31–40 of 124 posts
Feasibility aside, this is exactly what people want to hear today. Eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere and sell gasoline. You have to give them credit for the pitch, regardless of what is or isn't delivered.
Didn't Google X try out something similar, and then decided it was uneconomical? https://x.company/projects/foghorn/
They seem to be heavy on vision, marketing and zero-net-carbon partnerships with huge brands, light on technical detail (i wouldn't hate some links to papers or a PoC of their reactor or something), all of which feels a little Nikola-y. Thin articles touching on the technology: https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/meet-our-v3-faraday-... https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/worlds-1st-machine-t... Hopefully som…
They've licensed a couple of key technologies out of Oak Ridge. First is a catalyst that converts CO2 + H2O + electricity directly into ethanol. The other is a membrane with parallel carbon nanotubes that are just the right size to filter that ethanol. The rest of the business involves the chemical conversion of pure ethanol into other types of hydrocarbons.
The result is the ability to efficiently create carbon-netural fuel, effectively capturing a percentage of the electricity as gasoline (or jet fuel, etc).
Of course, this is less energy efficient than simply burning fuel that you found in the ground. The advantage is that they can bypass the expensive drilling, refining, and transportation steps and use cheap renewable energy to create fuel literally anywhere they can stick a shipping container.
That's the goal, anyway. I really hope they succeed.
I'm confused about how this is on the front page. The title says they've raised a Series B at a big valuation but the link is just their marketing page, with no mention whatsoever of a raise.
https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/prometheus-is-first-...
Feasibility aside, this is exactly what people want to hear today. Eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere and sell gasoline. You have to give them credit for the pitch, regardless of what is or isn't delivered.
They seem to be heavy on vision, marketing and zero-net-carbon partnerships with huge brands, light on technical detail (i wouldn't hate some links to papers or a PoC of their reactor or something), all of which feels a little Nikola-y. Thin articles touching on the technology: https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/meet-our-v3-faraday-... https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/worlds-1st-machine-t... Hopefully som…
And how a physical good/energy company that is worth $1.5B only has 20 employees...
Why convert methanol to gasoline when you can directly convert it into electricity using a reformer and HT-PEM fuelcell? https://www.advent.energy/advent-power-stacks/
Didn't Google X try out something similar, and then decided it was uneconomical? https://x.company/projects/foghorn/
The US Navy continues to research similar technology for manufacturing synthetic kerosene out of sea water onboard aircraft carriers. They aren't too concerned about economics. Their goal is to reduce the amount of jet fuel they have to haul around.
Which has economic consequences :)
They seem to be heavy on vision, marketing and zero-net-carbon partnerships with huge brands, light on technical detail (i wouldn't hate some links to papers or a PoC of their reactor or something), all of which feels a little Nikola-y. Thin articles touching on the technology: https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/meet-our-v3-faraday-... https://prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/worlds-1st-machine-t... Hopefully som…
I found this article written by the CEO in a journal outlining some technical details. https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(20)30002-7.pdf His breakthrough technology is supposed to be the carbon nanotube membrane as explained here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240 But, the two papers he cited in the Joule article don't go as far as actually separating water and ethanol. It's questionable whether th…
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/03/20180310-mattershif...
I admire the attempt to make your site really cool, but jeez it's so unusable. Perhaps the most "form over function" site I've used in years. Please use a million or so and just make the website a static site.