Comments on: Magical Gas Conjured from Thin Air

By: Charles Hammond

Charles Hammond — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:25:00 +0000

1.2mil for just a few ounces of fuel. What a joke.

By: Charles Hammond

Charles Hammond — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 00:21:00 +0000

Buld it next to a coal fired plant or a refinery and get some good co2.

By: Altair IV

Altair IV — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 07:52:00 +0000

I’m personally not too thrilled over developments like this. It may be carbon-neutral, but it does little to address more localized problems of smog and noise pollution. I’m want to see cities full of quiet, efficient, non-emitting electric vehicles (and other motorized devices), not a continuation of our current noisome, gas-guzzling ways.

The only area where I can really see this as being beneficial is in aviation fuel and the like, where high-density portable energy storage is still needed. AFAIK, a 747 can’t run on batteries.

By: Craig Allen

Craig Allen — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 13:04:00 +0000

On their website they lay out aspirational plans, but provide no specifics about any technology they have produced. They have pictures of devices in a room that are supposedly their pilot plant, but provide no details about what they are except for a cartoonish diagram and talk of using “off the shelf” equipment. Sounds dodgy.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 11:29:00 +0000

One potential source of carbon neutral CO2 is fermentation. Yeast could turn sugar or other organic material into alcohol or other liquid fuel and the almost pure CO2 released could be used to create additional liquid fuel. On the other hand, if we start to electrify ground transport in a major way we should have plenty of oil left over for flight and we could remove and sequester the CO2 released rather than use synthetic fuels if that turns out to be more practical.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:06:00 +0000

You’re right. They seem to be saying that they can use atmospheric CO2. If so, then I’ve got no complaints with what they are doing. We will need some liquid fuels and if they can be made efficiently using atmospheric carbon then that’s great.

(But keep your eye on them. Another company that was claiming they could use atmospheric finally admitted they were going to be locating next to coal plants where they could pump in concentrated CO2. Remember, there’s only 391.57 *parts per million CO2 in atmospheric air. Too much for the climate, but an awfully small amount for manufacturing.*)

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We can cut our use of liquid fuels for airplanes by ~50% by moving moderate distance travel to electrified high speed rail. Get there as quickly and in a lot more comfort.

We can drastically cut our use of liquid fuels by moving most freight to electrified rail. Just use trucks for shuttling from rail siding to warehouse/factory. We’ve already got battery powered 18-wheelers with a 100 mile range. Trucks would be great candidates for battery swapping at the rail siding.

Ships. Already we’re seeing significant increases in efficiency. And we need to move more manufacturing closer to markets and avoid long distance shipping as much as possible.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:45:00 +0000

The company claim they extract the CO2 directly from air. See http://airfuelsynthesis.com/technology/technical-review.html

You may well be right about cars, but planes and perhaps ships and trucks will still require hydrocarbons, absent some colossal breakthrough in batteries.

What I like about this technology is that it offers a way to store variable solar and wind energy in a readily usable and concentrated form. You could for example run gas turbine generators when the renewables are taking a break.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Here’s the problem with these schemes – they require a concentrated CO2 input. They don’t work with recycled CO2 from the air.

They will get built where they can suck up the CO2 from coal plants. To the extent they displace some oil consumption, that’s good. But they would likely help extend the amount of time we continue to burn coal.

It would be much harder to shut down a coal plant if it was sistered to a liquid fuel plant. We should do nothing that extends the life of coal.

There’s a much better idea. Drive with renewable electricity. Skip the CO2 altogether.