- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
The main reason why this process isn’t “something for nothing” is that it takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline. As Aircela told The Autopian:
Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.
Doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose of gasoline being used because it’s so energy dense? Like, this seems to suggest little more than the benefits of electrification in transport.
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so turn air into gasoline, burn the gasoline and replace the air with crap that is the burning product. So this is kind of a terraforming device that will make the planet inhabitable for us even faster if used widely and large scale enough.
many years ago there where bio reactors using algae to trap CO2 and later process those algae into fuel. does anybody know what happened to them?
just off my gut feeling, these should be more efficient. the algae does a big part of the steps basically for free. additionally, a chemical process to transform things sounds less energy costly, than smashing building blocks together yourself…
Ah, so it’s just a fairly compact way to make e-fuel. E-fuel will be really important going forwards for certain industries.
Doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose of gasoline being used because it’s so energy dense?
I think the idea would be to make it in a fixed place with grid power and then load up your plane or whatever. It sounds like they’re maybe marketing to consumers, which is weird, since not very many people would think it’s as cool as I do.
Assuming we never get more energy dense batteries, this would be one way to make air transport carbon neutral.
It’s far worse than batteries for cars, but batteries aren’t practical everywhere yet. Every bit helps.
This kind of technology will be used as an argument in people’s minds to still buy ice vehicles….
Doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose of gasoline being used because it’s so energy dense? Like, this seems to suggest little more than the benefits of electrification in transport.
It allows you to extend the use of gasoline vehicles into an electric future. Fueling gasoline vehicles for $1.50 a gallon is also a wonderful eff you to the oil companies (I’m sure it won’t be allowed to scale).
Maybe for industrial purposes, this makes sense, but losing half the energy to convert electricity to gas? You have a power line. You can charge an EV or lose 50% of your energy to produce a gallon of gas a day. I’m not really seeing parity here.
off-grid photovoltaic panels
Solar to gas, not grid to gas. Gasoline is easier to store and transport than batteries. There are places that batteries don’t make sense but still have lots of sun. I think this could be useful, and if it’s using CO2 from the atmosphere and solar power then it’s not contributing to global warming.
Sure, but if you’ve got 20 grand to spend on this contraption and already have solar, why not get a shitton of 48V server batteries?
Battery performance quickly degrades in cold conditions. In the Arctic circle, you could have lots of sun during the summer but it still wouldn’t make sense to deploy batteries. The people who live there are already dependent on gasoline.
Humans in 80,000 BCE:
“We have to do something about this global warming”
“I know, let’s scrub the air of methane and CO2 and store it deep underground! Then we’ll never have to worry about global warming ever again!”
Strategies like this allow you store excess energy at low demand periods (mid day) from sunlight for a time of day when there is peak demand (evening), but no sunlight. Effectively, it functions as a battery. The advantage of this technology is that it is immediately compatible with an ice vehicle or generator at the locality.
Well, it won’t be cheap. So you could also store it in batteries (for example the ones already in the car) with much better efficiency.
I’m assuming we can say this is carbon neutral, since the only carbon is being pulled out of the atmosphere in the first place, but it’s still combustion, and carbon isn’t the only concern there.
plastoline flashbacks. assuming this is viable, the drillers wouldn’t like such a thing.
In addition to the other comments about how it’s still not bad for efficiency, I’d like to point out the potential political and environmental benefits if we’re still using oil anyway. Oil drilling has a huge negative impact on the environment. Oil spills, pipeline leaks, and the extraction itself can devastate ecosystems. I understand that electronic components in general are bad to produce, but this may allow for minimizing at least one avenue of environmental damage and exploitation. Additionally, oil is a huge part of international politics. Not needing to rely on oil rich nations would relieve some complications regarding international affairs. I don’t know what scaling this looks like, but even if it had a worse conversion rate, it’s still of interest for those reasons. Of course, all of that supposing we cannot switch to an entirely oil free society in the interim.
I do wonder how the removal of water and carbon dioxide from the air will affect local areas though. I imagine more research needs to be done on that.
I mean, removing CO2 from the air is not a bad thing at this stage of global warming. It shouldn’t harm any ecosystem short of like… somehow building gigawatt factories in the middle of the jungle, which would be its own environmental disaster. Removing water … ehh, would just have to locate a big plant somewhere that isn’t struggling for moisture.
Yeah, I was figuring similarly, but still. I’ve seen enough “harmless” “local” environmental changes spiral to know that at least some thought is warranted about it. I absolutely did not mean to suggest it would be harmful, just that I don’t know enough about it and would hope that somebody knowledgeable looks into it before they recommend scaling.
Oh absolutely. I would never feel comfortable about any such projects unless several and different scientific institutions signed off on it being low to zero (or hopefully positive) impact.
You’re not generally going to have a problem with CO2 removal locally. We’re making enough of it that the trees won’t die.
Water vapour, on the other hand … that could be an environmental stressor depending on siting. Still, unless installing at scale, output of a gallon a day doesn’t seem like it’s going to do much to the local environment.
Yeah, I was figuring similarly, but still. I’ve seen enough “harmless” “local” environmental changes spiral to know that at least some thought is warranted about it. I absolutely did not mean to suggest it would be harmful, just that I don’t know enough about it and would hope that somebody knowledgeable looks into it before they recommend scaling.
