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Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

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Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#41

Post by [deleted] »

teekert wrote: post #27
theshrike79 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current synthetic fuels cost around 10€/litre, which comes to around $37/gallon. Not really viable for day to day use yet.

I live in the Netherlands and we're almost there! ;) No not really but, when it peaked I saw 2.40 eur/litre (9.71$/gallon, now down to 1.80 eur/litre) in places... Of course, much of that is taxes, but hey, this stuff would receive a lot of subsidies. Fwiw, I once (4 years ago or so?) spoke to someone from an ICE conference (a parallel conference to my breast cancer conference) who explained that ICE's can be made 10…

[deleted]

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#42

Post by itsoktocry »

YesThatTom2 wrote: post #10

I’m confused. This sounds like a good thing if the problem was an oil shortage, not CO2 pollution. Explain why they aren’t solving the wrong problem?

Maybe we have more than one problem that needs solving?

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#43

Post by PaulHoule »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #31
PaulHoule wrote: post #7

There is no surprise that synthetic fuels work. They worked for the nazis in the 1940s and they still produce them in South Africa, Qatar and other places. In fact in a lot of ways they are better than today’s gasolines because they have a low aromatic and olefin content. The question revolve around affordability and sustainability. Most of the interest was driven by fears we would be running out of oil, now it is dr…

Yes, and: the question revolves around total financial and material capital needed to transition away from fossil fuels. Synthetic fuels are potentially valuable because they allow existing capital assets (internal combustion engines and the industry that produces them, fuel distribution infrastructure) to continue to be used. I am glad to see research into them continue- it's difficult to predict what will scale wel…

The Fischer-Trospch process has a stupendously high capital cost because, even though cheap catalysts work, chemical reactions that build up larger molecules (that can proceed explosively under some conditions) compete with chemical reactions that break molecules down and have to be balanced on a knife edge to get hydrocarbons of the right length.

For any normal industrial process people would be really delighted that they could use iron as a catalyst but the economics of FT are so bad they've scoured the periodic table for something better and not had much improvement.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#44

Post by fulafel »

kuschku wrote: post #15

> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline. > Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents. So why are we doing this again?

A major problem with cars that they're very sticky because of the cost structure you're used to: expensive to buy but cheap to drive per km. Once you join the car club it's got you. This drives people to do all their transportation in cars once they have made the big investment in the the expensive car that has low marginal costs.

ICE cars running on renewable but more expensive fuel would provide a good option to the expensive EVs as we ramp down fossil fuels.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#45

Post by replygirl »

kuschku wrote: post #15

> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline. > Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents. So why are we doing this again?

efficiency only matters to offset the impacts of dirty methods of energy capture or storage

it's believed we can have cars and equipment on synthetic fuels producing waaay lower lifetime emissions than equivalent battery electric vehicles

when that's the case, it has potential to reduce the scope of the mobile emissions problem to a degree where we can focus almost exclusively on cleaner centralized energy capture, for which the most difficult engineering has already been done, and storage, which needs more attention and investment either way

it would also allow for a quicker transition away from fossil, by giving people a more affordable transition option (or free, if cars don't need conversion) vs. buying electric, and by using more of the energy infrastructure that's already in place

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#46

Post by thinkcontext »

firecall wrote: post #34
marcus0x62 wrote: post #21

1) How much of this fuel could be made at scale — how much of the type of agricultural waste they use is available worldwide? 2) Petrol is great for passenger cars, but the world runs on diesel and fuels that are more or less equivalent to diesel, like Jet-1A. Can they make that?

You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil!

Not as useful as one would hope. The world produces 20M tons of vegetable oil vs 4B tons of petroleum.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#47

Post by kuschku »

adql wrote: post #22
kuschku wrote: post #15

> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline. > Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents. So why are we doing this again?

Alternative for cases where electrification is hard (long haul trucks) or impossible (cargo hauling via planes)

Those are reasonable use cases, but: - those are entirely different types of engines - which are already able to use ethanol today - and none of which mazda is even producing engines for

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#48

Post by krona »

mrtksn wrote: post #35
PaulHoule wrote: post #7

There is no surprise that synthetic fuels work. They worked for the nazis in the 1940s and they still produce them in South Africa, Qatar and other places. In fact in a lot of ways they are better than today’s gasolines because they have a low aromatic and olefin content. The question revolve around affordability and sustainability. Most of the interest was driven by fears we would be running out of oil, now it is dr…

Well, it's kind of obvious that the supplies of oil aren't infinite, isn't it? Is there even a theory that the oil is infinite? The peak oil is about timing and and cost, maybe it didn't happen according to the predictions but it will definitely happen. Besides the environmental concerns it also seems wasteful to burn away the stuff that is used for so many more things. The synthetic stuff is interesting because it m…

> Is there even a theory that the oil is infinite?

Not quite infinite, but renewable: https://edu.rsc.org/news/treasure-from-the-earths-mantle/202...

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#49

Post by marcus0x62 »

pfdietz wrote: post #33
marcus0x62 wrote: post #21

1) How much of this fuel could be made at scale — how much of the type of agricultural waste they use is available worldwide? 2) Petrol is great for passenger cars, but the world runs on diesel and fuels that are more or less equivalent to diesel, like Jet-1A. Can they make that?

Companies have made drop-in compatible jet fuel from biomass. https://www.virent.com/

Does that work with the process described in the article, can it be done at scale, how much does it cost? While I hear about a couple of these breakthrough alternate fuels a year, I’ve yet to see a single one that doesn’t fall down on at least one of those areas. The first one isn’t a deal-killer — you could have an alternate fuel product for petrol and a different one for fuel oils, but if they can’t be made economically at scale, these technologies are useless for all but niche purposes.

Re: Mazda has tested a synthetic fuel in an unmodified MX5 on a 1000-mile road trip

#50

Post by kuschku »

theshrike79 wrote: post #23
kuschku wrote: post #15

> it’s safe to assume that it’ll likely charge a hefty premium over traditional gasoline. > Also worth noting is that while, yes, this synthetic fuel appears to make vehicles slightly more efficient, it still greatly trails the efficiency of EVs. Consequently, vehicles using this fuel will likely always be more expensive to drive per mile than their electric equivalents. So why are we doing this again?

There is a dream that synthetic fuels or hydrogen will suddenly get their own Elon Musk who will drive down the wholesale price to a viable level. But in the end (25 years+) I think synthetics will be used for hobbyists to run their vintage vehicles on track days and weekends.

That's actually an interesting use case, vintage vehicles, old diesel trucks used near radio telescopes, etc. That said, I doubt that market would be large enough for the amount of money currently being invested in it.
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