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

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

#101

Post by sailingparrot »

alexose wrote: post #94
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.

How would that be better for the environment though?

Unless we have a way to electrify all planes (we don't currently), this is the next best thing. I think the key is to ensure biofuel never gets cheaper than regular fuel, to avoid incentivizing flying more.

If you sequester what you pull out in some old oil well, while American Airlines is pumping out from the next oil well, it has to be less effective (and thus release more CO2 in the process), than just you sending your oil from captured carbon directly to them.

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

#102

Post by pkrein »

rmcginnis wrote: post #91
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.

Ok so the 40% efficiency and 2.5x reduction in electricity prices cancel each other out... we're still at electricity costs == energy in the jet fuel. No room for electrofuel plant capex or any other electrofuel plant opex. And to get those low electricity prices you have to only run your plant at 30% duty cycle when the sun is shining (3x capex).

How does capex and other opex fit in?

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

#103

Post by alexose »

sailingparrot wrote: post #101
alexose wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would that be better for the environment though? Unless we have a way to electrify all planes (we don't currently), this is the next best thing. I think the key is to ensure biofuel never gets cheaper than regular fuel, to avoid incentivizing flying more. If you sequester what you pull out in some old oil well, while American Airlines is pumping out from the next oil well, it has to be less effective (and thus re…

It would make sense in that we need a net reduction in atmospheric carbon, and not 100% of carbon emissions come from burning fuel.

Though, I do see your point-- This only pencils out once you've captured 100% of the available fuels market, which is quite large.

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

#104

Post by brutusborn »

dukecitypal wrote: post #20

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/

The main benefit would be in applications like jet fuel where the smaller alcohols and hydrocarbons won't cut it.

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

#105

Post by annoyingnoob »

I feel like a high school kid just told me about a great idea.

Pretty much ignores pollution beyond CO2. The 289 engine in the '67 Fastback in their cartoon is what I would call a 'gross polluter'. Burning gasoline also produces NOx, CO, SO2, particulates, and more. There is a reason that electric cars are a thing.

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

#106

Post by pedalpete »

rmcginnis wrote: post #88

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

More a bit of feedback then question.

You are obviously aware of the issues with the site. I like the vision and how you've laid it out, but I felt you were missing a trick with design a bit.

You lay out the "for centuries the way.." really well, and it's fun. I feel like I'm in Mad Max. But then, you introduce your technology, and everything is still desert. I don't feel like you've "changed the world" because your tech is so great.

Also, for LOTS of people (as you can see in the comments) this sort of web experience doesn't work when they want to dig into real details, or want to feel like they aren't watching a movie. They want it to feel real, so I'd recommend a place they can go with a simple layout, almost whitepaper like description of what you're doing. Perhaps that exists, but I couldn't find it, and you even had a comment (more highly voted than yours) which has copied the text from your site, and pasted it here to be easy to read.

Just a few suggestions.

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

#107

Post by mbesto »

mbesto wrote: post #100
nradov wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Couldn't edit my original but I finally had some time to google this:

> The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is the single-largest consumer of fuel in the world and Jet fuel accounts for 71% of the entire military’s petroleum consumption. Therefore, DoD needs to maintain a strong logistical support to provide jet fuel for its equipment across the world.

https://patentyogi.com/aircraft/us-navy-plans-produce-jet-fu...

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

#108

Post by trog »

rmcginnis wrote: post #88

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

While I generally agree with some of the comments about the usability/accessibility/load times, this is a visually amazing website and is a super impressive piece of design. Ran really nicely on my admittedly over-spec'ed laptop.

(I say this as someone that would be happy if every website on the Internet was just written in plain HTML with no CSS and just a few images.)

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

#109

Post by YossarianFrPrez »

YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #86
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…

Prometheus's vision is very hard not to like. And, at the same time, there are likely good reasons to be skeptical. (I have very little expertise in this area myself.) FYI, I didn't find the tweets you've linked to to be convincing. One tweet criticizes prometheus because, at the time of the tweet, they had a P.O. box. The other suggests that 'the secret ingredient may be lies.' Now, maybe both tweet authors' critici…

Also, if you read the Science article, the defensive moat comes down to a new way to align carbon nanotubes in the material they use to filter the ethanol from water. I'm bullish.

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

#110

Post by bushwik »

This is an interesting one since it may be more about market timing than technology. Doing a bit more research but it is likely they are getting the valuation based on LCFS (CA) and 45Q (Federal/IRS) carbon capture credits in addition to the potential of displacing jet fuel.
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