Germany cleantech company Sunfire GmbH may have found a future replacement for fossil fuels, having developed a rig that can transform water into a synthetic fuel source. (Photo : Creative Commons)
Posted on 11/19/2014 7:01:19 PM PST by ckilmer
By John Nassivera | Nov 19, 2014 01:48 PM EST
Germany cleantech company Sunfire GmbH may have found a future replacement for fossil fuels, having developed a rig that can transform water into a synthetic fuel source.
The rig accomplishes this through "Power-to-liquid" technology, which converts water and carbon dioxide (CO2) into liquid hydrocarbons to be used as synthetic petroleum, kerosene and diesel, according to CNET.
Solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs) play a role in the process, converting energy supplied by wind, solar and other renewable resources into steam. Hydrogen is produced by removing oxygen from the steam, and is then used to produce CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO). The rig then synthesizes the resultant H2 and CO into high-purity fuel.
Sunfire had to make use of the Fischer-Tropsch process, a technique for producing liquid hydrocarbons developed in 1925, in order to get the results it needed, Yahoo! News reported.
The rig is able to recycle 3.2 tonnes of CO2 each day and produces one barrel of fuel each day. The machine currently serves for demonstration and feasibility uses.
Sunfire, which had to spend "seven figures" to design and build the rig, says the process is able to achieve an efficiency rate of 70 percent by using excess heat to create more steam, CNET reported.
Christian von Olshausen, CTO of Sunfire, said the company now has to focus on "regulatory factors falling into place in a way which gives investors a sufficient level of planning reliability."
"Once that has occurred it will be possible to commence the step-by-step substitution of fossil fuels," von Olshausen added. "If we want to achieve fuel economy in the long term, we need to get started today.
Ping
This is Hugh!
*why does it smell like BS?*
How many years (decades) will it take for this “perpetual motion machine” to come to fruition?
Cue Hyde.
That’s great. First we use food for fuel, now we’ll use water. Do people think we have an unlimited water supply?
Good point. We can only convert to low-flush toilets once.
No, it’s entirely feasible, it’s just that it probably requires about 5 times as much energy input as it produces. What sounds ridiculous is the claim of 70% efficiency. The “water gas” reaction (with carbon monoxide and steam) has of course been known for many many decades and Fischer Tropsch since the 20’s.
It takes a lot of energy to take either water or carbon dioxide apart and F-T requires something like 60+ atmospheres of pressure.
If the reaction heat from a nuclear reactor could be used to boil the water and produce the energy inputs for the F-T part, more and more of this becomes feasible.
It takes more energy to split H2O than it yields.
crap...now what I am going to do with these little green pills ?
The process is not BS. What is BS is that they are going to get solar or wind power to provide enough energy to make the the conversion. A better way to do it is to use coal rather than water and CO2.
In fact this process was used by the Germans to make synthetic fuel in WW2. They used coal to provide the electricity to convert coal into synthetic fuel. By mid 1944 nearly 50% of all the fuels used by the German military were made this way.
It is VERY energy consumptive however and you don’t get nearly as much energy out as you put in.
Rather than the silly solar or wind power something like a pebble bed reactor would be a better way to get the power required to do the conversion.
Actually, we do have a virtually unlimited water supply. Most of the earth is covered with the stuff, and it is part of a constantly-renewed hydrological cycle.
Wind?
Solar?
Why not power this process by those new fusion reactors that Lockheed just invented??????
Coal is not CO2
Yeah pretty much.
How many gallons of water are there in the world, anyway?
If it can use salt water the supply is essentially limitless. Fresh water is the type we have a severe limitation on. How much of that do we use for fracturing gas and oil wells?
If it is truly 70% efficient then this is huge news. Converting energy, water and carbon dioxide isn't new technology. Just being able to do it efficiently has been the problem.
Either this or a similar process has been discussed for making jet fuel on aircraft carriers. While the cost may seem expensive, the cost difference appears to go down when the cost of shipping additional jet fuel on a separate AOE (fuel and munitions fleet auxiliary) is taken into account.
Valence bonds are just a silly thing.....
That’s nothing new. Jethro Bodine did this nearly fifty years ago.
I say thumbs down.
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