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Dude, where's my fuel?

prometheusfuels.com

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Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#21

Post by nyokodo »

_hypx wrote: post #20
johngalt wrote: post #3

Prometheus should be laser focused on being first to market in commercial quantities. There are people who want carbon neutral fuels today even if they are more expensive than fossil fuels. 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... The goal of $3/gallon is pushing Prometheus down the rabbit hole. Waiting for th…

The idea of synfuels, which is what this is, is not new. Many companies are pursuing this idea. Including Porsche: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/porsche-taking-stake-in-e-fu... There are two challenges to tackle here: First is to make it work at all, and second is to do it cheaper than what the competition can muster.

> There are two challenges to tackle

Both of which are covered in the article.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#22

Post by pedalpete »

neonate wrote: 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 today.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#23

Post by beachy »

sdkgjajggaf wrote: post #11

This page is completely unreadable due to the lagging custom scrolling they added. Just make a regular web page please.

These comments are irritating but so true. WTF! I waited for many seconds for the page to load, and now I have to wait 3 or 4 seconds every time I try and scroll.

Maybe this doesn't reflect on the company, but I feel if you can't even create a simple web page, then what the hell else are you going to struggle with along the journey?

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#24

Post by dredmorbius »

Dude, where's my web content?

(I'm ... if not a huge fan, desperately interested in seeing whether or not Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis is viable. Stumbling straight out of the gate with an impossible-to-read website is ... a very disappointing self-pwon.)

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#25

Post by beachy »

neonate wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#26

Post by Manuel_D »

10u152 wrote: post #19
Manuel_D wrote: post #8

This seems like a plan that's contingent on the moonshot of extremely cheap and scalable carbon capture. So far, effective carbon capture has remained elusive. "Carbon offsets" really means signing papers where a country says "we would have cut down this forest, but we won't now that you paid us." Actually taking carbon out of the atmosphere and burying it is the stuff of prototypes.

The Centre for climate and energy solutions say there are currently 26 commercial scale carbon capture facilities online and more in development. They're not talking about carbon offsets for the linked article, they're literally talking about using captured carbon to make fuel. Remember "Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good" https://www.c2es.org/content/carbon-capture/

Those examples aren't actually capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They're capturing carbon produced as a byproduct of industrial processes. There's a massive difference when you're already working with concentrated carbon dioxide and when you're trying to capture it from the atmosphere.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#28

Post by DennisP »

elil17 wrote: post #27

Can anyone explain to me why their DAC is so cheap?

From the article:

> The main energy cost is in getting the CO2 to release from the absorbent — to desorb. And that’s when things get really expensive, because this requires a lot of energy...we don’t make or need pure CO2 gas, so we don’t need to desorb it. Therefore, we avoid the vast majority of this cost. Instead, we capture CO2 in water and then use it in water to make fuel. ARPA-E refers to this as “reactive CO2 capture” and identifies it as a significantly lower-cost DAC approach.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#29

Post by rascul »

pedalpete wrote: post #22
neonate wrote: 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…

> Maybe it was ok in 1998

It wasn't.

Not sure if the screwed up scroll behavior was possible in 1998 but it wouldn't have been ok then either.

Re: Dude, where's my fuel?

#30

Post by db65edfc7996 »

johngalt wrote: post #3

Prometheus should be laser focused on being first to market in commercial quantities. There are people who want carbon neutral fuels today even if they are more expensive than fossil fuels. 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... The goal of $3/gallon is pushing Prometheus down the rabbit hole. Waiting for th…

One thing that is unclear to me - are there items that need to be replaced/regenerated? The article says the costs are mostly capital. If true, on a long enough timeline, are you not just looking at entirely operational costs (sourcing water + electricity)?
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