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Dude, where's my fuel?

prometheusfuels.com

111–120 of 191 posts

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#111
post #16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capture that entire market with v1 of the process even if it's $10/gallon. Take everything learned to make v2 at $7/gallon and v3 at $5/gallon etc... Due to Russian oil drying up volatile high prices globally will be the norm until technology like this comes into play and at least puts a ceiling on the price. So, the real question is how quickly and how cheaply can they reach 4 million barrels per day of production…

And if Peter Zeihan is right, the loss of Russian exports is just the beginning of oil supply disruption over the next decade.

If I read just one book of this author, which should I read? Or if not a book, which podcast/video? Thank you.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#112
post #56

This is neat and all (sincerely!), but what we really need much more of than this, and fast, is bulk anhydrous ammonia synthesis. It takes a lot less energy to produce ammonia, ammonia burns where natural gas is used today, and many places burning oil (such as ships and trains) can switch to ammonia with only tankage and plumbing retrofit. Burning electrically-synthesized ammonia displaces entirely as much fossil CO2…

How do you burn it without releasing a lot of nitrogen oxides? I realize the main reaction id 4 NH3 + 3 O2 -> 2 N2 + 6 H2O but there must be a lot of trace sideproducts, no?

edit: By using excess ammonia, you reduce nitrogen oxides with a mechanism similar to AdBlue in diesel engines.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#113
Website text size seems to be based on window width, doesn't resize when I zoom out, I'm zooming out because I don't want to read your website as if I'm trying to read a war memorial from 1ft. I shouldn't have to resize my window to read comfortably.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#114

This all sounds amazing but it also gives me Theranos vibes. While I understand the general science around this has been around a long time (the aforementioned Fischer Tropsch process) I would love for this to get some independent scientific validation before I'm willing to buy in to their dream here. It just "feels" too good to be true. Even with the Faraday Reactor considerations Seems much more scientifically plau…

Relevant thread - question asked by Ramez Naam on the feasibility of Prometheus: https://twitter.com/ramez/status/1516199169911713794?s=21&t=...

> Bluntly? They are a running joke among anybody that has been around the renewable fuels space for longer than a couple years.

> There are no shortcuts around the physics required to assemble a molecule.

So the process is viable, but the cost is prohibitive?

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#115
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've ever seen a web site where the content was so interesting, but the presentation was so piss poor that the bulk of visitors likely leave without having even read any of this cool stuff. For the love of god, throw your web site away and start again with some simple, static HTML pages.

I'd second this, just tried loading it on a tablet and gave up on the load screen. It was 50/50 I'd read the comments but I'm glad I did now. Please please, for goodness sake, put a quick loading static page front and center quick! This stuff is too important and too cool to be lost to same hokey web design.

I lasted about ten seconds. Worst website I browsed in an age...

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#116
post #14

[Since a lot of people can't read the article and the format is annoying enough that even archive services haven't captured it, here's the text.] As you know, Prometheus converts renewable electricity from solar and wind power into zero net carbon gasoline, diesel, and jet e-fuels (short for “electro-fuels”) that compete with fossil fuels on price. What some readers may not know is that the process we use to do this…

Thank you for copy and pasting this. They need to fire their designer right away. There is absolutely no reason for me to wait 10+ seconds for their website to load text data. WTAF are they thinking? It may seem like a small thing, but it is an important detail, and it makes me question if the company is snake oil or not. It doesn't appear very professional to take this approach. Maybe it was ok in 1998, but not toda…

That’s a dev problem…

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#118

Oh I see, their lander is mining Bitcoins with my browser to subsidize the product. /s Seriously, that page took 10s to load, pegged my laptop CPU and got the fans spinning. WTF?

The blog seems to be poorly optimized, but if you go to their home page you will see where all that power is going. Really amazing TBH.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#119
Their website is so obnoxious (why the hell do people think that scrolling text needs "inertia", so it keeps going after you stop twiddling the scroll wheel?) than I would never use their product.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#120
post #63
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burried in the long post (as copied in the thread), it sounds like they are starting to move something to production, which they say will enable enough fuel to do demos and what not. Depending on what exactly that means when it happens, maybe they can start selling $10/gallon gasoline somewhere. If it's a turnkey fuel production device, I'm sure there's a market for hook up electricity in remote location and get a ta…

Tractor fuel produced at the foot of a wind turbine in the middle of a farmer's field, that doesn't need to be transported from a refinery, would have immediate value. Fences made of double-sided solar panels mounted a bit more than tractor-width apart, running N-S, coexist nicely with row crops, and cut water loss, improve conversion efficiency (via evaporative cooling), and often increase yield besides (via reduced…

> doesn't need to be transported from a refinery

Given how much cutting edge process chemistry is involved in this fuel manufacture, it will be a long time before it's available in small units, which will of course be more capital-intensive and less efficient than large units because that's how scaling works.

It's far more likely this fuel will end up simply co-mingled with the global market and shipped all over the world from a few sites which are good for generation but not for direct consumption.

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