British Scientists Make Gasoline From Air

[Lawyer105]

[tinfoilhat]
I wonder if this is going to be one of those technologies that gets bought out by the energy companies and then vanishes into some sort of technological black hole, never to be seen again. Like so many others. [/tinfoilhat]

CAPTCHA: Pyrrhic Victory
Yes, captcha. It may well have been.

 

[Terminate421]

We can save the future now

 

[OniaPL]

As others have said, I can't see how this would be anything more than an amusing piece of news since they have to use energy, more enrgy than they get from the gasoline, to make it out of air.

So they can transform energy made with, for ecample, solar panels into gasoline? Whoopty doo.
If you'd find a way to make solard energy or other renewable energy sources more efficient, now that'd be a news piece.

 

[renegade7]

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...

Not a warp drive, but still pretty damn awesome:

http://www.uah.edu/news/research/2501-slapshot-to-deep-space#.UIHdvYYkrKo

OT: Won't the combustion process still produce CO2 anyway? CO2 is always produced from a combustion reaction. But I guess if the process takes up as much CO2 as is produced, it's perfectly clean.

Fuck you, oil companies!

 

[Therumancer]

I tend to agree that big oil companies aren't going to let this one succeed. It's like most other alternative energy plans, unless these things come about with a multi-billion dollar alliance behind them to force the deal, they aren't going to go anywhere. The guys who did this are too small in scope to survive.

What's going to happen is the existing companies will buy the patent and sit on it, ensuring nobody else can legally use it while not using it themselves, OR they will simply make it impractical for them to get any kind of infrastructure going. Saying they want to get a plant going is nice, but when you consider the zoning permissions, and even buying the land itself, strong enough opposition and political bribe money can kill it outright.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

And expect gas prices to drop NEVER!

Quite the opposite in fact. They will counter this innovation by saying "Our livelihood is threatened, we must increase prices now!"

 

[Agent Larkin]

God damn I love living in the future.

 

[The]

And expect gas prices to drop NEVER!

They'll rise like air.


Get it? Air? *laughs*

 

[DugMachine]

How are world economies not throwing large sums of cash at this to speed up the process? oh right we're all held by the balls by big oil companies.

 

[bravetoaster]

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.

It's a good solution for "how do we keep people from developing better technology and moving forward as a species while saving money and resources?"

 

[CardinalPiggles]

This won't happen. It'll work with renewable energy to fuel the process of... creating fuel, but why not just increase the amount of renewable energy that gets produced and use that? Oil will always be needed but gasoline won't if engines just run off of other power sources.

 

[Grahav]

Let's see how much time before oil companies assassinate them.

 

[Souplex]

Are there any numbers on the rate at which it can be produced, and the cost of producing it?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

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

Hehe, you reminded me of this:

Also this is pretty awesome, but if they've only managed to produce a few gallons in two months then it's obviously a very costly and energy intensive process, to the extent that just running cars off electricity would be better holistically for the environment. Still, it's a huge discovery, and it's these sorts of advances that open the door for who knows what sort of awesome innovations.

 

[MorganL4]

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...

Yesterday, this was the future.... You are here now...... Welcome.

But yeah, this is friggin' sweet, especially the fact that it removes carbon from the atmosphere instead of creating it.

 

[Rellik San]

This is it, the people in charge of funding will look at it and go:
"Ok so with our funding you may have this financially viable in 10 years of development, but then we won't see a profit from this for a further 15, I think we'll pass."

Instead of thinking;
"We get in on this now, monopolise it and we basically get 10 years of free good PR and remove our reliance on foreign powers."
Y'know, like a smart company would.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

Think of it this way: If you can burn 1 Litre of Fossil fuels to power a machine that produces 2 Litres of Synthetic Fuel (or even 1.2Litres), you now have a machine that can power itself with it's own product. So if they can refine the process to make more fuel then they expend, they'll have created a literal self-powering machine that can produce a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels.

 

[mrdude2010]

It's a shame the oil companies will do their best to suppress this.

 

[RA92]

This won't happen. It'll work with renewable energy to fuel the process of... creating fuel, but why not just increase the amount of renewable energy that gets produced and use that? Oil will always be needed but gasoline won't if engines just run off of other power sources.

Chemical batteries and hydrogen still come nowhere close to hydrocarbons in terms of storing energy per volume.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Holy shit! This is really awesome. Hooray for science!