"Go to England and see if they can produce votes from air."
Posted on 10/20/2012 1:31:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A British firm has produced the first 'petrol from air', it emerged today - in a pioneering scientific breakthrough that could end mankind's reliance on declining fossil fuels.
Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside, claims to have made five litres of petrol since August using a small refinery that synthesises the fuel from carbon dioxide and water vapour.
Experts have hailed the incredible breakthrough as a potential 'game-changer' in the battle against climate change and solution to the globe's escalating energy crisis.
While the company is still developing their process and still need to take electricity from the national grid, it believes it will eventually be possible to power the synthesis entirely from renewable sources.
Within two years it hopes to build a commercial-scale plant capable of making a ton of petrol a day and expand into producing green aviation fuel to make airline travel more eco-friendly.
The technology involves mixing air with sodium hydroxide, then electrolysing the resultant sodium carbonate to release pure carbon dioxide...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Not necessarily, because making an electric car that is as convenient, with the same performance and range, as a regular car is not going to be simple, might not even be possible any time soon.
US Department of Energy will send a grant of $150 billion!
IIRC, we’re about 10 years away from an “impulse” engine for space travel, a cure for cancer and diabetes, computers inside eyeglasses and talking dogs. What’s battery life compared to those? LOL
They’re only going to use free range flies that have had a long life and have died of natural causes. Yes, they will have a moment of silence before their little wings are pulled off. With respect too! With respect.
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again!
Simple thermodynamics and conservation of energy will demonstrate the fallacy of the claim.
CO2 and water are the products of combustion of hydrocarbons. The reason that energy is released when hydrocarbons are burned is that the energy contents (heats of formation) of CO2 and water are lower than the energy content of the hydrocarbon fuel. To go back in the other direction, you have to put all of that energy back in.
So, where does the energy come from? The article says they are currently using electricity. I believe the thermal efficiency of generating electricity in a hydrocarbon-fueled power plant, and delivering it through transmission lines, is about 35%. The rest of the heat gets released to atmosphere in low level heat which is not useful for generating electricity. In other words, if you had a 100% efficient process of converting CO2 and water to hydrocarbon (an impossibility), you would still have to burn almost three times as much hydrocarbon to make the required electricity.
The article also says that later they anticipate the electricity can be produced from renewable fuels. But the efficiency of generating the electricity will not be improved by doing this.
God invented a process to naturally make hydrocarbons from CO2 and water. It’s called photosynthesis. If someone can find a way of mimicking that process to make useful fuel, they might have something.
I already have one of their perpetual motion machines. Been powering my house and my car for years...
Pointless over-selling of a marginally useful technology: isolated outposts with plenty of wind or sun could use this to avoid the need to bring motor fuel in from afar. Other than that, until frackable oil and natural gas are used up in a millenium or so, this isn’t very interesting (and if the Russian theory of non-fossil petroleum formation turns out to be wrong never will be except for the use I just proposed).
Simple answer: Quite a bit more energy goes in than comes out. However, the energy that comes out is in the form of a convenient liquid fuel, whereas the energy that goes in is electrical. So, if liquid fuel is scarce and electricity (from nuclear, solar, wind, etc.) is plentiful, this process is potentially useful. But my bet is fossil liquid needs to get a lot scarcer and non-fossil electricity a lot more plentiful in order for this process to be economically viable.
From the company website:
The AFS Process - turning air into a sustainable fuel
i) Air is blown up into a tower and meets a mist of a sodium hydroxide solution. The carbon dioxide in the air is absorbed by reaction with some of the sodium hydroxide to form sodium carbonate. Whilst there are advances in CO2 capture technology, sodium hydroxide has been chosen as it is proven and market ready.
ii) The sodium hydroxide/carbonate solution that results from Step 1 is pumped into an electrolysis cell through which an electric current is passed. The electricity results in the release of the carbon dioxide which is collected and stored for subsequent reaction.
iii) Optionally, a dehumidifier condenses the water out of the air that is being passed into the sodium hydroxide spray tower. The condensed water is passed into an electrolyser where an electric current splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Water might be obtained from any source so long as it is or can be made pure enough to be placed in the electrolyser.
iv) The carbon dioxide and hydrogen are reacted together to make a hydrocarbon mixture, the reaction conditions being varied depending on the type of fuel that is required.
v) There are a number of reaction paths already in existence and well known in industrial chemistry that may be used to make the fuels.
(1) Thus a reverse-water-gas shift reaction may be used to convert a carbon dioxide/water mixture to a carbon monoxide/hydrogen mixture called Syn Gas. The Syn Gas mixture can then be further reacted to form the desired fuels using the Fisher-Tropsch (FT) reaction.
(2) Alternatively, the Syn Gas may be reacted to form methanol and the methanol used to make fuels via the Mobil methanol-to gasoline reaction (MTG).
(3) For the future, it is highly likely that reactions can be developed whereby carbon dioxide and hydrogen can be directly reacted to fuels.
vi) The AFD product will require the addition of the same additives used in current fuels to ease starting, burn cleanly and avoid corrosion problems, to turn the raw fuel into a full marketable product. However as a product it can be blended directly with gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.
No, one can use energy from a nuclear power plant or even windmills or solar panels. (So this process gives a way to power your gasoline burning car with nuclear energy.)
LOL.....yeah, right
I am rolling
Even coal gasification would be less energy intense, wouldn’t it?
Another BS Ormus scam....
If the Federal Reserve can conjure up money out of thin air why not this? Imma believer!
At 34.8 megajoules/liter, that is the energy equivalent of 48.33 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
While the company is still developing their process and still need to take electricity from the national grid,
How much electricity? Even if less than 100% efficient, this would be good for converting energy into a portable, storable form if you have power plants like nuclear ones which run best at 100% all the time. Dump the excess energy at night into producing gasoline.
Only if every joule of energy produced out of thin air reduces the brightness of every light bulb in the country. Back when my grandfather was a kid they used to be able to light the entire room with a 5-watt bulb. Now it takes 100 watts to do the same thing.
(20-1 loss was picked because that's what the Fed has done to the dollar in 100 years.)
Drive across the country, from Portland Maine to Portland Oregon. You will see big long stretches of cornfields, and forests, and then as you cross rivers, and pass dozens of small towns, day after day, the fields turn into range, and mountains, where you see cattle and antelope, together out in the sage brush.
No one has any idea of what it is like until they personally drive across country, and get some small idea of just how Huge these United States are. Start out in Iowa in the morning, and plow across Nebraska, hour after hour, and you won't see Wyoming until dusk. Utah and Idaho are still hours away.
Gasoline, until The Great Liar, was relatively cheap, and easily found. Only a Marxist would trash the oil industry and smugly explain that it was for your own good.
:) !!!!
Oh! But the article answered that concern.
While the company is still developing their process and still need to take electricity from the national grid, it believes it will eventually be possible to power the synthesis entirely from renewable sources.
You see, windmills and solar panels don't need to be manufactured [in messy factories hidden away in China.] Unicorns poop them.
It's all basically free.
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