New Machine Produces Usable Gasoline from Air...

[Josh128]

This is quite an awesome concept-- takes CO2 and air and produces up to 1 gallon of gasoline a day. Runs on solar power. Not sure what you can run off of 1 gall/day, but if larger ones could be built that were powered by wind or hydro that could actually produce usable amounts, that would be pretty awesome. Would be net zero CO2 released into the atmosphere if you burned that gasoline.

Press Kit - Fast Facts

Fast Facts

sites.google.com

 

[dullard]

I wish them luck, but they have not yet released the two most critical details: price of the machine and amount of solar power used. Without that information, it is impossible to know if this is a viable option or not.

As it is, remove the Aircela and that is exactly how I power my vehicle. Solar Panels -> Inverter -> Car. All without carbon produced. So, this Aircela needs to have something of value that it adds beyond what we can already easily do. So far all I see is something that looks quite expensive.

Heck, in their NYC demo, the cost of the real estate to store that device probably is roughly $20k. At $3.50/gallon, that thing would take over 15 years to pay off the real estate cost alone -- not including the cost of the machine.

 

[William Gaatjes]

It is possible since gasoline which is just a fluid made from hydrocarbons, and these hydrocarbons are made from hydrogen and carbon atoms in a specific order. Catch CO2 (1 carbon atom and two oxygen atoms) out the air and watervapour (2 hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom) and it is a go.
Since it is all solarpowered, efficiency is less of a problem. We get free solarenergy anyways.

But OPEC will never allow this on a grand scale, if the patent is not owned by one of the big oil companies, cartels. Just think about all the initiatives that came alive during the 1973-1974 oil crisis.

As a small sidenote :
What humans consume is called carbohydrates and are comprised of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen atoms.

 

[crashtech]

The novelty of creating gasoline of of thin air aside, this tech may actually help address the elephant in the room in re solar, which is the difficulty of deploying bulk energy storage for excess daytime solar capacity. Using this tech to produce methane instead might eventually be a good way to effectively make large solar installations into baseload generation plants, solar by day, but burning in situ generated, carbon-neutral methane by night.

 

[lxskllr]

Doesn't have to solve every problem, and be a magic dropin replacement for everything. Every gallon pulled from air is a gallon not taken out of the ground. That said, cost is important. For my own purposes, 1G/day would more than cover all my small engine needs, and if it's quality fuel, I could sell excess to other small engine users. No corn is a HUGE benefit.

 

[Josh128]

The novelty of creating gasoline of of thin air aside, this tech may actually help address the elephant in the room in re solar, which is the difficulty of deploying bulk energy storage for excess daytime solar capacity. Using this tech to produce methane instead might eventually be a good way to effectively make large solar installations into baseload generation plants, solar by day, but burning in situ generated, carbon-neutral methane by night.

Very good point. No need for massive, dirty storage batteries when the energy can just be stored in tanks and easily consumed or transported.

 

[William Gaatjes]

The novelty of creating gasoline of of thin air aside, this tech may actually help address the elephant in the room in re solar, which is the difficulty of deploying bulk energy storage for excess daytime solar capacity. Using this tech to produce methane instead might eventually be a good way to effectively make large solar installations into baseload generation plants, solar by day, but burning in situ generated, carbon-neutral methane by night.

This on a grand scale , like say a football field scale and lots of it would definitely help offset the carbon footprint generated by oil production companies. Which seem to be 33% of global carbon footprint.

Oil production companies often flair off(Burning with huge flames, building high flames) excess methane gas in open air with the excuse that it is a safety feature. That is a huge carbon footprint right there.

My opinion is that they do this flaring to burn of the methanogens and methanotrophs, the bacteria that convert dead carbon rich (plant) matter into oil and oil into gas in the first place in those huge gas and oil fields for millions of years non stop.
And convert methane into CO2 as a life cycle.

These bacteria can live without sunlight or oxygen. That is what makes them special and probably came with a comet out of space, landing on Earth.

 

[dullard]

The novelty of creating gasoline of of thin air aside, this tech may actually help address the elephant in the room in re solar, which is the difficulty of deploying bulk energy storage for excess daytime solar capacity.

Solar can be stored in numerous ways. The most common options are:

• Batteries which are self-explanatory. Pretty simple to use. Infinitely and cheaply recyclable when they reach their lifespan after 10+ years. But, quite expensive to build that first battery.
• Heat: use solar to heat an object then use the heat to produce energy whenever you want. There is hot sand, hot salt, or just store the extra energy in your water heater (which is actually how much of the world uses solar).
• Potential energy. Often you can move something high and then let gravity lower it producing energy whenever you want. Or there is the age-old flywheel method. Use the solar to spin a flywheel and then slow the flywheel down when you want to use more energy.

The real question is can this do it any more efficiently than the options above.

The average family in the US uses about 2 gallons of gasoline per day. Thus, on ideal days, they'd need 2 of these machines. But, solar isn't flawless. You get days without much solar production. They average about half power over the whole lifespan vs their best days. So, double that and the average family needs 4 of these machines. It is hard to tell from that image in the OP, but it looks like it needs at least four 22 ft^2 solar panels for one machine. Possibly more since the image cuts off. Now we are talking 16+ solar panels for the average family.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Very good point. No need for massive, dirty storage batteries when the energy can just be stored in tanks and easily consumed or transported.

Both can be done depending on the situation. This is a better direct way to produce gasoline than making bioethanol which just costs thousands of hectares of rainforest and the death of unique insect and animal life. Not to mention fungi and other life that because of evolutionary pressures may hold ready available solutions to rare diseases.
This would be great for Brazil for example, which heavily supports bioethanol.

 

[Josh128]

My opinion is that they do this flaring to burn of the methanogens and methanotrophs, the bacteria that convert dead carbon rich (plant) matter into oil and oil into gas in the first place in those huge gas and oil fields for millions of years non stop.
And convert methane into CO2 as a life cycle.

This is false. They flare the methane because raw uncombusted methane released into the atmosphere is 30x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2/combusted methane.

 

[William Gaatjes]

This is patently false. They flare the methane because raw uncombusted methane is 30x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2/combusted methane.

I am not so sure about that.
Methane is the same gas that is in natural gas. It is the energetic component of natural gas. Depending on the field 80% to 96% pure methane. Why if people want natural gas, which is methane , burn free gas ?

Swamp gas, natural gas LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas), it is all methane.

 

[Josh128]

I am not so sure about that.
Methane is the same gas that is in natural gas. It is the energetic component of natural gas. Depending on the field 80% to 96% pure methane. Why if people want natural gas, which is methane , burn free gas ?

Swamp gas, natural gas, it is all methane.

Because its much more cost prohibitive to capture, compress and transport that methane from an installation built to produce oil than to just flare it off. Its not a conspiracy. The alternatives are either: Release raw methane gas into the atmosphere (super bad) or build the infrastructure to produce and distribute the methane, even though the amount produced in most cases wont be worth anywhere near the capital required to build the infrastructure. Both are dubious.

 

[dullard]

Because its much more cost prohibitive to capture, compress and transport that methane from an installation built to produce oil than to just flare it off. Its not a conspiracy. The alternatives are either: Release raw methane gas into the atmosphere (super bad) or build the infrastructure to produce and distribute the methane, even though the amount produced in most cases wont be worth anywhere near the capital required to build the infrastructure. Both are dubious.

Exactly. The methane can be captured. It is just quite expensive to capture and prices to sell it are somewhat low. So, many companies just burn the excess rather than capture it.

 

[biostud]

Just a small scale Power to X system

Power-to-X - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[William Gaatjes]

Because its much more cost prohibitive to capture, compress and transport that methane from an installation built to produce oil than to just flare it off. Its not a conspiracy. The alternatives are either: Release raw methane gas into the atmosphere (super bad) or build the infrastructure to produce and distribute the methane, even though the amount produced in most cases wont be worth anywhere near the capital required to build the infrastructure. Both are dubious.

So we all have to pay the price for a clean environment because the oil company does not want to invest in better systems

Of course it is not a conspiracy. But it is people being unwilling in solving that problem. Flaring of methane releases millions of gallons of CO2,. I get extra greenhouse taxes to pay because the oilcompanies are unwilling to invest in cleaner systems.

This site says it all :

Gas Flaring - Energy System - IEA

Non-emergency flaring and venting occur when oil field operators opt to burn the "associated" gas that accompanies oil production, or simply release it to the atmosphere, rather than to build the equipment and pipelines to capture it.

www.iea.org

small excerpt from text:
"

What is gas flaring?​

Non-emergency flaring and venting occur when oil field operators opt to burn the "associated" gas that accompanies oil production, or simply release it to the atmosphere, rather than to build the equipment and pipelines to capture it.

Why is it important?​

Flaring results in the release of substantial volumes of potent GHGs, including methane, black soot and nitrous oxide. Venting causes even worse environmental damage than flaring.

Where do we need to go?​

With natural gas prices at historic highs, gas flaring is an extraordinary waste of money in addition to its negative impacts on climate change and human health. Bringing this gas to market could offer relief to very tight gas markets and, in many cases, could do so faster and cheaper than investing in new supply.

"


This is about LNG from Shell :

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) | Shell Global

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state. Learn about Shell’s growing international LNG business.

www.shell.com

You know how oil companies in the western world get green ? They sell off the refinery placed in another country to a local company and let them do the polluting and flaring.
Meanwhile, the big oil corperations claim to be green. Cause hey, they do not pollute and flair of excessive gass and oil. They just buy and resell the gas and the oil. Like stock.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Exactly. The methane can be captured. It is just quite expensive to capture and prices to sell it are somewhat low. So, many companies just burn the excess rather than capture it.

And let you pay the extra greenhouse taxes. And we all have to jump through hoops and loops to lower CO2 carbon emissions. But that is fine. Just burn it off. Who cares anyway.

Do not try to rationalize flaring and venting, be angry about it.

 

[crashtech]

At least some flaring will always be a part of refinery operations as it is also a safety mechanism. Capturing the excess, or even burning it on site to generate a bit of power would be good if technological advances would allow it to be done economically and safely, although it'd be a bare drop in the bucket compared to production of gas by other means. Somewhat OT, though.

 

[Paratus]

I wish them luck, but they have not yet released the two most critical details: price of the machine and amount of solar power used. Without that information, it is impossible to know if this is a viable option or not.

As it is, remove the Aircela and that is exactly how I power my vehicle. Solar Panels -> Inverter -> Car. All without carbon produced. So, this Aircela needs to have something of value that it adds beyond what we can already easily do. So far all I see is something that looks quite expensive.

Heck, in their NYC demo, the cost of the real estate to store that device probably is roughly $20k. At $3.50/gallon, that thing would take over 15 years to pay off the real estate cost alone -- not including the cost of the machine.

I’ll guarantee more than 33.7kwh of electricity. More likely ~120-250kwh as a rough estimate.

 

[Paratus]

The biggest benefit to this tech is 0 carbon fuels to replace fossil fuels in areas where that’s difficult like air travel.

The navy was already looking at this for their nuclear powered aircraft carriers to be able to produce aviation fuel from CO2 and sea water reducing the requirements for tenders.

 

[dullard]

I’ll guarantee more than 33.7kwh of electricity. More likely ~120-250kwh as a rough estimate.

33.7 kWhr would give my EV about 124 miles of interstate range driving 80 MPH (at least so far in the spring that I've owned it, I'll see how much worse that does in the winter). Even with a really good hybrid, that Aircela's one gallon of gas would get only 50 miles at best in the city and closer to 40 miles on the interstate at 80 MPH. That shows how inefficient the Aircela is if your numbers are even remotely accurate.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I always wondered if something like this would eventually be possible. We can make hydrogen, so why not hydrocarbons too. The elements needed are available. This could actually be a viable way to store energy for seasonal use. Run it all summer when there's tons of daylight, then use the fuel in winter when there's not as much daylight. One gallon of gas is about 33kwh so that is more than enough for a full day of power usage.

If they could manage to make diesel or propane this way this would be the best bet as it stores for longer.

Even if it uses more electricity than what the fuel equates to, as long as they're using excess solar/wind to do it then it's technically free energy.

 

[Paratus]

A gallon of gas contains 33.7kwh of energy so even with 100% efficiency you need at least that much sunlight.

Most solar panels around 20-25% efficient at maximums so you really need 4-5 times as much sunlight.

Then you’ve got whatever efficiency this process has for converting CO2 back to a hydrocarbon fuel. So assuming ~30% efficient conversion process,( but who knows - the link doesn’t have any info), and 25% efficient solar array you need about 250kwh of solar energy/ gallon.

If you don’t need the storage of a hydrocarbon fuel directly charging a battery would be much more efficient.

The difference in EVs vs ICE is fascinating from an energy standpoint.

You are correct. EVs are just more efficient. Mine averages 4miles / kWh while my sons Corolla averages ~ 34 mpg or 1mile / kWh. Pretty much any EV is going to be 4 times or more efficient than its ICE counterpart for a given body style. (Sedan vs sedan pick up vs pickup etc)

My battery which holds 82kwh is equivalent to the energy in 2.4 gallons of gas while my sons tank holds 13 gallons. So he can go well over 400 miles on a tank and I struggle to get much over 300 on a battery.

The fastest chargers top out at 350KW which is 5.8kwh / minute while a fast gas pump can do 10 gallons / minute or the equivalent of 337 kWh / minute almost 60 times faster but the EV tank is 5-6 times smaller.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

The average family in the US uses about 2 gallons of gasoline per day.

As always, I'm below average.

I use about 20-30 gallons every two months.

I also have a few acres of open ground to install something on at no additional cost.

Now, if the price of the contraption isn't too nuts ....

 

[nakedfrog]

I always wondered if something like this would eventually be possible. We can make hydrogen, so why not hydrocarbons too. The elements needed are available. This could actually be a viable way to store energy for seasonal use. Run it all summer when there's tons of daylight, then use the fuel in winter when there's not as much daylight. One gallon of gas is about 33kwh so that is more than enough for a full day of power usage.

If they could manage to make diesel or propane this way this would be the best bet as it stores for longer.

Even if it uses more electricity than what the fuel equates to, as long as they're using excess solar/wind to do it then it's technically free energy.

Diesel motors were originally designed to run on vegetable oil, and they can run on a range of fuels.

 

[Ken g6]

Most of this is well-understood. It appears to start with a dehumidifier to get water out of the air. (There are a few methods, thermal or chemical; I'm not sure which they use.) Then I expect they'd use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from the water. Finally, I expect they'd use the Fischer-Tropsch process to turn it into gasoline.

The missing part of this is extracting the other ingredient in Fischer-Tropsch, CO2, from air. How it works, I don't know. Does it integrate with the dehumidifier?

The novelty of creating gasoline of of thin air aside, this tech may actually help address the elephant in the room in re solar, which is the difficulty of deploying bulk energy storage for excess daytime solar capacity. Using this tech to produce methane instead might eventually be a good way to effectively make large solar installations into baseload generation plants, solar by day, but burning in situ generated, carbon-neutral methane by night.

You're right about energy storage, wrong about the method. Hydrogen is easier to make than methane, and a fuel cell is more efficient than burning. Other common storage methods are batteries and pumping a working fluid, usually water or air.

But this tech might allow large solar installations away from the grid to make fuel instead of grid electricity. Cost would be key. I think it would be hard to get gasoline under $4/gallon; I seem to recall an estimate of $10/gallon.