British Scientists Make Gasoline From Air

[Playful Pony]

Ignoring the many problems this would encounter in todays climnate (an anti-nuclear atitude, lacking green-power infrastructure, economic powerhouses etc), this is pretty damn awesome! I haven't the faintest idea how anyone could possibly manage to do this, but I consider it to be pretty damn amazing and I really hope this takes off if it's as good as this article make it seem...

I'd love to see a day where we burn large forrested areas on purpose to combat the planet-wide global cooling scandal as a result of a lack of greenhouse gasses. And then we'd have 4,000 meter tall superstructures, small cities in orbit and a megacity on the moon. Me? I'd live a quiet life on a small Marsian farm, somewhere in a mountainous region.

 

[maninahat]

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.

Wouldn't that be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics?

Technically it wouldn't. The product would have less energy per volume than the fossil fuel used to make it due to energy losses in the production process.

However... there is a little loophole in the first law that could be used to power cars (And no, it is not any of that tinfoil pyramid nonsense!); because motors are becoming increasingly efficient in their conversion of electrical energy to mechanical energy and generators are becoming increasingly efficient in the conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy you could have a motor connected to a generator in a system that generates more energy than then motor uses to spin the generator...

It's a shame that everyone thinks it's just hogwash and claptrap; we could get an electric car with infinite range today (Possibly with off-the-shelf parts!) if we just threw enough money at getting it to work!

No. Just no. There is no way you can hook up a dynamo to a wheel, and then use the dynamo to power a motor that spins the same wheel. That would be a perpetual motion engine, and that is impossible.

Basically, no matter how efficient an electric motor or dynamo gets, they still waste energy in the form of friction, heat and sound. As a motor can only spin as fast as the energy going in, and a dynamo can only produce as much power as the wheels can spin, energy quickly leaks out of the system until both motor and gyro come to a halt.

We have hybrid cars with dynamos and electric engines, but they still also depend on an internal combustion engine. It's sad but true, and it is kind of silly to assume that a company wouldn't capitalize on perpetual motion electric cars, even if they could - that company would become the richest business in the world if it succeeded.

 

[Sprinal]

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

Edit:

How annoying in attempting to continue reading the tread for other quotable things I accidentally posted a blank post with only a quote.


Sorry Mods and person who got alerted.

Anyway. What I was going to say about this anyway was that people said the same thing after the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster.

Really there is nothing wrong with Nuclear power as long as you dispose of your waste properly and you also don't decomission half of the reactor and thus leave many faults unchecked.


But anyway. From the OP I say that if they have announced it and the Escapist knows about it then the major companies will be unable to obtain the Patent and the company will hopefully survive. And hey this process might be incredably useful as a last resort to obtain oil in event of a war.

Lets just hope it survives that long.

 

[uzo]

Let's see the reaction to the Carbon Tax when we start getting taxed based on how much air we're breathing.

The simply fact is that if someone can figure this out, there'll be a new form of resource to exploit. C'mon - air, and water? It just happens to be the two things everyone in the world needs to live. Now that's what I call an inelastic demand and supply plot. They can charge whatever the hell they want, regardless of supply.

Oh hang on ... that's what they do already.

 

[GildaTheGriffin]

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...

Did you know we can with today's technology. But we won't because most of the world is greedy for the price of oil. It's about money, not the world.

That's what I believe. Because oil companies make billions of dollars and no government will give it up. But if we can make billion or trillion with this 'air gas' we could change the market.

 

[mooncalf]

food from air, fuel from air, TY science. o.o

 

[Little Duck]

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.

How? Instead of using billions of pounds to find some highly taxed oil, they use the pollution they've already thrown in the air and charge it at the same or slightly lower price.

 

[Pinkamena]

I've been reading about this. I do not see how this will be a feasible method of creating petrol. The process seems to require a lot of electrical energy, and that energy gotta come from somewhere.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

A short, freely available paper on the process, addressing feasibility: http://ma.ecsdl.org/content/MA2011-02/18/1498.full.pdf+html

 

[mew4ever23]

This is promising, but it doesn't seem too terribly efficient. Unless we can get it running on a renewable source of energy, it might not be viable.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Not quite sure if it's a favorable reaction, chemistry wise. I love the concept though. I hope it works out for them.

 

[Jake the Snake]

Fuck yeah! Science! This is just so cool, I don't care if it's inefficient at the moment. This gives me hope we'll figure out the energy crisis. Humans are so clever. Gas from the air. Brilliant.

 

[spartan231490]

Yeah, these guys are idiots. It takes more energy to make the gas than you get out of it. Also, since this energy comes from coal, you end up getting a lot more pollution from making the gas than you take out of the air by making it. It's stupid.

this is true for most biofuels as well as battery cars last i read up, though its been a few years.

It is true for most biofuels and battery cars yes, which is why I don't like them either. That doesn't make this a good thing, just because it's already being done in some ways.

I've been reading about this. I do not see how this will be a feasible method of creating petrol. The process seems to require a lot of electrical energy, and that energy gotta come from somewhere.

correct

Ignoring the many problems this would encounter in todays climnate (an anti-nuclear atitude, lacking green-power infrastructure, economic powerhouses etc), this is pretty damn awesome! I haven't the faintest idea how anyone could possibly manage to do this, but I consider it to be pretty damn amazing and I really hope this takes off if it's as good as this article make it seem...

I'd love to see a day where we burn large forrested areas on purpose to combat the planet-wide global cooling scandal as a result of a lack of greenhouse gasses. And then we'd have 4,000 meter tall superstructures, small cities in orbit and a megacity on the moon. Me? I'd live a quiet life on a small Marsian farm, somewhere in a mountainous region.

Even if this was produced from green-energy, it still wouldn't reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses, it would only hold that level constant by recyclying what's in the atmosphere

 

[spartan231490]

Yeah, these guys are idiots. It takes more energy to make the gas than you get out of it. Also, since this energy comes from coal, you end up getting a lot more pollution from making the gas than you take out of the air by making it. It's stupid.

Yeah, well the first message shot across the internet was a grand total of two letters. They didn't just say, "Meh it wasn't a full word, let alone a full sentence, let's give up." They worked to improve the system and today I can type this entire paragraph, and not bat an eyelid.

You don't give up on new technology just because it didn't provide results in huge quantities, you work to improve it so that in the future you have greater utility.

Do you not understand physics? Every single energy conversion, such as combining chemicals into gasoline to store energy in chemical form, is less than 100% efficient. This isn't due to unfinished technology, this is just the way it is. Which means that there is no possible way for this to not take more energy than you gain from it. Which means as long as it works off a fossil fuel power grid, it will always cause more pollution than it saves. Also, they use coal to generate the power, and coal is remarkably bad for the environment, far more so than gasoline. Even "clean coal" is bad for the environment, in fact the only power source it pollutes less than is regular coal. This isn't due to limited technology, it's due to massively high levels of impurities inherent in the coal.

No matter how much they refine this technology, it will always cause more pollution for the environment, which considering the current state of the world, is not a good thing.

 

[spartan231490]

This is promising, but it doesn't seem too terribly efficient. Unless we can get it running on a renewable source of energy, it might not be viable.

Viable in what way? Economically, it's probably cheaper to buy a rediculous amount of electricity to make the gasoline than it is to build, man, and protect oil drilling platforms and oil refineries, possibly on hostile soil. Ecologically, this will never be viable until the power grid, and arguably every power grid on earth, is renewable, because no energy conversion is 100% efficient so it will always produce more CO2 to generate the electricity than is removed from the atmosphere to produce the gasoline.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

You know, instead of using clean energy to make gasoline to power cars, why don't we just make cars that run on clean energy? I feel like that would be a lot simpler.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

Yeah, these guys are idiots. It takes more energy to make the gas than you get out of it. Also, since this energy comes from coal, you end up getting a lot more pollution from making the gas than you take out of the air by making it. It's stupid.

Yeah, well the first message shot across the internet was a grand total of two letters. They didn't just say, "Meh it wasn't a full word, let alone a full sentence, let's give up." They worked to improve the system and today I can type this entire paragraph, and not bat an eyelid.

You don't give up on new technology just because it didn't provide results in huge quantities, you work to improve it so that in the future you have greater utility.

Do you not understand physics? Every single energy conversion, such as combining chemicals into gasoline to store energy in chemical form, is less than 100% efficient. This isn't due to unfinished technology, this is just the way it is. Which means that there is no possible way for this to not take more energy than you gain from it. Which means as long as it works off a fossil fuel power grid, it will always cause more pollution than it saves. Also, they use coal to generate the power, and coal is remarkably bad for the environment, far more so than gasoline. Even "clean coal" is bad for the environment, in fact the only power source it pollutes less than is regular coal. This isn't due to limited technology, it's due to massively high levels of impurities inherent in the coal.

No matter how much they refine this technology, it will always cause more pollution for the environment, which considering the current state of the world, is not a good thing.

I imagine this is not intended as a potential energy source. That would be ludicrous, as you have pointed out. It could be a new source of fuel for cars/planes etc. If the energy came from renewable's it could end up being less polluting, as it does not need to be dug out of the ground.

Although obviously a better solution would be to properly develop electric transport.

 

[dyre]

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.

But converting the entire population to using alternate fuel sources for their cars isn't feasible.

It's not as simple as designing a bitching car that runs off of happy thoughts. You have to consider the titanic infrastructure changes you'd need to undergo. First and foremost is making it efficient, Honda have been trying for years to find alternate, efficient energy sources for cars. And then when they find it, they've got to find a way to conveniently allow people to refuel. It's not like back in the 30's when you could slowly introduce the concept of petrol stations. Adding 1 or 2 to every town over the course of a few years won't cut it. People expect to be able to refuel round the corner. And we're not at a point where we can make a mobile fuel source that can last seemingly indefinitely.

Like it or not, the best option is to find more efficient ways to get large quantities of fuel that's already in use.

About the refueling thing, I interned at an energy forecasting firm over the summer, and from the research I did there it looks like in the next few decades we might see enough fueling stations created/converted for it to be economically viable to switch trucks, buses, etc from diesel to natural gas (trucks obviously don't need as many fueling stations as cars).

It's not as plentiful as air, but we do have a lot of it.

That's pretty damn cool, I assume the switch for commercial wagons is some sort of test, or proof of viability for cars or something?

I think it's really just for trucks, buses, maybe pickup trucks, etc, and not meant to be moved to cars. We might see enough natural gas stops in cities for buses (which have fixed routes, so a small number of gas stations could be placed strategically to meet an entire city's needs), or enough fuel stops on heavily used highway routes for trucks, but like you said earlier, people expect to refuel their cars around every corner, and afaik such a large scale conversion isn't planned for the distant future.

edit: However, most of my work was centered around diesel to natural gas, so it's possible there's something going on for gasoline cars that I'm not aware of.

 

[Playful Pony]

Even if this was produced from green-energy, it still wouldn't reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses, it would only hold that level constant by recyclying what's in the atmosphere

I see my dreamy, sci-fi fangirl ramblings got to you...

 

[Harker067]

Yeah, these guys are idiots. It takes more energy to make the gas than you get out of it. Also, since this energy comes from coal, you end up getting a lot more pollution from making the gas than you take out of the air by making it. It's stupid.

this is true for most biofuels as well as battery cars last i read up, though its been a few years.

but thats the fault of an energy grid. we MUST shut down ALL fossil fuel power plants and put atomic plants in their place and we would have a 100% enviromentally friendly energy.

This is still going to have potential impacts unless we have good battery technology cause we're going to have to mine, refine and dispose of the waste. Then there's still the nuclear waste problem which while I think its a better problem then the ones created then fossil fuels lets not kind ourselves into thinking its environmentally friendly.

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.

Wouldn't that be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics?

Technically it wouldn't. The product would have less energy per volume than the fossil fuel used to make it due to energy losses in the production process.

However... there is a little loophole in the first law that could be used to power cars (And no, it is not any of that tinfoil pyramid nonsense!); because motors are becoming increasingly efficient in their conversion of electrical energy to mechanical energy and generators are becoming increasingly efficient in the conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy you could have a motor connected to a generator in a system that generates more energy than then motor uses to spin the generator...

It's a shame that everyone thinks it's just hogwash and claptrap; we could get an electric car with infinite range today (Possibly with off-the-shelf parts!) if we just threw enough money at getting it to work!

This might extend the range but no it would never give you infinite range. There's going to be friction on all the moving parts any magnetic forces are also going to repel, there's going to be sound generated. No there is no way this is going to work and any first year physics major would tell you the same thing.