401–410 of 589 posts
How do you measure efficiency ? Is it amount of energy spent to generate equivalent energy worth of gasoline ? ( Will one megawatts solar plant generate about 0.25 gallon gasoline per minute ? )
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He said "inexpensive", not "economical". The whole process isn't economical yet . Perhaps conversion is more economical with their particlar sorts of alcohol though.
Understood, although eventually it has to become "economical" or it doesn't fly. My point was, you can view the alcohols as a feedstock for the gasoline production, and given that, you might just stream in large quantities of already-produced and cheap grain ethanol etc. from Indiana.
Hi Rob. I'm CTO of a company that generates electricity from waste heat at industrial facilities. Pipeline compressor stations often generate 35MWth+ in waste heat, which we can use at about 20% efficiency to generate electricity. Many pipeline compressor stations are not anywhere close to distribution lines so just merrily pump this heat up their stack. Especially with new pipelines where companies are battling (leg…
You could certainly do this, using distillation or the thermal processes Carbon Engineering is doing, and it could be worth pursuing, from a business opportunity perspective. We're focused on an implementation that can scale to >300 B gallons per year, so are pursuing an electricity only path.
If you can pull that off, I'll be impressed; but it seems like a very aggressive target.
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Depending on your assumptions. For day to day use EV doesn't need trips for gas station to refuel - so you actually save time. For long trips - yes.
But nobody makes trips to the gas station to refuel. Re-fueling is something that's done on the way at a convenient gas bar, and typically takes only 2–3 minutes.
Because I keep track of my mileage and have to carefully babysit the process (likes to overflow) I’d say I lose at least 10 minutes every time I get gas, and that’s every 130 miles or so.
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Bizarre comment. Being able to quickly refuel is one of the key advantages internal combustion engines have over electrics.
If the ev car companies got their shit together, they could have used swappable battery packs. You can wait around for 12h to charge, or you can turn in your cores and pay for 100% capacity batts now. And the swap would be quicker than standing around filling up a tank. But no. Each ev is different and proprietary. The chargers aren't even the same.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090933_standardized-el...
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The thought is kind of horrifying, but you could even make it a closed process - send your old phone to the factory, where it's burned to produce the plastics for your new phone.
Why is this horrifying? Is there some part of this I'm missing here?
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You could certainly do this, using distillation or the thermal processes Carbon Engineering is doing, and it could be worth pursuing, from a business opportunity perspective. We're focused on an implementation that can scale to >300 B gallons per year, so are pursuing an electricity only path.
To put this number in perspective: 300B gallons of gasoline is an amount of carbon equivalent to all of the CO2 in the air above all of the earth's land area, up to an altitude of about 80 feet. If you can pull that off, I'll be impressed; but it seems like a very aggressive target.
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* producing solar panels and such also requires energy input, and these do have limited lifetime. What is the real full-cycle energy conversion ratio is? I wonder what this is, too, but a typical 300W panel with 20 year lifespan will generate something like 20MWh over its lifetime. You can't possibly use anywhere near that much energy to manufacture it.
My personal pet theory is that the energy consumption is more or less equivalent to the price. So as long as the solar panel is not economically viable, it does not provide an energy surplus. 20MWh is not much, it's $500-$3000 worth of energy, depending on taxes and stuff. Can you buy, install, connect, maintain, clean a 300W solar panel for 20 years for this price? Edit: Also, 20MWh is quite high. That's 9h of perfe…
1 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
2 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
3 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/archive/aeo18/pdf/electricity_g...
4 https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nv-energy-23-cent-solar-con...
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But nobody makes trips to the gas station to refuel. Re-fueling is something that's done on the way at a convenient gas bar, and typically takes only 2–3 minutes.
I’m very skeptical about 2-3 minutes. Maybe if you disregard lost momentum and don’t keep track of your mileage or wait for a receipt or have to go around once or twice to find a spot or... Because I keep track of my mileage and have to carefully babysit the process (likes to overflow) I’d say I lose at least 10 minutes every time I get gas, and that’s every 130 miles or so.
Only 130 miles? Is that normal? My car can easily go 600 miles on a 15 gallon tank (diesel), but I've had it for so long I don't remember what other cars are like.
Now I'm curious how long it actually takes. Next time I fill up I'll time it.