Posted on 10/18/2012 8:36:34 PM PDT by Steelfish
British Engineers Produce Amazing 'Petrol From Air' Technology Revolutionary new technology that produces “petrol from air” is being produced by a British firm, it emerged tonight.
Andrew Hough 18 Oct 2012 A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity.
Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis.
The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.
The company, Air Fuel Syndication, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.
Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside. The fuel that is produced can be used in any regular petrol tank and, if renewable energy is used to provide the electricity it could become “completely carbon neutral”.
The £1.1m project, in development for the past two years, is being funded by a group of unnamed philanthropists who believe the technology could prove to be a lucrative way of creating renewable energy.
While the technology has the backing of Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers, it has yet to capture the interest of major oil companies.
But company executives hope to build a large plant, which could produce more than a tonne of petrol every day, within two years and a refinery size operation within the...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Sounds like using corn for fuel, it will probably take more energy input than what you get out of it.
“........Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery......”
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Five liters in less than three months? I’m sure this will really be cost effective and completely eliminate the need to actually drill for oil. I expect Obama & crew to announce an award of 1/2 billion dollars to these folks any day now.
Oh my god! This is funnier than something from the onion! My wife and I couldn’t stop cracking up.
Sounds like the Solyndra execs have setup shop in the UK.
Thats what I want to know. All these stupid “breakthroughs” and “holy grails” are bunk every time we find out you have to feed more energy in than you get out.
Somehow, just somehow, even if they can truly do this, I will bet one hundred and eleventy billion dollars that it requires much more energy (just from the electrolysis part alone), than you actually get from the petrol. But with the word “climate change” inserted eleventy billion times, they are sure to get lots of free government money to develop it, and will retire in the bahamas just before the government realizes it isn’t worth the investment.
Nothing like using a couple of megawatts to produce a few kilowatts of energy, but hey we are saving the planet.
Correct, there is no way around the First Law of Thermodynamics. Depending on the effeciency of the process, though, it could be useful as a storage medium for nuclear or hydroelectric power *IF* it is cheaper than pumping oil from the ground.
Since plants need carbon dioxide to live, if this technology really works well won’t we potentially be reducing plant growth by reducing CO2 levels?
I have discovered a way to make bridges from sparrow farts. It takes a little while depending on the length of the fart and the bridge. Contact me with your bank data right away and we’ll work something out.
Such a deal! Especially when you live in a place, like the UK, where they have unlimited, free electricity to such all this ‘petrol’ out of the air for free......
Nothing like a desert planet. Maybe they can grow Arabs next.
They get them from Dragon’s teeth, i think.
And what is the cost per liter to produce it?
British Engineers Produce Something Completely Impractical In The Real World.
This is the kind of innovation that will attract the wrath of oil producers, but the petroleum industry would embrace because they can produce and sell it without being dependent on questionable governments. I am skeptical, but the process could work especially as a method of storing interrupted power sources such as wind and solar. I like the effects without consideration of the environment, and we need to push all possible methods.
This is the kind of innovation that will attract the wrath of oil producers, but the petroleum industry would embrace because they can produce and sell it without being dependent on questionable governments. I am skeptical, but the process could work especially as a method of storing interrupted power sources such as wind and solar. I like the effects without consideration of the environment, and we need to push all possible methods.
5 liters = 1.32 gallons. I could fill my pickup in no time.
Yikes...Be really afraid, they’re going to go after huge sums of taxpayer money in subsidies.
Hopefully Obama will be long gone.
You beat me to it. IF the process could be made efficient enough then it could be used as a means of storing excess energy generated from a nuclear power plant. It can never be used to generate power, however, since it will always take far more energy to create fuel than can be recovered from the fuel.
By the way, I learned how to create clean burning pure hydrogen out of water back in my high school chemistry class 40 years ago. This is not new technology.
It’s a lot easier to create “Petrol” from Coal
The Germans worked it out in WWII
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process
http://seekingalpha.com/article/850891-a-new-vision-the-potential-for-coal-gasification-and-coal-chemical-industry-development-in-mongolia
It would appear that the process is ‘carbon neutral’. Any CO2 taken out of the atmosphere to produce the fuel would then be returned to the atmosphere when the fuel is burned. Of course this does not take into account any CO2 produced creating the energy inputs necessary to create the fuel in the first place.
Conservation of Energy rules the day.
I am really excited about carbon-neutral gasoline /sarc
Sure there is... but you kinda have to be God for that route to work.
hmmm, if the Brits decide to go through with this, I should buy stock in their electric companies!
Envirofascists never want to answer that question.
That’s all fine but I have the true revolutionary fuel. There are these small round things made from nickel and copper. And you can make energy with NOTHING but electricity. You put electricity in them and they store it. Then you hook these things up to am electric motor and BAM you can propel your car with electricity!
I think I am going to apply to nObama for a billion dollar financing. I think I am going to call these things.... Batteries.... Yeah that sounds right...
And I have developed a process for turning dog turds into gold bars.
Well, it might work if you were partnering w/ a brewery and capturing/processing the carbon-dioxide waste from fermenting*... that's kind of how we got gasoline in the first place: it was a waste product.
It might not be enough to dent the global supply, but if crude-prices are high it might be enough to turn a bit of profit.
I vote that this is a scam.
True; but it only takes a little over one volt to do electrolysis w/ water (that could easily be produced by solar) -- I don't know what the energy cost for sodium hydroxide electrolysis is though.
Even so, it would make more sense to partner with a brewery, as fermentation produces carbon-dioxide as a waste-product (and IIRC it's fairly high purity).
It likely is, as it seems to be trying to take carbon dioxide straight from the air... rather than capping a brewery or somesuch.
In all likelyhood, the best 'alternative energy' source is biodiesel, considering that there is no modification to the engine (or current designs) needed to use it and that the algae-production method looked very promising last I heard about it.
But then again, maybe it's because it could work that I haven't heard about it in a few years.
No, that was practical and useful. After all, if it stopped running, you could park it in your living room as sculpture. :P
From the information given, there’s no way to know whether this can go into mass production. But if electricity can be converted into gasoline with reasonable efficiency, then nuclear energy will fill up our gas tanks. If cold fusion can be made practical, even better.
That should be all anyone needs to know in order to make a reasonable conclusion regarding this process. It will most likely take 100 bucks worth of electricity to produce an ounce of fuel.
I hope I'm wrong, but so far, history has shown us a 100% accuracy rate of pessimistic observations regarding any such magical energy production methods.
The £1.1m project, in development for the past two years
Five liters in three months, at a cost of 1.1 MILLION British Pounds.... what a bargain. So you use enough energy to power how many cities to produce this fuel in limited quantities... Don't let Obama hear- he will sink US Taxpayer $$$ into it...
Pretty clear to me that the vast majority of posters here are missing the point. Ah never mind....
Well, He passed that law so I suppose He can amend it.
Yep, me too. Too bad it's nearly impossible to store.
I know you’re being facetious, but *IF* this process is reasonably efficient then it is a far more effective means of storing energy. Consider the fact that the bulky, heavy, state-of-the-art battery in the Chevy Volt only holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. Ultimately all fossil fuels are the storage medium for solar & geothermal energy from prehistoric times.
“It will probably take more energy input than what you get out of it.”
Ya think? :)
“While the technology has the backing of Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers, it has yet to capture the interest of major oil companies”.
Possibly because they need more than a few tons of petrol.
Yeh -- as long as the air is over a dairy farm or a Mexican burrito wagon at lunchtime.
Produced 6 liters of petrol in 3 months? And I apparently missed the part where they mentioned how many thousand pounds it cost per liter to produce! Right up there with Solyndra, et al!
not to mention that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would be harmful to plants and crops ... doh!
Sure it’s a scam
It’s a scam to get tax dollars to develop a completely useless process.
No, since burning the fuel will release the CO2 back into the air.
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