Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#91

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

pkrein wrote: post #52

If the founders are around... trying to understand their economics. They claim to sell Jet A at the market clearing price. Jet A goes for $0.45/L. The lowest industrial electricity rates in the US are $0.05/kWh (double that in California where they are selling today.) With 100% efficiency, no capital costs and no other opex, you get $0.05/kWh * 9.5 kWh/L = $0.47/L electrofuel Jet A. How can that work?

In order to make electrofuels cost competitive, you've got to use new utility scale solar, which is now less than $0.02/kWh : https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/08/saudi-arabias-second-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-sola...

Assume an overall efficiency of approx. 40% to be conservative.

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#92

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

quadrature wrote: post #67

neonate wrote: post #66

Here's the relevant text, since the website makes it hard to get to. We’re excited to announce the close of our Series B funding round, with investment by Maersk, Metaplanet, and BMW. As a result of the round, we’ve achieved a $1.5 Billion valuation, making us the world’s first electrofuels unicorn. This month, we received strong support from the White House, as well as some of world’s largest, most iconic brands tha…

Thanks!, their website is completely unusable so this helps a ton.

Working on it!

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#93

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

sailingparrot wrote: post #58

hannob wrote: post #54

Just so people are aware, Prometheus comes up every now and then among people on twitter following the climate tech space, and most think that their claims are bogus and completely unbelievable. Like they recently claimed that they can capture CO2 from the air with 36$, which is like 20-30 times lower than what current best tech can offer, and also lower than what people believe is generally possible. See some discus…

> can capture CO2 from the air with 36$, which is like 20-30 times lower than what current best tech can offer 36$ is their cost after reselling the fuel. The 20-30x is the cost to capture and then sequester a ton, with no revenue for this.

$36/ton is our cost to capture CO2 from the air. For us it is an input to making things, not a product, so we don't need to purify it to 100% pure CO2, just need to capture it into water (approx. 2% concentration). This requires way less energy and equipment, so much much cheaper.

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#94

Post by alexose » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

rmcginnis wrote: post #88

Hi everybody, I'm the founder of Prometheus. Happy to answer any questions!

I'm curious if Prometheus has considered any options for permanent sequestration. Perhaps buying an old oil rig and pumping electro fuel back into it.

It's obviously hard to find an economic incentive to do this, but maybe carbon credits would make it possible.

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#95

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

Sorry to all about the drop in website performance. Working on it!

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#96

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #26

Didn't Google X try out something similar, and then decided it was uneconomical? https://x.company/projects/foghorn/

Project Foghorn was technically successful but couldn't hit the economics. The tech lead on that project is now a scientific advisor for Prometheus - Matt Eisaman

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#97

Post by lowercase1 » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

cfgghsj wrote: post #21

ttobbaybbob wrote: post #13

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…

Yeah the tech seems feasible but I'm skeptical of controlling capital costs when you need carbon nanotubes membranes as a core piece.

Air capture is also quite expensive and I'm not sure how much the "only need small concentrations of CO2" trick does.

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#98

Post by rmcginnis » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #2

What's the catch? Does the fuel cost $10 a gallon?

One cent per gallon less than the fossil jet fuel spot price - in California (we will use LCFS credits to start)

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#99

Post by alexose » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

earksiinni wrote: post #72

Serious question for all atmospheric carbon capture companies: What happens once you're super successful and atmospheric carbon densities are dramatically lower? Is there a point at which the density is too low for the economics to work? Would be an awesome problem to have.

I can't wait for that to be a problem :)

Most carbon capture schemes like this tend to have some sort of concentration step, often using amine sorbents or other chemical equivalents. The atmospheric concentration doesn't tend to be the bottleneck here, from what I can tell.

There is the question of "what happens when we're at pre-industrial carbon levels", which yeah, means that we'll have to stop getting our carbon straight from the atmosphere :)

Re: Prometheus Fuels (YC W19) Closes Series B with $1.5B Valuation

#100

Post by mbesto » Thu, Sep 23, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #68

mbesto wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok let's get pedantic. Not having to store fuel means: - I have to spend less money on logistics because I don't have to put out fires, I don't have to train people to put out fires, I don't have to hire people, etc. etc. - Less fuel needed to be held means more working capital needed for energy consumption, less time to fuel up. - Less fire risk means I have to allocate less money for risk based allocations (insuran…

No that's nonsense. The ships will still have all the same fire fighting equipment and they will continue the same damage control training for crews. If this fuel synthesis technology is built into future aircraft carriers then they won't be any smaller or cheaper. The large size is a requirement to maintain high sortie rates and handle rough seas, and reducing the size wouldn't significantly reduce costs (steel is c…

The suggestion that there isn't some powerpoint presentation that the US Navy created (or consultants to them) that says "if we invest $X millions/billions to create smaller fuel jet fuel tanks we won't save money" is total nonsense. That's not how capital intensive government projects work.