No, this is making hydrocarbons out of air and water using electricity. This is an exceptionally clean, if costly, process. The potentially risky stuff is based on baking hydrocarbons out of waste using heat. Though that article you probably read is more of a clickbait hit-piece than legitimate journalism. That said, this article is also a vaguely disguised ad.
Hydrogen does have its problems. It's much harder to handle and transport than a nice liquid hydrocarbon. Due to its size, hydrogen leaks easily from seals. Hydrogen embritlement on metals is also a thing.
No problems we haven't solved, but they all add cost over traditional petrol.
Pragmatic, practical, hydrogen at scale from the people currently building out ways to double and quadruple current global green hydrogen production is looking a lot like bulk transport of ammonia (hydrogen rich with 'safe' nitrogen by product) to large scale generators to distribute electricity .. to charge "dirty lithium" batteries.
If it's any consolation the "dirty lithium" part doesn't happen at the mines - they fairly cleanly extract and mechanically produce concentrates which largely (today) go to China and Malaysia .. and will soon ship to Texas.
I think it is carcinogenic. Apparently the plant for this (or another competitor) pumps carcinogens into the air at orders of magnitude above the legal limit.
I was wondering why they made it in Chile. Wind? Sun? Cheap land? Corruption and lack of evironment protection regulation? Also using ships running on HFO to transport this green e-fuel from Chile to Germany or whrerever they sell most Porsches.
I've never understood synthetic fuel. We've got plenty of petroleum in the ground, but too much carbon in the air. Better to come up with a good sequestration strategy to put some of that carbon back in the ground.
"Carbon is extracted from the air in the form of CO2 and combined with the hydrogen in a process called synthesis."
It seems like at least re-burning the carbon that's already in the air is better than burning new dug up carbon? This is at least not net atmospheric carbon positive. You can do sequestration too...
I am by no means a chemist (beyond a secondary school level), but burning CO2 doesn’t seem possible. Doesn’t burning through application of some energy split the bonds of complicated stable molecules into less complicated, but stable molecules (by adding oxygen), thus releasing energy.
In this case; how do they recombine the CO2 into more complicated hydrocarbons? And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
> In this case; how do they recombine the CO2 into more complicated hydrocarbons?
Fischer–Tropsch process.
> And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
It's obviously "energy negative", as it would be a violation of thermodynamics for it not to be, entropy being how it is. As far as doing it over carbon capture, I would be more interested in hearing your thoughts on why carbon capture would be a better alternative.
"In this case; how do they recombine..." that is exactly what the article is about. E-fuels are atmospheric carbon dioxide that is electrolyzed using renewable sources and combined with additional hydrogen in order to produce octane. So, my original parent is saying the process we should focus on is sequestration (Atmospheric carbon dioxide -> electrolyze to carbon and oxygen [this is the energy intensive step] -> bury the carbon and leave the oxygen -> harvest natural hydrocarbons / oil -> distill into various weights -> burn the octane). I propose achieving similar atmospheric carbon balance with similar energy inputs with the cycle (Atmospheric carbon dioxide -> electrolyze to carbon and oxygen [same energy per carbon] -> hydogenate the carbon to octane for portability and compatibility reasons -> burn the octane). The only point in doing all of this of course is the huge installed user base for engines that burn octane, a portable and stable fuel.
Synthetic fuels are generally cleaner in that they have significantly less sulfur and a decent bit less aromatics. There’s a great picture on Wikipedia that illustrates the difference.
Burning and recapturing is a carbon positive process without separately trying to recapture carbon out of the rest of the air.
The air at large has a very low concentration of CO2, so the capture is unfavourable. Your apparatus is only going to touch so many CO2 particles to recapture them, asides from CO2 being energetically favourable
And, once you have sequestered them, the sequestration also has to worry about leaks.
If you're using a synthetic fuel, those leaks move you from -100% net release towards 0% net release.
If you're using newly mined fuel, the leaks move you from 0% release towards 100% release
This doesn't account for the energy requirements to create the fuel
Ignoring questions about if this is makes economical or environmental sense, this just seems plain cool -- it appears to be a fairly standalone industrial complex that just needs water as input, and produces fuel plus three useful byproducts.
This seems like something you might build in Surviving Mars, or something.
> Editor’s note 4/1/2023 6:30 pm ET: This story was removed after WIRED learned that Porsche paid the author for his travel to Chile, a violation of WIRED’s editorial policy.
I'm less curious about this for cars that can get decent range from batteries...
...and far more curious about its potential for aviation, where the weight of batteries makes powering a jumbo jet impossible.
I know other technologies are being investigated (like cooled liquid hydrogen to power fuel cells), but could “emissions-neutral” synthetic fuel ever become a long-term solution for planes?
Or is there something about the economics of this that will keep it niche for things like owners of eventually-antique ICE cars?
What's the energy consumption for this? Alas the article has been pulled (for seemingly reasonable reasons)
Internal combustion engines already have a fairly terrible energy efficiency, so what's the energy loss involved in collecting CO2 and then rebuilding a bunch of hydrocarbons from that?
What this sounds like is an attempt to launder the problems of gas engines by claiming they're consuming the CO2 emissions from other engines, except they're using energy to do produce this fuel. That additional energy has to come from somewhere.
Also it acts like clean water isn't also a significantly restricted resource.
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 837 ms ] threadNo problems we haven't solved, but they all add cost over traditional petrol.
If it's any consolation the "dirty lithium" part doesn't happen at the mines - they fairly cleanly extract and mechanically produce concentrates which largely (today) go to China and Malaysia .. and will soon ship to Texas.
It seems like at least re-burning the carbon that's already in the air is better than burning new dug up carbon? This is at least not net atmospheric carbon positive. You can do sequestration too...
In this case; how do they recombine the CO2 into more complicated hydrocarbons? And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
Fischer–Tropsch process.
> And if it’s energy negative, is it better to do this, or to use it to capture carbon?
It's obviously "energy negative", as it would be a violation of thermodynamics for it not to be, entropy being how it is. As far as doing it over carbon capture, I would be more interested in hearing your thoughts on why carbon capture would be a better alternative.
The marketing blurb for this fuel can say: we only kill birds! (Because wind turbines)
Bats too. They don't even need to hit the bats to kill them. The difference in air pressure around the blades is enough to rupture bat lungs:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14593-wind-turbines-m...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bat-killings-by-w...
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/heat-wave-australia-killed-2300....
Formula 1 plans to move to synthetic fuel in 2026:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/61942876
Burning and recapturing is a carbon positive process without separately trying to recapture carbon out of the rest of the air.
The air at large has a very low concentration of CO2, so the capture is unfavourable. Your apparatus is only going to touch so many CO2 particles to recapture them, asides from CO2 being energetically favourable
And, once you have sequestered them, the sequestration also has to worry about leaks.
If you're using a synthetic fuel, those leaks move you from -100% net release towards 0% net release.
If you're using newly mined fuel, the leaks move you from 0% release towards 100% release
This doesn't account for the energy requirements to create the fuel
This seems like something you might build in Surviving Mars, or something.
Here's another article from a few months ago:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/porsches-synthetic-gaso...
...and far more curious about its potential for aviation, where the weight of batteries makes powering a jumbo jet impossible.
I know other technologies are being investigated (like cooled liquid hydrogen to power fuel cells), but could “emissions-neutral” synthetic fuel ever become a long-term solution for planes?
Or is there something about the economics of this that will keep it niche for things like owners of eventually-antique ICE cars?
Internal combustion engines already have a fairly terrible energy efficiency, so what's the energy loss involved in collecting CO2 and then rebuilding a bunch of hydrocarbons from that?
What this sounds like is an attempt to launder the problems of gas engines by claiming they're consuming the CO2 emissions from other engines, except they're using energy to do produce this fuel. That additional energy has to come from somewhere.
Also it acts like clean water isn't also a significantly restricted resource.
Basically this will only be viable if we've got gigawatts of excess renewable generation. Viable being "cheaper than regular gasoline".
No one knows what their chasing, because they can't see it. Somethings are too fast but they will not know until they try.
There may not be enough lithium to power everything. Batteries may never be light enough for aviation.