British Scientists Make Gasoline From Air

[JonB]

British Scientists Make Gasoline From Air

A company in England has made gasoline out of CO2 extracted from air.

The company Air Fuel Synthesis, located in northern England, has proven the concept that fuel can be made from a synthesis of water vapor and clean air. The proof of concept machine the company is currently operating has produced five liters of fuel since August. The resulting fuel is fully compatible with the current transportation grid, and if removed from the tank would run any existing gas powered vehicle. "There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," said Peter Harrison, the chief executive of the company. The company hopes to have a commercial scale plant up and running by the end of 2014.

The fuel creation process is currently powered by the existing electric grid, and so any clean fuel produced now is actually made using mostly fossil fuels. If the conversion plant were powered by a renewable source of energy, such as wind or solar, then the resulting fuel would be a messiah of green fuels. The clean gasoline would solve the problem of solar and tidal energy rich areas in that it would make that energy easy to transport in a liquid form. At the same time, it would actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, carbon production being the primary problem with burning fossil fuels. The company is currently working on two fuels, a standard and an aviation fuel. The first step for the company is likely to be to blend their product with conventional fuel to make fuels for motor sports.

The company's findings have been independently verified by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London. Apparently, this technology has existed for some time and been achievable, being based on already known principles. Air Fuel Synthesis, however, is the first to actually put all the pieces together and show it can work. While it's obvious that a full scale application of this technology, let alone the day that the tech is cheap enough to be economically feasible, is a long way off, I think I'll take it as an acceptable alternative to Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future II. At least until I can get my hands on a Mr. Fusion.

Source: The Independent [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html]


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[razor343]

As fantastic as this is, I can see it disappearing into nothing within a few years because it just isn't profitable enough for the people with one too many bags of cash.

 

[Jamane]

and yay for tecnology

 

[Yelchor]

Great, now the oil companies have the means to theoretically -never- let go of their monopoly on energy.

Energy sources which can be efficient and accessible to everyone virtually for free? No way! These hugely profitable corporations must make a few extra billions a year, progress of global infrastructure be damned!

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

Gasoline from Air... SCIENTISTS LISTEN UP! Stop making better pregnancy tests and help real scientists do science!

 

[LTK_70]

We get fuel out of the god damned air, how can we NOT be living in the future now?

I say we work on setting up a decent warp drive now...

Ever heard of conservation of energy? Every chemical reaction is reversible, so if a combustion engine converts gasoline into carbon dioxide, water, and energy, then we should be able to convert carbon dioxide, water and energy into gasoline. And that's exactly what they did, so that's 0% surprising. In fact, they actually put more energy into producing the fuel than you can get out of it because of entropy.

Given that you need an insane amount of clean energy to even dent the efficiency of fossil fuels, and you lose energy with every transition, I don't see how this is a good solution for anything.

 

[Volstag9]

I really hope they can make a profit out of this. I can see a lot of oil companies reacting very poorly to this.

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

Dammit, now I have to work this out.
Assuming petrol is octane without any other hydrocarbons...

8CO[sub]2[/sub] + 9H[sub]2[/sub]O --> C[sub]8[/sub]H[sub]18[/sub] + 12.5O[sub]2[/sub]
I DIDN'T JUST EDIT A MISTAKE IN MY EQUATION BALANCING, YOU SAW NOTHING
That's entropically disfavoured - enthalpically as well, given that the reverse of that reaction is simply burning octane in air.
At least at room temperature.
Increasing pressure might bring equilibrium over a bit, and damned if they're not catalysing it somehow - but yeah, that'd be crazy expensive.
It's a nice idea, but it could very easily fall through if they can't make their process more efficient.

 

[kajinking]

Sorry but this is the only way to properly show my reaction

 

[Baldr]

Dammit, now I have to work this out.
Assuming petrol is octane without any other hydrocarbons...

8CO[sub]2[/sub] + 9H[sub]2[/sub]O --> C[sub]8[/sub]H[sub]18[/sub] + 12.5O[sub]2[/sub]
I DIDN'T JUST EDIT A MISTAKE IN MY EQUATION BALANCING, YOU SAW NOTHING
That's entropically disfavoured - enthalpically as well, given that the reverse of that reaction is simply burning octane in air.
At least at room temperature.
Increasing pressure might bring equilibrium over a bit, and damned if they're not catalysing it somehow - but yeah, that'd be crazy expensive.
It's a nice idea, but it could very easily fall through if they can't make their process more efficient.

Here how I could see a way: It has been proposed in a hypothetical renewable energy dominated energy system to use the excess electricity generated by wind, solar photovoltaic, hydro, marine currents and others to make methane (natural gas) by electrolysis of water. The process described would be to create hydrogen and the addition of carbon dioxide CO2 (Sabatier process) to create methane as follows: CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O
Use the newer cheaper methods of the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert Methane to Gasoline.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

It's a neat and tidy idea considering all the engines in the world that run on petrol and all the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we don't want. If we had fusion reactors to cleanly create a massive amount of clean energy then this would be awesome but we don't.

 

[Zipa]

Nice I hope this idea takes off, seeing as it would remove carbon dioxide that we have been dumping into the atmosphere since the start of industrialization pretty much. Also cool to see its some British scientists leading the charge. Nice to see my inflated gas and electric bills are paying dividends.

 

[Call Me Jose]

Oh no we're going to run out of air!

 

[fix-the-spade]

As fantastic as this is, I can see it disappearing into nothing within a few years because it just isn't profitable enough for the people with one too many bags of cash.

Granted a lot of people stand to lose out from this, but those same people (if they're smart enough) could be the one investing in it.

From the perspective of someone like BP, this has the potential to remove or reduce transport costs and more importantly, reduce the need for costly and dangerous oil wells. Petrol separated from political instability and tankers, there's a thought. Fuel prices could go down, profit margins would go up and they already have an infrastructure that the entire planet runs on.

Of course a number of Arab states will be shitting themselves, the ability to produce fuel locally would fantastic, for their local, non oil producing rivals...

 

[Xeorm]

That sounds great if we can ever grow our non-fossil fuel power plants. Too bad everyone dislikes nuclear so much.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Oh no we're going to run out of air!

Nah, we'd run out of Carbon Dioxide... Which might actually be a good thing for a while, what with Global Warming and all...

OT: Huh, neat. Maybe Gasoline isn't Archaic after all. Still, I don't want the first car I ever buy to run on it; 4+ Dollars is crazy!

 

[Daverson]

The question we should be asking isn't "is it economically feasible?", rather "are we getting more power out than we put in?". If it's costing us 1.21 gigawatts to get enough petrol to light an LED for 20 seconds, it's probably not worth the efforts =p

 

[Rigs83]

This is an old idea and I heard of a similar idea of taking carbon from the air and using the power from a nuclear plant to convert it back to gas. It looked promising until Fukashima