldn't address the much larger market for gasoline. It's a simple and inexpensive upgrade, so makes sense to do it. We will definitely take advantage of carbon credits, tax incentives, etc too!

Organic feedstocks (non-fuel), although smaller isn't exactly a tiny market. Depending on how much control you have over the fixation process you might be able to tap into some high-value alcohol markets. That's the main reason I added the follow-up to the original questions.

In other words, the flow of material would look like:

CO2 -> polymers, drugs, and other useful solid materials

There would be no [product] -> CO2 step at the end. It cuts out the re-release of CO2 and eliminates a dependence on petroleum.

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

#126

Post by ossie »

The unit economics around this are by no means perfect but the BIG point here that should probably be in all caps is that fact that the thermal process is displaced by the use of electricity. We could argue on what is used to generate said electricity, but that is beside the point since this innovation opens up many more possibilities than are stated here. We could also argue about the comparative cost of produced energy vs conventional fossil, but lets not forget that those same arguments were used during the early commercialization of solar energy.

In my opinion, the conversion process should stop at the creation of alcohols which can then be used as additives in E-85 gasoline for example, or in other chemical applications that have a less direct and immediate carbon impact on the environment.

I also think this innovation has a larger impact if it were used to bring existing generators of emissions closer to being carbon neutral. It also reduces the burden of being cost efficient on Day 1 since the carbon intensity of large emission generators is already a cost they'd be glad to mitigate or get rid of (esp if the process generates a valuable by-product). Imagine power plant stack exhausts channeled through this technology, or if were miniaturized and made a standard part of every fossil fuel combustion engine...we could all be buying gasoline and selling ethanol before you can say Prometheus.

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

#127

Post by eanzenberg »

icebraining wrote: post #92
ineedasername wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, that answer skirts the question of what happens to the water. You said you're using the nanotube membrane to separate petro products from the water. What do you do with the water left over? What state is the water in when the process is complete? Potable? In need of treatment by traditional water treatment facilities?

If water is an input and not an output, that implies it's consumed, not left over.

Yes, one of the things that gets glossed over many times in this field (I used to do research in artificial photosynthesis) is that water gets consumed to create the fuel, and is released as vapor from every engine's exhaust. So to generate 10 million barrels requires about 10 millions barrels of pure water, per day, to satiate the US.

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

#128

Post by rmcginnis »

scrape_it wrote: post #114

Very promising but I'm going to hold out until I actually see this being applied in places like South Korea, literally suffocating from a combination of both local and foreign smog from Korea's favorite neighbor. You can't really fault me because we've often seen groundbreaking, extraordinary claims, and very little of it is actually realized. Sort of like how we get news about how somebody found a cure for AIDs or C…

I totally agree on skepticism. We are working hard to prove our economics. We are targeting selling renewable gasoline from the air for a profit next year. It will be much better for air quality too!

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

#129

Post by mikorym »

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…

Personally: Carbon negative aims are admirable, but idealistic. Carbon neutrality is in many cases much more feasible and makes a massive impact in an industry that is currently overwhelmingly carbon positive. By argument of historical trends to future trends replacing a carbon positive market with carbon neutrality at the end of the day is removing carbon from the air that would otherwise have ended up there.

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

#130

Post by danielmg »

rmcginnis wrote: post #49
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…

We expect a gallon of gasoline to require approx. 60 kWh of electrical energy. If the price of that electricity is below 5 cents, the economics work. If the price is lower, the efficiency of the conversion could also be lower if that optimized other costs (like capital). Electricity is routinely below 5 cents now at utility scale (wholesale), which is where we will want to be.

60 kWh capacity EV will get you (realisticaly) 200 miles.

A gallon of petrol - 40 miles (realistcally and using UK gallon).

According to Tesla their charging is 92% efficient so reduce that 200 to 184 miles.

Your process is 4.5 times less efficient than just putting that electricity into the EV? Is that right?

If so - and your process is carbon neutral (big if) - what's the point in a future where EVs dominate?

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