Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

uc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 213 posts

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#31

Post by qw3rty01 »

yholio wrote: post #15

No, enough with this nonsense. Capturing, liquefying and transforming CO2 into fuel requires energy - due to thermodynamic limits, much more energy than what the fuel can give back. You then take that fuel, and... burn it into 25% efficient engines that spew the very same CO2 back into the air, along with some new carcinogenic fumes and acid-rain inducing nitrogen oxides? No, just no, full stop. They way forward is e…

In the article, the idea was to store excess green electricity (from solar/wind farms for example) by capturing CO2 that is generated from fossil fuels. I do agree that claiming it will address climate change is a bit of a stretch, since that CO2 is still going back into the environment when the methane is used, but it does mean getting more energy per unit of CO2.

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#32

Post by btilly »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #5
DiabloD3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur, looks like the title changed, slug remained the same.

That's amusing. The change must've occurred in the ~8 minute window between the submission and my comment, which seems odd considering the article is 2 days old. Not casting doubt, but remarking on coincidence.

Most likely the fact that it appeared here caused someone to look at it, realize that the title didn't match the contents, and hurry to change it.

The old title really was egregiously bad. @dang, can we get it fixed?

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#33

Post by dang »

yholio wrote: post #15

No, enough with this nonsense. Capturing, liquefying and transforming CO2 into fuel requires energy - due to thermodynamic limits, much more energy than what the fuel can give back. You then take that fuel, and... burn it into 25% efficient engines that spew the very same CO2 back into the air, along with some new carcinogenic fumes and acid-rain inducing nitrogen oxides? No, just no, full stop. They way forward is e…

Please don't fulminate. That's in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because it tends to produce low-quality discussion which we're hoping to avoid here. I'm sure you can make your substantive points thoughtfully, so please do that instead.

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#34

Post by eightysixfour »

yholio wrote: post #15

No, enough with this nonsense. Capturing, liquefying and transforming CO2 into fuel requires energy - due to thermodynamic limits, much more energy than what the fuel can give back. You then take that fuel, and... burn it into 25% efficient engines that spew the very same CO2 back into the air, along with some new carcinogenic fumes and acid-rain inducing nitrogen oxides? No, just no, full stop. They way forward is e…

I was with you until no hydrogen. While it is inefficient in compared to batteries, as long as it is being produced with carbon-neutral energy then there are areas where its kWh/kg ratio and comparatively rapid refilling are extremely beneficial.

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#36

Post by mirekrusin »

We just need long pipe from Earth to Mars to pump out CO2 there. It has to be long in case it gets entangled with the Sun. The best is to fund it from crypto tokens. Winning Elon's XPrize should buy few km of McDonald's straws to kick it off.

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#37

Post by selimthegrim »

mirekrusin wrote: post #36

We just need long pipe from Earth to Mars to pump out CO2 there. It has to be long in case it gets entangled with the Sun. The best is to fund it from crypto tokens. Winning Elon's XPrize should buy few km of McDonald's straws to kick it off.

Hey, it could happen.

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#38

Post by [deleted] »

yholio wrote: post #15

No, enough with this nonsense. Capturing, liquefying and transforming CO2 into fuel requires energy - due to thermodynamic limits, much more energy than what the fuel can give back. You then take that fuel, and... burn it into 25% efficient engines that spew the very same CO2 back into the air, along with some new carcinogenic fumes and acid-rain inducing nitrogen oxides? No, just no, full stop. They way forward is e…

[deleted]

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#39

Post by [deleted] »

btilly wrote: post #18

This isn't the only team trying this. See https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/making-methane-m... for another team working on the same thing for the same purpose. It is worthy of note that the process that is described is exactly the one that Elon Musk was already planning to use on Mars. This is exactly why finding water on Mars is critical to his plans, and is also why Starship is designed to run on methane…

[deleted]

Re: Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to fuel

#40

Post by qw3rty01 »

whatever1 wrote: post #9

I like how in the media publications for carbon capturing they always forget to mention that these things need a ton of energy to run.

They do mention it, just not directly:

> Right now we have excess green energy that we just throw away. We can store this excess renewable energy in chemicals.

The idea is that it can be used to store excess energy from green sources

Post reply on HN