Researchers Demonstrate Complete Solar-Powered Hydrocarbon Production (arstechnica.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Carbon capture. Hydrogen production. Synthetic fuels. All of these technologies have been proposed as potential resources for dealing with the crises created by our carbon dioxide emissions. While they have worked in small pilot demonstrations, most of them haven't demonstrated that they can scale to provide the economical solutions we need. In the meantime, a group of European researchers sees the methods as part of a single coherent production platform, one that goes from sunlight and air to kerosene. Thanks to a small installation on the roof of a lab in Zurich, the team has been producing small amounts of different fuels using some mirrors and a handful of reaction chambers. While the full production process would also need to demonstrate that it can scale, the researchers calculate that the platform could fuel the entire commercial aircraft industry using a small fraction of the land in the Sahara.
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Overall, the results are clear: The process can work, but it's not productive enough to matter in its current state, so a large portion of the paper considers optimization and scale. Optimization is mostly a matter of many little improvements, like the better use of waste heat to ensure all the necessary heat is provided by the solar reflectors. Other targets include better catalysts and more efficient means of storing the gasses between steps. Then there's a matter of scale. To fuel a daily round-trip flight between New York City and London, the researchers estimate, it would take 10 mirror farms directing sunlight at reaction chambers in an area that gets strong and consistent sunlight. That translates to covering around 3.8 square kilometers of the desert with mirrors. (For context, that's about a quarter of the size of California's Ivanpah solar facility.) Providing for all of commercial aviation's fuel needs would require taking over half of one percent of the surface of the Sahara Desert. And that means a lot of mirrors.
The researchers suggest we will likely see the sort of dramatic cost reductions seen in other renewable resources, including technologies like concentrating solar power. That mirror-based tech saw prices drop by 60 percent over a recent 15-year period. But it's questionable whether the sorts of price drops we've seen with photovoltaics are possible, given the large material costs of all those mirrors and their associated hardware, plus the maintenance costs of keeping them clean. The flipside is that concentrating solar power costs have continued to come down, and a lot of those savings could probably be applied to heat-driven chemistry like this. And it's possible that this basic concept -- solar-powered green chemistry -- could be adapted to produce fuels with a higher value than kerosene.
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Overall, the results are clear: The process can work, but it's not productive enough to matter in its current state, so a large portion of the paper considers optimization and scale. Optimization is mostly a matter of many little improvements, like the better use of waste heat to ensure all the necessary heat is provided by the solar reflectors. Other targets include better catalysts and more efficient means of storing the gasses between steps. Then there's a matter of scale. To fuel a daily round-trip flight between New York City and London, the researchers estimate, it would take 10 mirror farms directing sunlight at reaction chambers in an area that gets strong and consistent sunlight. That translates to covering around 3.8 square kilometers of the desert with mirrors. (For context, that's about a quarter of the size of California's Ivanpah solar facility.) Providing for all of commercial aviation's fuel needs would require taking over half of one percent of the surface of the Sahara Desert. And that means a lot of mirrors.
The researchers suggest we will likely see the sort of dramatic cost reductions seen in other renewable resources, including technologies like concentrating solar power. That mirror-based tech saw prices drop by 60 percent over a recent 15-year period. But it's questionable whether the sorts of price drops we've seen with photovoltaics are possible, given the large material costs of all those mirrors and their associated hardware, plus the maintenance costs of keeping them clean. The flipside is that concentrating solar power costs have continued to come down, and a lot of those savings could probably be applied to heat-driven chemistry like this. And it's possible that this basic concept -- solar-powered green chemistry -- could be adapted to produce fuels with a higher value than kerosene.
Or they could have a zoom meeting (Score:2)
But which is more feasible, green hydrogen stored in liquid hydrogen tanks on an aircraft of new design, or a green hydrocarbon fuel?
Is is really more practical to take all the carbon along, to make it a room temperature liquid?
Or just use liquid hydrogen cryo-tanks?
I'm pretty sure green hydrogen can be produced at scale with less of the Sahara desert involved.
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But which is more feasible, green hydrogen stored in liquid hydrogen tanks on an aircraft of new design, or a green hydrocarbon fuel?
The hydrocarbon fuel is more feasible because it is a drop-in replacement for the current fuel.
Hydrogen requires an entirely new design of both engine and fuselage (for the much larger and colder fuel tanks).
The real answer is "both": Synthetic hydrocarbons or biofuels can be used immediately. Cryogenic H2 can be used in a decade or two when the technology is ready.
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You can have a Zoom meeting across the Atlantic, but you can't virtualize two weeks in Tuscany. Technology like this could be a lot cheaper than trying to electrify aircraft.
Fuel production (Score:2)
Re:Fuel production (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sure, carbon-negative is even better than carbon-neutral. But nobody has a clue of how to do that for long-range commercial aviation. No clue how to do either, really.
Technically, thermolysis of biomass (wood etc.) should leave you with substantial elemental carbon to be buried, AND with hydrocarbons that could potentially be turned into airplane fuel. Of course practicality of such a process is another matter but the "no clue" part doesn't seem to be entirely true.
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Do you have any idea how much space all those oil fields take up? The Ghawar Field in SA is over 5000 square kilometres alone.
Mirrors are cheap to make. It can be done.
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When they say 4 square km of solar, I would expect they mean a fill factor close to one.
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Sure, carbon-negative is even better than carbon-neutral. But nobody has a clue of how to do that for long-range commercial aviation. No clue how to do either, really. The estimate of 4 square km of solar to power each airplane isn't super-surprising, and yet very ominous.
Theoretically you could do it with Ethanol, or something similar. Right now there are plans being kicked around to build a large pipeline that branches through the major agricultural regions of the American Midwest, leading to the Bakken formation in the Dakotas. https://www.harvestpublicmedia... [harvestpublicmedia.org]
The idea would be to capture CO2 produced during biofuel production and pipe it directly into the rock formations in a tremendous carbon capture operation. This works because chemically you lose half the CO2 durin
Re:Fuel production (Score:5, Insightful)
Their goal seems to be fuel production, while carbon should be sent underground.
This is wrong. Not all carbon should be sent underground, only excessive carbon should be. Like anything else, to much carbon is a bad thing. The environment actually needs some carbon to keep it healthy.
With that said, there is nothing wrong with synthetic hydrocarbon fuel depending on where the carbon comes from. If the carbon is pulled out of the atmosphere and combined with other elements to make the fuel then its nothing more than a energy storage system. An the carbon released by burning the fuel doesn't contribute to climate change. It in effect is a carbon neutral fuel, which is a good thing.
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The tech may have other applications, too, such as synthesizing rocket fuel on Mars. Sure, the solar resource is not as great there, but it may be more productive to use concentrated solar than PV. A modest-sized nuke would be great, too, but that's a different conversation.
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The tech may have other applications, too, such as synthesizing rocket fuel on Mars.
I can think of lots of application for the technology other than synthesizing rocket fuel on Mars. Until battery storage energy density catches up with hydrocarbon fuels we are going to be using them for a long time to come.
Aviation comes to mind. You can't replace the fuel tanks in a 747 with batteries and expect it to get off the ground and fly as far as it does now. Hydrocarbon based fuel is all there currently is for that.
Large ships and other ocean going floaty objects. Basically the same thi
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A battery powered vehicle of any type is a complex machine and not easily repaired in the field. It also a specialized skill set to fix one. These tools and skills are not going to be available in villages in Africa and India.
Where as a basic ICE engine can be fixed by someone basic education and a instruction manual. They are simple, reliable, and easily maintained.
You've never actually opened the hood of your Honda, have you.
There's nothing basic about the complexity of an ICE engine. I've done small engine overhauls, so I actually know what all the parts are and what they do. 80% of the people I know... don't. An electric car power train, meanwhile, consists of a battery bank, an inverter, a charge controller, a motor controller, and a motor. And sometimes a very simple electrically shifted transmission. The only intimidating part is the battery bank, and that'
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There's nothing basic about the complexity of an ICE engine.
I clearly said basic internal combustion engine. Not a modern one.
Let me tell you a story. My grandfather didn't finish high school. I think he got to the 6th grade but had to drop out. After WWII he bought a farm and a McCormick tractor around 1950. With nothing more than a owners manual and a box of tools he manages that tractor till the day he died. That farm is still in our family and so is that tractor. It is 70 years old and still runs perfectly.
It's a simple engine, simple to maintain and
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Let me tell you a story. My grandfather didn't finish high school. I think he got to the 6th grade but had to drop out. After WWII he bought a farm and a McCormick tractor around 1950. With nothing more than a owners manual and a box of tools he manages that tractor till the day he died. That farm is still in our family and so is that tractor. It is 70 years old and still runs perfectly.
And the emissions on that thing are catastrophic. Sure it works, but it epitomizes the generation that cut down ALL the trees and cut great gashes into mountains to get at the coal inside and turned the sky yellow with smog. They did great things. That could only have been done by them, because when they were done, there was nothing left.
It's a sweet story, but I doubt very much that it takes any more than a sixth grade education to manage a similarly simple electric tractor equipped with nickel-iron bat
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it is obvious that many people are locked into a mode of thinking where combustion (a caveman technology) is somehow cool if you make it more technologically advanced combustion. It's total bullshit. So you capture it, only to burn it again? Cavemen throughout history would applaud you. Stop burning things to make energy, when the sun is just ripe for the picking. Wind, tidal, geothermal, the list is long. It is only because so much money has been invested in oil/gas infrastructure that this is going to be
Carbon neutral a huge improvement (Score:5, Insightful)
it is obvious that many people are locked into a mode of thinking where combustion (a caveman technology) is somehow cool if you make it more technologically advanced combustion.
Its more obvious that some people are Sun Worshipers that view all other energy sources as heresy.
Its not that this generated hydrocarbon fuel is cool. It is that it is carbon neutral. President Biden added 2 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere flying to the climate conference in Scotland. If he had used a fuel such as the proposed one he would have added zero carbon. The proposed fuel is carbon neutral. That is a huge environmental improvement.
As for your solar solution. Batteries don't have the energy density of the hydrocarbon.
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President Biden added 2 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere flying to the climate conference in Scotland.
Your figure is WAY off. Here's an estimate from the 2019 summit
https://www.aviation24.be/mili... [aviation24.be]
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President Biden added 2 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere flying to the climate conference in Scotland.
Your figure is WAY off. Here's an estimate from the 2019 summit
Apologies, wrong units, 2.2 million pounds of carbon. Or 1 million kilograms of carbon for those outside the US.
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Apologies, wrong units, 2.2 million pounds of carbon. Or 1 million kilograms of carbon for those outside the US.
Still completely wrong. 1.5 tonnes of CO2 (actually less, see my other post) - aka 1500kg, aka a bit more than 3000 US pounds.
No idea what is wrong with your mind. How heavy is an airplane? Hu?
It is an absolute no brainer that your math is off by 3 or 4 zeros.
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Apologies, wrong units, 2.2 million pounds of carbon. Or 1 million kilograms of carbon for those outside the US. Still completely wrong. 1.5 tonnes of CO2 (actually less, see my other post) - aka 1500kg, aka a bit more than 3000 US pounds.
No idea what is wrong with your mind. How heavy is an airplane? Hu? It is an absolute no brainer that your math is off by 3 or 4 zeros.
You might want to recheck whatever brain provided your numbers.
"His fleet is comprised of the heavily modified Boeing 747 he travels on, known as Air Force One when the president is on board, an identical decoy, and two huge C-17 Globemaster planes to carry his battalion of cars and helicopters. Those jets each belch out an average of 54 pounds of carbon per mile flown."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
4 aircraft at 54 pounds of carbon per mile, a 10,000 mile trip. What does your mind make of that?
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4 aircraft at 54 pounds of carbon per mile, a 10,000 mile trip. What does your mind make of that?
No idea? 2 million _tonnes_ ? Most certainly not.
2 million _killo grams_ ? Most certainly not.
You did not mention he is flying 4 jets same time, how should anyone know that?
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4 aircraft at 54 pounds of carbon per mile, a 10,000 mile trip. What does your mind make of that?
No idea? 2 million _tonnes_ ? Most certainly not. 2 million _killo grams_ ? Most certainly not.
I'll give your a clue: "Apologies, wrong units, 2.2 million pounds of carbon. Or 1 million kilograms of carbon for those outside the US."
You did not mention he is flying 4 jets same time, how should anyone know that?
Other than its general knowledge, not a state secret, how did you think his armored limousine got from Washington DC to Glasgow? How did you think all those cabinet members that accompanied him got to Glasgow, with all their respective entourages of staffers? How the press pool that travels with the President got to Glasgow? That can't all fit on Air Force One.
Other tha
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President Biden added 2 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere flying to the climate conference in Scotland.
No he did not. No idea from where he flew, let's assume New York and let's assume he landed in Glasgow: 3,219.50 mi (5,181.28 km).
A plane needs about 2.5 litre of kerosine per 100km per passenger, so that is 518 litre. Assuming a litre of kerosine weights one kg (wich it does not - it is lighter) that is roughly 520kg.
Assuming 1 kg of kerosine burns completely into CO2 - which it does not, by volu
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2 million tons is the equivalent of 4 thousand fully loaded Airbus planes.
FTFY.
Also, the most efficient airplanes today need 4 liters of kerosene per passenger and 100 km when fully booked. Air Force One is an older 747 with at most 50 people on board, so here the consumption is more realistically 40 liters of kerosene per passenger and 100 km.
Still, the "millions of tons" figure is nonsense.
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Also, the most efficient airplanes today need 4 liters of kerosene per passenger and 100 km when fully booked. :D hence I used that number.
Nope, they need 2.5l
Thanx for fixing my million versus thousand mistake, though. Strange that this happens os often that one miscalculates there.
The Air Force one is a Boing. It needs nearly twice as much fuel than an Airbus.
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Thanx for fixing my million versus thousand mistake, though
LOL, misstating the units, imagine that.
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Still, the "millions of tons" figure is nonsense.
It was an error in units. The true figure was 2.2 million pounds of carbon. Apologies.
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Your computation is nonsense. For one aircraft if would have been 250,000 kg of carbon not the 1,500 your flawed method came up with.
Then there is the common knowledge that it takes more than one aircraft to move the President around on this sort of trip. The armored limousine doesn't go in Air Force One. Neither would all the cabinet officers plus their respective staff that were accompanying him.
"His fleet is comprised of the h
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It is still called pollution. You are still putting crap in the air that people end up breathing. So yeah, you are locked into thinking that pollution is just fine as long as it is "carbon neutral". Take a deep breath.
Actually if you read the article you will find that this fuel does not contain Sulfur and other contaminants.
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it is obvious that many people are locked into a mode of thinking where combustion (a caveman technology) is somehow cool if you make it more technologically advanced combustion
Um yeah. You may not realize this but combustion is one of the basic forces of the universe. The internal combustion engine has been with us for almost 200 years. During that time it has proven to be a very reliable and powerful source of power. Odds are it will be with us in some form or another for another hundred years. I'm even willing to bet that when we go to the stars it will go with us in some form or another.
Nothing wrong with the ICE. Where its problem lies in what we have chosen to use f
Re: Fuel production (Score:2)
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Re:Fuel production (Score:4, Informative)
The reason why you'd want to do this is because the energy density of hydrocarbons is still two orders of magnitude (i.e. about 100x) greater than lithium batteries. That's why the airline industry is especially interested in this. Right now if you tried to create an electric airliner with anywhere close to the same range as existing airliners, the weight of the lithium batteries alone would exceed the plane's maximum takeoff weight (i.e. it couldn't fly, which is kind of a deal-breaking trait for an airplane).
It's amazing how many people have the misconception that electric batteries are some magical technology which store electricity. They don't store electricity. They use the electricity to drive a chemical reaction, converting electrical energy into chemical potential energy. The chemical is much more stable over long periods of time (electricity stored in a capacitor leaks out on the order of seconds to minutes). And when you need the electricity back, you run the reverse chemical reaction, converting that chemical potential energy back into electricity.
They're doing the same thing here, they're just using a hydrocarbon as the chemical battery to store the collected solar energy. It's a problem with fossil fuels because we're taking hydrocarbons which were created and buried underground for hundreds of millions of years, and reintroducing that carbon back into the atmosphere thus upsetting the balance current life is built to survive. But if you create the hydrocarbons by pulling CO2 out of the air, then it's not a problem. The carbon you release by burning/converting the hydrocarbon back into CO2, is balanced out by the CO2 removed from the air to create the hydrocarbon in the first place. Heck, you could modify the process to separate the H2O from the C, forming graphite. Then just store blocks of graphite in abandoned coal mines, thereby using this process to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester carbon back underground. Thus helping to restore atmospheric CO2 levels to pre-industrialization levels.
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I, for one, welcome a way to use green energy to make greenhouse gas!
TL;DR (Score:1)
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It can scale. The only problem remaining is cost. Admittedly, it's a big problem.
Small fraction of the Shara desert (Score:3)
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It works for oil. We have massive oil fields in unstable parts of the world, with poor human rights records and armed conflicts.
Places like Morocco are relatively safe in comparison to some of the places we get oil from. The fuel would be a drop in replacement too, so if there was some kind of problem the aircraft could switch back to fossil fuels.
The money to be made from hydrocarbon and electricity generation will bring wealth to the region, like oil did for the Middle East. Security will be paid for.
Infrastructure doesn't exist in vacuum (Score:2)
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you need to place those thermal farms in very specific places with *direct* sunlight, since this thing completely breaks down in the presence of some clouds
That is wrong. And deserts rarely have clouds. If there is a cloud: it is called a sand storm.
And, your chemical plants need to be in exactly the same place where the primary energy gets collected. ...
Just the same situation as with Arabic oil
even if today mirrors seemed like a good idea to someone.
You know what a tank is, right?
I mean, those things,
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That is wrong.
No, that is how concentrating solar behaves. It's a well-known phenomenon.
And deserts rarely have clouds. If there is a cloud: it is called a sand storm.
I don't live in a desert.
You know what a tank is, right? I mean, those things, often made from metal, often round, about 10 yards high and 10 yards diameter? Some gasoline stations have far bigger ones underground. Does it really matter if your artificial fuel trickles 365/24h into that tank, or can you make the plant in a way that it produces just a little bit more during good days so that it compensates for bad days?
Yes, it matters from the capex perspective. You're trying to have a duty cycle as high as possibly for economy's sake.
I really wonder what all the nerds/software developers here are doing. If thy can not even think about simple solutions to simple problems.
Well, apparently they're heavily trying to ignore economics of things, if your comment is in any way representative of "all the nerds/software developers here".
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No, that is how concentrating solar behaves. It's a well-known phenomenon.
Sorry, it is wrong.
Thermal solar collectors work pretty well under clouds.
My father has one.
I don't live in a desert.
But the project about converting CO2 into artificial carbon based fuel: is supposed to be in a desert.
Yes, it matters from the capex perspective. You're trying to have a duty cycle as high as possibly for economy's sake.
Strange that Netherlands windmills, pumping water, disagree.
It is economical enough if you can produc
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Sorry, it is wrong.
No, it is right. Only non-imaging optics could possibly concentrate diffuse light, but that's just a pipe dream today. They're not very practical for this application and their concentration factor is low. The article talks of 5000 suns being used for this application (which you *can* reasonably get using parabolic mirrors from *direct* sunlight); the best non-imaging concentrators reach perhaps several suns from diffuse light.
Thermal solar collectors work pretty well under clouds. My father has one.
Your father has a tracking, *concentrating* thermal collector that is the topic o
Non-stop drip, drip of stories... (Score:2)
Re:Non-stop drip, drip of stories... (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder who's funding all these projects?
The project is at ETH Zurich, which is a Swiss University.
The funding is mostly coming from Swiss and EU taxpayers.
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Clue: Its rational to acknowledge extreism (Score:2)
Re: "climate alarmists" -- OK, denialist.
What a fool you are. Acknowledging one political extreme does not make you part of the other political extreme. One can be rational, centrist, scientific and acknowledge both political extremes. Try it sometime rather than be political.
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Can you tell me the difference between hedging (which is scientifically responsible) & wild speculation (which isn't)?
Alarmism is political manipulation, something quite different than hedging.
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Re:Non-stop drip, drip of stories... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, it is now forbidden to post research results? If you do not want to know about new research, you are either on the wrong site, or you should skip over the stuff that does not interest you.
I wonder who's funding all these projects?
The government of the EU and/or Switzerland. In this case most likely Switzerland alone. (You could google that btw. instead of ranting here)
Are you really that dumb?
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Damnit ;Where's the +1 terrifying; everyone needs to read this so we can agree to ban it mod when you need it?
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So, it is now forbidden to post research results?
Straight to a straw-man argument, I see. There's a lot of research published every day. It's a matter of which ones get picked up on by the popular science reporters. These fossil fuel-oriented ones like TFA don't seem to have much of a future & just aren't all that interesting. As many of the posts above have already commented, it just doesn't seem feasible by any stretch of the imagination.
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Straight to a straw-man argument, I see.
That was not a strawman.
If researchers at an university can not publish a research result without getting flamed at: you have some stupid mental problem.
it just doesn't seem feasible by any stretch of the imagination.
Correct. And what has that to do with researchers posting a new research result which probably was part of their PhD thesis?
NOTHING.
That is how science/research works. You probably never were at an university, or you would know that!
When I studied we had
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Saying your argument isn't a straw-man doesn't magically make it not so. Where have I criticised publishing science papers in scientific journals? This is what your response is implying, hence a straw-man argument. Surely, you can do better than this?
To reiterate & make it absolutely clear; Slashdot isn't a scientific journal & neither is 'Arse-Technica.' I'm not arguing against scientists publishing their findings in scientific journals. I'm simply complaining & raising questions about dubious
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Saying your argument isn't a straw-man doesn't magically make it not so.
Perhaps you have a different idea what a strawman is.
For me it is no strawman.
I'm simply complaining & raising questions about dubious journalism. /. and it contains no "costs"? Obviously the students never looked at the costs. Why would they? That is not their job!
And what exactly is dubious when some students (diploma or PhD) publish something, ars technika is repeating it, it ends up on
So: no strawman.
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You don't pay much attention to conceptual framing & editorial aspects of journalism, do you?
Reply to This
No I don't. Does not make sense in my world. Why would I care what a science editor is editing into a research result? I hope he does nothing.
However the fact is: they seems to have "repeated it". At least YOU claimed so.
And what else would they have done? Build such a thing in the backyard and note how much it costs? Because that was your first complaint: no information abut costs and yield (or s
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I was not discussing journalism.
And until the second last post of you: I was not aware that you wanted to discuss journalism.
My impression was that you were ranting about scientists, juniors at that, would slack by not giving cost estimations for making their research project into an industrial project. And I pointed out: that is not their job.
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I was not discussing journalism.
And until the second last post of you: I was not aware that you wanted to discuss journalism.
You're on the wrong site then mate. All /. does is regurgitate journalism of varying degrees of quality.
Green Freedom (Score:3)
I think Los Alamos National Laboratory did something similar back in 2007/2008 and concluded that gas prices at the pump would have to exceed $4.60 before it could compete. https://www.greencarcongress.c... [greencarcongress.com]
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If the first year of Biden's tenure is any indication - where gas prices have already risen $1.25 on average - this will be competitive around the time mid-terms come around.
And whether you like it or not, making solar viable by increasing fossil fuel cost by a factor of two or three is quite an accomplishment in a single Presidential term.
Greenwash (Score:2)
To the Scientists and Researchers :
If you cant see the problem with the following statement - then you dont understand what happens when kerosine is burned for jet fuel.
"A group of European researchers sees the methods as part of a single coherent production platform, one that goes from sunlight and air to kerosene."
Interesting Research But Solving The Wrong Problem (Score:1)
The very first sentence of the research abstract says:
"Aviation and shipping currently contribute approximately 8% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions ..."
The fundamental rule for ameliorating major issues is, biggest factors first!
Continue tinkering, but stop pretending it's significant!