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

news.ycombinator.com

291–300 of 589 posts

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

#291

Are you going to open a few "carbon neutral" gas stations? It might be great for publicity and marketing to open a few in dense urban areas with high gas prices (like LA and SF). Look at what the Apple and Tesla stores did for those companies. You could probably also charge gas prices higher than average by attracting the environmental crowd who would be willing to pay extra to fill their Priuses with carbon neutral…

We'll start out using other's pumps, and then move into making/selling fuel making systems themselves. I don't see us buying gas stations.

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

#292

Are you going to open a few "carbon neutral" gas stations? It might be great for publicity and marketing to open a few in dense urban areas with high gas prices (like LA and SF). Look at what the Apple and Tesla stores did for those companies. You could probably also charge gas prices higher than average by attracting the environmental crowd who would be willing to pay extra to fill their Priuses with carbon neutral…

I would actually argue that they'd be better off competing on price, rather than raising it (if at all possible and sustainable.) That way even the "but it doesn't run on gas" nuts would have no excuse not to get this instead.

Competing on price is the plan. It's a commodity, so the only way to replace fossil fuel is to take market share by competing on price.

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

#293

By law, gasoline gets cut with ethanol, degrading engine performance. If I buy gas from you guys will it be legal to put 100% gasoline into my engine? If so that's a "killer app," (so to speak) for people who care about their engines, even if it is more expensive in early development stages.

It's likely we will be exempt from ethanol blending requirements, as this would increase the carbon intensity of our fuel.

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

#294
post #251

How long does the the carbon nanotube membrane last? How many gallons can it produce before it needs replacing? And how much it costs to manufacture?

We expect a long life for the CNT membrane, as it operates on clean internal streams. They are actually not that expensive, so this is a small risk.

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

#295

How much control over molecules do you have? Gasoline is a mix of things (which changes based on season). I know today you can buy synthetic diesel (last I checked 3x the price of pump fuel, but it has enough more energy to make the difference between a win/loss in a race).

We have pretty good control, but it's not necessary to make pure substances like only octane, etc. A mix of C4 to C12 hydrocarbons and alcohols that meets the ASTM spec is all we need.

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

#296
post #62

Incredible pitch, I wish you luck. This would be an amazing alternative to batteries in areas where there would otherwise be renewable over-capacity. While it appears less efficient, it is transportable and easy to store. Please keep us all updated on how it goes, I'm sure you will see a lot of excitement about what you are doing.

Thanks, will do!

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

#297
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

If the alcohol upgrade to gasoline makes sense technically and economically for you, why is it not commonly done with (presumably much cheaper and extant in great volume) industrial alcohol today?

I might have misunderstood your point, but I believe alcohol is commonly used as a fuel in Brazil, where most cars are capable of using it directly.

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

#298
post #91

How does your expected 50-60% energy efficiency compare to the current energy efficiency of oil extraction? Extraction and especially refinement must be pretty inefficient. How do the end to end costs compare, and why do they fall the way they do?

We expect to be able to compete with fossil fuels on price as we push the price down to get more market share. The process of extracting oil and refining it to gasoline is not inexpensive or easy. By comparison, making fuel on site that doesn't need refining is potentially much less difficult and costly.

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

#299

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…

In the near term, we will remove the damage caused by fossil fuel use. Our fuel will burn much cleaner, so that's also helpful. In the medium to long term, cars will switch to electric, but now we'll have enough time to do that. As that happens, Prometheus will roll out new products made from CO2, like carbon negative building materials, etc. It's important to look not only at the end goal, but also the path!

> cars will switch to electric

Even once cars are all electric, I can’t see gas turbine engines in planes, trains and ships being replaced in a hurry.

And rockets are never going to be electric. I assume you can make RP-1 with this process.

I can imagine hydrocarbons being produced where electricity is cheap and practical, and being shipped to where it is expensive and impractical.

In theory if it was efficient enough, you could even use it to store electricity, (e.g. in the summer) and burn it again in the winter.

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

#300
post #87

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…

There have been 15 year solar power purchase agreements signed already for $0.025/kWh [1]. Assuming they get to 50% efficiency, that's $1.69/gallon. Sounds crazy low, but I hope it's true. [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-muni-signs-cheap-sola...

Yes, and that's just until now. Anyone want to bet that we've hit rock bottom in terms of prices, efficiencies, and economies of scale? Or are we going to see another 10x? 0.17$/gallon. 20x?, 0.09$/gallon (rounding up because I'm lazy).

My view is that is more a question of when than if and that the point where it stops mattering relative to the comparison to fossil fuels depending on your point may already be quite near or even in the past.

Some places are still getting expensive solar, some places are bidding at 0.025/kwh. It doesn't really matter. What matters is what the bids will be ten years or so from now, which is when realistically this could start becoming operational at a meaningful scale.

It's 2019. Ramping up production for something like this takes some time. A decade can fly by for a startup like this. Doing the math with 2019 prices and efficiencies means you get a very conservative view of what would be possible now with today's level of technology at today's scale.

However, an investor needs to look a decade ahead. Or longer and assign some probabilities to likely outcomes. The outcome where there's no progress whatsoever in making clean energy tech better in the next ten years seems unlikely. So, betting on < 1$/gallon as a feasible goal in 1-2 decades seems like a reasonable bet. If the rest of the technology works as advertised (room temperature synthesis and extraction of alcohols) and the technology can be scaled at reasonable cost, that ought to be basically a money printing machine. The lower that price drops, the better. As long as oil remains the primary source, you can pocket the difference as profit.

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