insert Adam Something’s “shitting in the living room” metaphor here
I wonder is a scaled up version of this could work for grid-scale medium length storage. Smoothing out weeks of dunkleflaute is the main blocker to going to a primarily renewable grid. Gasoline is a lot easier to store than hydrogen and large scale gasoline generators should get close to the efficiency of natural gas peaker plants.
It takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline.
We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume!
Eh, not quite.
Sometimes electricity is so cheap that we could be giving it away for free. This and other techniques could be used to store excess energy for when we need it later.
Sustainable energy is the key to making the Aircela machine practical and cost-effective. Running it on the grid from coal or natural gas power plants defeats the purpose of removing carbon from the air, and the electricity will cost more, too.
The company themselves even state that this is supposed to be driven by solar/wind, otherwise it makes no sense. This is regular PtX but in SFF for modular small scale deployment.
Yeah, put these in Iceland, Scotland or the Sahara where there’s virtually unlimited zero-carbon power available and they make a world of sense.
Carbon dioxide needs to be captured were there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. So especially around cities with lots of car traffic, or around fossil fuel power plants…
So… It would be better to stop car traffic and fossil fuel power plants first, before doing carbon capture. And the purpose of that should be, making the air cleaner. And putting that carbon back into a less environmental damaging state.
Finally a way to turn clean solar into something I can burn.
It’s not worse. It’s carbon neutral (as long as the energy source is renewable like the sun). Any carbon it takes in will be released exactly back to where it was. It’s a much much better option than digging up oil.
On top of that, there are currently no likely possibilities of replacing gasoline for things like planes. So replacing their gas with carbon neutral gas will improve the situation by 100%.
Well, it shouldn’t be carbon neutral… It should used to get carbon out of the atmosphere and into a less damaging substance.
Carbon capture does not replace getting rid of our dependency on burning fossil fuels.
We wouldn’t get back the same amount that we are burning anyway. So this approach is worse, because dumb people think it would save us, without us changing the way we produce energy.
It is worse, because it is a distraction from actually doing something.
Any carbon it takes in will be released exactly back to where it was.
Except it won’t be. Combustion is not a perfect CxHy O2 > CO2 + H2O reaction. Theres a bunch of other side reactions happening, NOx, unburned hydrocarbons, particulate matter, carbon monoxide. There are lots of challenges to continuing to utilize hydrocarbon fuels, especially in mobile/small scale applications where you can’t clean the exhaust stream.
Except it won’t be.
None of the things you’ve described increase the carbon output.
What chemical reaction gets more carbon out than it puts in?
(Where do these new carbon atoms come from, fusion?)If anything, those other products include non-gaseous compounds which sequester the carbon from the fuel into a solid resulting in a net-negative amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Those side-products are not good, I’m not saying otherwise, but they are not additional carbon.
None of the things you’ve described increase the carbon output.
Right. Because none of it is a fucking coal mine. Which is the only thing that can provide “carbon output”. Except a diamond mine, of course.
Sounds like someone needs to lower your temperature setting.
There is no such thing as “carbon neutral”. Nor is there a problem with carbon. You’re talking about carbon dioxide which is as close to carbon as table salt is to chlorine.
Battery electric aeroplanes aren’t as far off as you might think, but you’re technically correct that they don’t currently exist.
For planes there’s a catalytic process that can turn ethanol into jet fuel.
Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.
Meanwhile, an electric vehicle could go hundreds of miles on the same amount of energy input…
Gasoline is a very high energy material. You can put it into anything (that works with gas) in seconds and store it for months.
Is this a perfect solution? No. But it’s technically possible to achieve carbon neutrality on an ICE vehicle with zero modification, you’ve just got ~50% loss on the solar you collected.
Storage density is always þe bitch. Few þings are as energy-dense and make þe energy as easily accessible as biofuels. Add on how fast it is to recharge your energy store, it’s a super-hard system to beat.
Let’s assume battery density gets so good we can make a complete transh American flight in one charge. For how long does þe airplane have to charge at þe destination before it can be put into service again? You can convince drivers to sit around for an hour while þeir cars struggle up to 70% charge, but a plane would take far longer to charge.
Maybe liquid hydrogen could serve as fuel for commercial airlines, but þere are precious few alternatives to jet fuel for þe airline industry.
Triggered by “ICE” rn
First Magic: The Gathering, and now this. Have Republicans no shame?
What Republican reference is MTG?
Marjorie Taylor Greene - former(recently) GA House rep
I have never heard of her…but I don’t follow US politics either so that’s probably why.
Your life is better for it
Another device of the type that Thunderf00t used to ‘bust.’
The “Why ‘Feminism’ is poisoning atheism”, “Feminism Vs FACTS” chud?
I’m surprised he still has an audience tbh. Well, sadly not that surprised.
Yeah, anyone who isn’t blindly loyal to your cause deserves no recognition.
Make sure you always go out of your way to convince others to only watch what you approve of.
“Why ‘Feminism’ is poisoning atheism”
What? How are these two topics related at all?
Oh, they’re not but I guess you’d have to ask him for the answer. Those videos are both still up if you want to watch a long stream of misogyny and logical fallacies dressed up as an ‘owning’.
Thunderf00t
Love his YT channel… he destroys Elon reputation (if he ever had one…) and calls his 90% BS . lol
Sell these to the “but mah vroom vroom noise” crowd and switch everything to electric.
Hmm, 75kwh to make a gallon of gasoline at even a low estimate of 15 cents per kWh is $11.25/gallon. That’s if they meet their full efficiency targets. I’m sure there will be a few who are willing to pay but it’s pretty expensive fun.
The big car brands in Germany are pivoting to internal combustion for the top as an audible status symbol and electric for the common man, so that tracks.
So power to x, basically
But smaller
Reusing the co2 in the air. Its a good idea.
No it’s not a good idea.
It’s extremely inefficent compared to just using elecricity directly for whatever you’re planning to do with it.
The extension cord won’t reach my Airbus
Still a good idea for specific cases though. An example from current news close to me: We have line ships on lake Zürich that can’t be electrified because either they are too old to sustain a major internal rework or, for some, they can’t carry the battery weight.
For a case like that I’d prefer if they put some CO2 capture stations up to keep running the ships rather than scrapping them prematurely.
… if the capture stations work, that is. Can’t trust the word of a startup too much.
All the catches
