Posted on 06/15/2025 3:13:04 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Potassium hydroxide captures CO2 from the air forming potassium carbonate. Use of the carbonate (at the cost of input energy) regenerates the potassium hydroxide.
Because air is only about 400 ppms CO2, one has to go through a lot of air to consume enough CO2 to generate a gallon of gasoline - at the cost, of course, of a tremendous amount of energy, equal to no less, and actually substantially more, than the combustion energy of the eventually resulting gallon of gas, of many megajoules.
The article is legit, in that this is possible to do, but highly misleading, in failing to convey just how energy intensive the process is. (Which misleadingness is typical of climate change articles.)
Basically, the same concept as what NASA has already proposed for making fuel from Martian air. It requires an energy source, however.
SOUNDS LIKE ONE OF THE ads in the back of pulp magazines 60 years on how to make your own fuel. Next to the adds for the Hollow Earth and LOST CONTINENT OF MU books, near the Charles ATLAS books and other “snake oil” ads.
One item guaranteed to save half of your gasoline! Then the super carburator that saved you lots of gas with magic metallic pills to save even more gas!
One man said he bought and installed these items a THEY WORKED! Problem was he had to stop every few miles to drain gas out of it’s tank to keep it from overflowing the gas tank!
There is no way to convert methanol into a mixture of C7-C9 hydrocarbons (gasoline). The level of ignorance among general population about all things chemical is astonishing. No pity for Aircel investors.
With all the gizmos that increase your mileage by 30% on your car you would be generating gas as you drive.
Maybe they sold a giant gas tank to hold it all.
You too are missing the point, these types of systems turn electrons that would be lost into a liquid form that stores at room temp,in plastic tanks.
What matters is can you get cheap enough electrons to make a gallon for close to the retail level consumer price.
Basic math shows that to make a kg of H2 takes 52 kWh in modern electrolysis machines all in pumping included. At 1 cent per kWh that’s 52 cents per kg in energy cost for the h2.
1kg of H2 when combined with CO2 will yield 5.35kg of methanol when balancing the molar mass equations.
Methanol masses at 6.63lb/gal or 3.007kg per gallon. So one kg of H2 makes 1.77 gallons of methanol.
MTG catalysts yield 440kg of hydrocarbons from 1000kg by mass of methanol with 90% of that being gasoline and the rest is propane.
So if it cost you 52 cents per kg that’s 52000 cents per tonne = $520
440 less ten percent is 396kg
Gasoline is 6.073 pounds per gallon at 59°F or 2.7kg per gallon.
So MTG yields 146.6 gallons per tonne of methanol feed into it.
At $10 per megawatt hour that is $3.54 per gallon in energy costs alone.
But you also got 44kg of propane too one gallon of propane is 4.2lbs or 1.9kg so you also can sell 23.15 gallons of propane which at TSC down the road today is. $3.99 per gallon.
Propane could make sense gasoline in the U.S.market not so much. In the EU where gasoline is $7 to $9 per US gallon equivalent to liters pricing if you could get off peak or curtailment power yeah money to be made it comes down to capex per gallon capacity on this machine and how much is O&M per gallon.
Of course if you have access to $5 per megawatt hour which solar can do at the farm edge then interesting things can happen cut the above prices in half for the energy cost.
Commercial panels of the 750 watt size can be had for $450 retail, wholesale is one quarter that cost. But since this is a small machine lets say a home owner wants one.
$450 is 60 cents per watt of panel capacity. In a panel with a 25 year warranty to 80% capacity. West Texas , New Mexico , Arizona all have PVOUT Kwp of 5-5.6kwp that means on a yearly basis including clouds ,rain, nighttime all in over a 30 year average of weather data a kwp of 5 is 3.75kWh per day per panel over 365 days so that panel is going to make 1,368kWh per year it’s first year and by the 25th year it is warrantied to make at least 80% of that. For simplicity sake I’ll use half the degradation so 10% loss from day one till year 25. That’s 1231 kWh per year and over 25 years is 30,796.875 kWh from a single $450 panel.
$450/30,796.875=0.0146118721 that’s 1.46 cents per kWh
Not to shabby for a $450 investment.
I can get that same panel for 14 cents per watt of capacity or $105 delivered by the pallet load.
$105/30796= 0.0034094368
Over the same period my cost per kWh is 0.345 cents or $3.45 per megawatt hour.
At $3.45/MWh a tonne of methanol feed is $177 per tonne in energy from that you get
146 gallons gasoline and 23 gallons propane. That works out to an average of $1.04 for each gallon of either product. Now that is interesting that gives plenty of room for capex and O&M to the retail level consumer price, even more so in Europe.
$3.45 is higher than a large commercial farm they could get those same panels by the rail car load for under 10 cents per watt in quantities of ten thousand panels or more.
^^^^^^ This is why exergy doesn’t matter one but when you can get into the sub $3 per megawatt hour for electrons you can throw away a lot of electrons or just run your process when those electrons are there and idle in the mean time pick a location with PVOUT above 4 and laugh all the way to the bank.
The critical cost seems to be the hardware to do this.
How much does the hardware cost per gallon of fuel amortized over the lifetime of the plant?
lightning bugs?
My uncle invented a carburetor that ran his truck on dirt. He drove his dump truck on it for years and barely used a yard. Then some big corporation stole it from him
“There is no way to convert methanol into a mixture of C7-C9 hydrocarbons (gasoline). The level of ignorance among general population about all things chemical is astonishing. No pity for Aircel investors.”
What are you insane? Put the pipe down.
Exxon Mobil no less has been using ZSM-5 zeolite catalyst to do industrial million plus bbl per year MTG since the 1980s. The Chinese, Qatar and Louisiana all use them to turn methanol and DME into pure gasoline 95+ octane at that and propane. Ask Google to show you MTG at scale they don’t just look like oil refineries they are refineries. This is a mini version of the process. The ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts form care where the methanol feed comes from. You can use any syngas to make methanol it can come from coal gasification, steam methane reforming, water gas shift from CO2 and hydrogen from electrolysis, steam gasification of wastes, plasma gasification of wastes too.
‘ My uncle invented a carburetor that ran his truck on dirt. He drove his dump truck on it for years and barely used a yard. Then some big corporation stole it from him’
Sounds legit.
Holy crap, I haven’t seen a woman so far out of whack on thr matrix ... like, EVER.
“The critical cost seems to be the hardware to do this.
How much does the hardware cost per gallon of fuel amortized over the lifetime of the plant?”
That is exactly my point in two of my posts. The capex and O&M is the critical piece of this puzzle. Exxon Mobil does this process commercially at scale with methanol from syngas , sourced from coal gasification or natural gas. But any syngas can be used to make methanol as long as it has the correct CO/H2 ratio.
With panels so low in cost for wholesale and commercial sized projects energy simply is not a factor anymore. As long as your capex is low enough to tolerate the idle times when the sun is down , add in wind and you can balance that load factor. In windy and sunny West Texas ypu can get into the 70% capacity factors with both sources. It’s windy when the sun is down a lot of the time especially when it’s stormy. It comes down to can you get that capex and O&M down enough to use the ultra cheap intermittent electrons.
This makes the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen seem positively cheap in comparison. What is the plan for supplying the enormous amount of electricity reliably and at the best cost/benefit ratio that can be derived from scale?
Nuclear-generated electricity is going to have to be put on-line with all deliberate alacrity. And if we have that, probably don’t need gasoline all that much.
I think Musk is doing this at his desalination plant near his space port in texas. he uses the methanol to power his rockets.
the real question in this stuff is the cost.
how much does the gasoline cost?
"we have so much wind and solar...I have seen negative $15 in the middle of the night." Yes, sure, math expert. It's all the electricity coming from those solar power in the middle of the night. You might want to re-think how much solar power those stars are generating even if, as the song goes, "the stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas".
You might be able to convince some people, but I'll just laugh at you about that excess of solar power at night. Meanwhile if I end up sweltering this summer like I did a few years ago, I'll re-visit the idea of a natural gas generator.
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