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Startup Aims To Turn Solar and Wind Power Into Carbon-Neutral Gasoline (sciencemag.org) 109

Posted by EditorDavid from the cleaning-energy dept.
"Last month, Rob McGinnis fired up a new machine that runs combustion in reverse, using electricity to weld carbon dioxide and water into liquid fuels," writes Slashdot reader sciencehabit: McGinnis, a chemical engineer and entrepreneur, has launched a new start-up called Prometheus, in hopes that he will be able to synthesize fuels more cheaply than energy giants can drill for oil, ship it and refine it. If powered by solar, wind, or other renewable power sources, McGinnis' machine will churn out carbon neutral fuels, eliminating the fossil from fossil fuels. At the heart of McGinnis' machine is proprietary carbon nanotube-based filter that separates fuel molecules from water without the large energy input normally required for this job. Can a former Yale University theater major remake the $2 trillion liquid fuels industry?
The article adds that the startup signed its first deal last month, "to begin to sell carbon-neutral fuel to Boom Supersonic, a Denver company building a supersonic commercial airliner."
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Startup Aims To Turn Solar and Wind Power Into Carbon-Neutral Gasoline More

Startup Aims To Turn Solar and Wind Power Into Carbon-Neutral Gasoline

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  • cost (Score:3)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Saturday July 06, 2019 @01:52PM (#58882864)

    Once the machine is working efficiently, electricity will make up about one-third of its operating costs.

    So, what's the other 2/3rd ?

  • Burning Stuff (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 )

    Burning stuff is not human neutral. We can stop putting carbon monoxide and other trace toxins of combustion into the air I breathe, we breathe. What right do you claim to do that in an age where we no longer need to do that and is only continuing because of cost because of greed. You want to pollute the air I breathe, a what point of you doing so, do I have the right to punch you in the face because there is no longer an honest need beyond greed, to do so.

    Stop burning stuff, it is a fair and reasonable re

  • This sounds awfully like a scam I've heard (Score:4, Informative)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Saturday July 06, 2019 @02:05PM (#58882928)

    Separate fuel from water through a 'proprietary' 'carbon nanotube' filter using solar power only. Yeah, sure, and I have a bridge to sell you.

    Looking into the article, it's actually consuming zeolite (silicon, aluminum and oxygen) as a catalyst and the filter doesn't exist yet - so basically they're a perpetuum mobile fueled by external processes and magic.

    • it's actually consuming zeolite (silicon, aluminum and oxygen) as a catalyst

      Umm, a catalyst isn't consumed when it's used. So the zeolite, if it's a catalyst, is going to last the lifetime of the plant and go to a recycler when the plant is shut down....

    • I agree.

      The article is incomplete in that it doesn't discuss waste management.

      And there's this:

      Even if all goes according to plan, McGinnis will face a long road to compete with the likes of ExxonMobil. He'll have to prove he can build a fuelmaker cheaply enough to make its gasoline affordable. That could be tough if turning it on makes sense only when renewable electricity prices bottom out. The fuelmaker also works only with a source of clean water. And before he can market his invention, he'll need to prove that his fuels can directly substitute for fossil-derived versions.

      I'd like to see numbers that show total energy input vs energy contained in the final product.

      • I'd like to see numbers that show total energy input vs energy contained in the final product.

        With solar it is not an issue. You have to spend the electricity anyway and the panels are a one-time cost.
        Also from TFA:

        Synthesizing the fuel is the easy part. Peidong Yang's team and groups at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and the University of Illinois in Urbana have published papers in the past 3 years showing that electricity and nanosize copper catalysts can turn CO2 and water into a mix of alcohols.
        And startups including a New Orleans, Louisiana, company called ReactWell are pursuing related approaches.

        Thus far, the ORNL team has reported the highest efficiency, turning 23% of the electrical energy into fuel.
        But all the groups using the approach to make alcohols face the challenge of separating the fuel from the water. McGinnis says his membranes are the answer.
        They are "the new piece in the puzzle no one else has."

        Actual issue is the viability of the carbon nanotube filters they CLAIM to have and whether their prototypes will ever produce a) any fuel, b) produce it at greater efficiency than the competition and c) HOW DOES IT SCALE.

        In December 2018, he received $150,000 from Y Combinator, the Mountain View, California, seed funder hosting the pitch fair, to build a prototype of his air-to-gasoline-maker.
        The result was a refrigerator-size contraption of catalysts, tubes, electronics, and filters, assembled a week before the pitch fest.

        But before the demo, the machine sprang a leak.

        Also:

        He expects the device, when optimized, to produce 20 liters of gasoline per week.
        ...
        Next year, the company plans to build a $500,000 shipping container-size demonstration plant that can produce hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel per year".

        And then there's the issue of the writer of the article [sciencemag.org] fundamentally not understanding the elementary concepts of physics and chemistry he is writing about.

        When air blows through the chamber, the CO2 it contains reacts with water, producing carbonic acid-the same molecule acidifying the oceans.
        That acid, in turn, reacts on a copper catalyst coating the negative electrode, or cathode, to create CO.
        The cathode also strips protons off water molecules, leaving behind negatively charged hydroxide ions.
        Those ions travel to a positively charged electrode, or anode, where they react to form water and oxygen gas.
        Meanwhile, at the cathode, multiple CO molecules and protons are transformed into ethanol and other alcohols.

    • To be fair, there's nothing magic about creating hydrocarbon fuels using electricity. People have been doing it for a long time. There've even been some small scale demonstrations of running commercial airplanes on manufactured jet fuel. The problems are economic: it's cheaper to dig your hydrocarbons out of the ground than to synthesize them from water and CO2. If enough countries get serious about carbon taxes or other ways of restricting greenhouse gases, that could change.

  • This Sounds Like Unadulterated Bullshit! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why waste time with this. Surely a guy this smaht would just go straight to cold fusion.

  • Just as real as Boom (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Saturday July 06, 2019 @02:12PM (#58882956)

    The water is split into "fuel" (H+O) and that requires a lot of power.

    "Proprietary carbon filter nanotubes" = "Investors, please give me money"

    Splitting a molecule of water is so energy-intensive that it costs more electric power to do it than the value of the hydrogen you get out of it. That's why countries with nuclear reactors do it, and the rest of us don't.

    This "theater major" is putting on the show of his life. ...and the punchline is that the nonexistent supersonic plane will run on it!!! /s

    E

  • That water contains refined and blended gasoline which can be filtered out from the rest of water.

  • "If powered by solar, wind, or other renewable power sources, McGinnis' machine will churn out carbon neutral fuels, eliminating the fossil from fossil fuels."

    How about we make this more efficient by removing a rather pointless conversion - meaning we use those renewable power sources directly, as much as possible? Internal combustion engines really only make economic sense if we get a net power gain when we obtain and use the fuel, like we currently do with drilling oil. If we want to get away from that,

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "If powered by solar, wind, or other renewable power sources, McGinnis' machine will churn out carbon neutral fuels, eliminating the fossil from fossil fuels."

      How about we make this more efficient by removing a rather pointless conversion - meaning we use those renewable power sources directly, as much as possible? Internal combustion engines really only make economic sense if we get a net power gain when we obtain and use the fuel, like we currently do with drilling oil. If we want to get away from that, it makes more sense to just make a wholesale move over to electric motors.

      You seem to be forgetting that almost all cars are running on gasoline, and what you're suggesting (using electric cars instead I assume) would mean mining tons and tons of lithium and other elements instead of just continuing to run our existing cars.

      Nothing is stopping us from doing both, but either way environmentalists will have something to complain about, even if they aren't doing it yet.

      • That's a really good point there. It's more environmentally friendly to keep using an existing item then buy a whole new one, even if the new one is "greener" across it's lifetime. So, we shouldn't force people to stop using old cars etc, because that would in fact cause a huge spike in production, mining, CO2 emissions etc.

    • If we want to get away from that, it makes more sense to just make a wholesale move over to electric motors.

      Electric motors are great. Batteries, however, are not so great unless you're relatively well off financially. (hint: there's a reason you don't see any EVs at those "buy-here-pay-here" dealers in sketchy parts of town).

      Carbon neutral fuels are fine, but it's probably more efficient to let good ol' mother nature do the work of turning sunlight and CO2 into biomass, and then processing that into fuel, rather than whatever investment scam voodoo science is behind this crap. You can cheat dumb investors, bu

    • > , it makes more sense to just make a wholesale move over to electric motors.

      No one alive today will ever see a battery powered supersonic passenger jet that can cross the Atlantic. That is in this article. If you think the world will go oil free in 40 years, you either stop developing things like space craft, jets... or look to other ways to produce a fuel equivalent from renewable sources.

      Most strip mines fill mining equipment with 100 GPM fuel pumps, when do you think we will see a 270 MW charger th

    • You insensitive clod.

      Application of the science can kill this guy's revenue stream.

      But you don't care about him. You only think of the science.

    • How about we make this more efficient by removing a rather pointless conversion - meaning we use those renewable power sources directly, as much as possible?

      Because electric batteries currently have an energy density [wikipedia.org] about two orders of magnitude lower than gasoline. That's not a big deal with fixed ground installations. But for transportation applications like ships and especially planes, energy density matters a lot. More weight you have to carry around directly translates into more energy you need to

    • Or use it to produce jet fuel instead of gasoline, an application not easily converted to direct electric usage.

    • Does the wind blow all the time and the sun shine all the time? If not, then using spare energy to generate fuels makes sense. Storage and transport. Sure, you could have a solar car but what about if you want to drive it at night?

      • Also just considered: How do you power aircraft with solar and/or batteries? You need fuels, which is why this start-up is linking with an aircraft maker. One problem with electric batteries for planes is that planes get lighter when the fuel is burnt, so they can travel farther, whereas batteries stay the same weight, meaning you're lugging the dead weight of batteries around for at least half the flight.

  • Did anyone let the US Navy know that someone finally figured out the same thing they did SEVEN YEARS AGO?

    https://www.military.com/defen... [military.com]

    But the US Navy wanted to power this technology with nuclear power. Because it's powered by nuclear power then it's simply a waste of time, money, and energy. At least according to Vice.

    https://news.vice.com/en_us/ar... [vice.com]

    Now that we are using wind and solar power, well, that changes everything. Because now it's "green".

    What a bunch of bullshit. This technology has been

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Making the thing efficient if the part that requires a breakthrough, all the rest of it just relatively simple chemistry. Call us after the breakthrough; until then he's selling snake oil.
      The breakthrough is already here. Hence is founding a company manufacuring the thing ... it is in the article, you could read it.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Well, you could have been more clear about that :D

          Anyway, if the energy is more or less free, the efficiency is not relevant. However you are right that biofuel is only a part time solution, even if it is made via this process.

  • Using renewable energy directly is massively cheaper and better. The only reason we see these articles? Because the fossil fuel companies are in a panic to try to convince people they are still relevant in the future. They are not

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Hardly. There's a lot more to it than just electric vehicles. Our transportation infrastructure is based on chemical storage. And that's not going to change anytime soon, nor is it really possible. Electric cars are cool and all, but they are relatively limited. To say nothing of the carbon cost of manufacturing all those batteries.

      Carbon neutral chemical fuel would nicely solve the greenhouse gas emission problem while still utilizing ubiquitous thermal expansion engines.

  • With thermal conversion [ca.gov], all of the paper and plastics in landfills can be converted into carbon-neutral fuel. The solar and wind can go towards generating carbon-negative energy instead.
  • All these countries that are mandating that cars be all-electric vs. just setting strict emission standards are stupid. The problem is the pollution not necessarily how the engine works. its better to stick to a goal and allow all forms of innovation.

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