This article on producing gasoline the air and water caught my eye as I was reading the news at Al Jazeera. Let’s be upfront here people, get your skeptical hats on because the process described seems to be a little short on detail (and verification) at the moment.
“A small company working in two converted shipping containers says it has found a way to make petrol from fresh air and water. Air Fuel Synthesis Chief Executive Peter Harrison says the process could help curb climate change by providing a cleaner alternative to oil.
“We’ve taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol,” he told Al Jazeera. “For a country like the UK it means we could create all the fuel you want from renewable energy.”
Limitless hydrocarbon based energy? Tell us more.
“Harrison explained that they use a 30 foot tower on top of their first container to capture CO2 from the air. The process of separation involves combining the air with sodium hydroxide and passing it through an electrolyser.
A similar method is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The CO2 and hydrogen are then synthesised to make methanol, and eventually petrol.
It cost them around $800,000 to build the plant. Since the mini-refinery was switched on in August, they have made 15 litres of fuel that could be used to power any normal car.
Philippa Oldham, head of transport at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, is excited at the breakthrough. “The process of making petrol from air is relatively straightforward and really does work,” she told Al Jazeera.
Of course, there is a downside at the moment.
“The barrier to expansion is that the process uses lots of power. Much more energy is fed into the plant, in the form of electricity, than is extracted from it.
Because of this, Lee Cronin, professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow, is cautious about its potential.
“The bottom line – making very optimistic assumptions about their efficiency, if this company was to scale up to produce enough gasoline to meet demand in the USA, it would require half the world’s energy consumption every day,” he said. “That is clearly unacceptable.”
Mmmm….good point. There is a counter argument though.
Harrison believes Scotland’s ambitious targets mean there will be plenty of spare power. “There is a lot of renewable energy around at the moment that is wasted,” he said. “What we want to do is to catch all that spare renewable electricity and use it in other forms. Petrol is something that is very useful and easy to store.”
Now doesn’t that just lace things up nicely. One of the problems with renewable energy is how to efficiently store the energy when demand has been met. One could imagine that the excess energy during non peak times could be transferred to into this process, creating gasoline that stores energy very efficiently and is easy to stockpile.
I’d like to see some numbers as to exactly how energy intensive this process is as that will play a deciding role in the viability of this new technology.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
9 comments
January 17, 2013 at 7:00 am
writerdood
Very interesting. I am skeptical, yes, but I find the idea of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and using it for something a good start.
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January 17, 2013 at 9:59 am
MoS
I received an article earlier this week detailing the U.S. Navy’s experiment at producing hydrocarbons (jet fuel) from CO2 scavenged at sea out of sea water. Concentrations of CO2 in sea water are about 140 times that in air. The idea was that the navy’s aircraft carriers could then be self-sufficient in fuel for their air wings.
Apparently the technology worked but it was still too expensive to warrant adopting it in the near term. It is believed it would be much less costly to produce liquid hydrocarbons at coastal stations and would even be a bargain if CO2 was taxed at actual sequestration costs.
The real benefit to both these schemes is that they work on surface carbon instead of safely buried fossil carbon.
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January 17, 2013 at 11:07 am
The Arbourist
@ Mos
Isn’t that the rub though? Most of the new technologies do come out to be prohibitively expensive, or not cost efficient. We need a government to get behind something like this a make it a priority.
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January 17, 2013 at 11:13 am
Rob F
The burning of hydrocarbons is exothermic, and therefore producing hydrocarbons out of CO2 in air pretty much takes more energy then you recover by burning the products. Burning the products of this reaction will simply dump the carbon back into the air. One of the more positive things is that it presumably allows direct removal of CO2 from the air, if the CO2 is somehow sequestered (perhaps by pumping it underground).
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January 17, 2013 at 11:31 am
The Arbourist
@Rob F
Now here is something to think about. What if, they set up the process near CO2 intensive projects, like oh say the oilsands and worked their magic with the emmisions from there and then worked their magic. Like a co-generation set up.
Hydrogen via electrolysis is the cheaper of the two inputs and if the CO2 is already being produced without having to distill it from the air, it could keep costs down.
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January 17, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Rob F
Taking the CO2 from emissions from (say) coal sands,could well take less energy than extracting it from air, since the concentration of CO2 in emissions is greater than in the air. However, that still does nothing about the energy it takes to take the oxygen out of CO2 and add hydrogen to create methanol CH3OH. In order to make a difference with regards to CO2 emissions, the energy to create methanol would have to come from non CO2 emitting sources. And if the methanol is burnt as fuel, then it becomes CO2 again and is in the atmosphere. Hence, as I see it, that CO2 still ends up in the atmosphere; it just takes longer to get there. Hence, it might slightly reduce emissions on a per unit of time basis, but I still don’t see how it will reduce CO2 emissions in the long run. A better idea would probably be to simply take that CO2 from the oil sands and pump it underground, therefore sequestering it. (Doing this takes energy. Using a coal plant as an example, if such a plant uses carbon capture and storage, it will use about 25% of its energy output to store the emitted carbon.)
And if there really enough renewable energy to create enough liquid fuel to meet energy needs, why not simply cut out the middle molecule use that renewable energy to replace liquid fuels with plug in cars and to shut down coal plants, or use that to engage in direct air capture and remove CO2?
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January 17, 2013 at 1:42 pm
bleatmop
Rob F has the right of it. Any of these energy creation schemes usually require using more energy to create than it will to use. Thus, why not just use the energy source as your primary source? The only practical use of these types of technologies is perhaps using them as a battery if the primary source of energy is not portable. Whether it be this solution or hydrogen fuel cells, the basic chemistry that it takes more energy to create the bonds than what you will be able to harness on their release can’t be overcome.
Hydrocarbons from fresh air and water sounds like a horrible idea anyway. Fresh water is incredibly rare in this world and to use it for energy should be a crime against humanity (cough cough oil sands). Not only that, but burning hydrocarbons tends to pollute the fresh air and water that you’re not using in creating them in this process.
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January 17, 2013 at 3:07 pm
MoS
@ bleatmop The U.S. Navy experiment ran with sea water. What I read indicated that water was then separated into acid and base and, via some sort of osmosis, the CO2 was extracted, the streams re-mixed and returned to the sea. I guess it’s easier to do on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and would release the warship from its dependence on fleet tankers to deliver jet fuel. In peace time, however, the cost factor favours the traditional tanker supply..
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January 17, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Perhaps it’s time to start the alternative « The Words on What…
[…] The Arbourist has a post about a small company that has a proposal to create liquid fuels out of water and carbon dioxide from the air. While the proposal looks promising, since, as far as I can tell, it takes more energy to create the liquid fuel than is released by burning that fuel, and that any carbon extracted from the atmosphere while creating the fuel will ultimately be re–emitted when that fuel is used, I have difficulty seeing how much of a difference this particular technology would make. (See also my comments at the Arbourist’s post). However, if new evidence or technology emerges that allows this technology to make more of a difference, I will certainly change my mind about it. […]
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