Comment by 0000011111 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0000011111 | Hacker News Reader

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As a person with a background in Environmental Studies, a c o2 to fuel conversion technology such as this sounds revolutionary! I am most curious about the fundementals.

Can you give us more specifics on the process such as;

1. What is the scale of the operation? Does this process need to be done at a large scale to work out economically? 2. Take a Boeing 737 for example which has a fuel capacity of ~6,875 Gallons. How much would it cost to build a C02 refinery that could produce that much fuel daily?

3. How much does it cost at a small scale? Say you have a miminal viable product that can refine 100 gallons of gasoline per day. What is the cost of that production in USD?

4.How many KWh of electricity would be required to refine 1 gallon of fuel using your current prototype?

I would love to hear / see data your numbers.

Thanks, 01

The smallest scale at which we can operate profitably is probably in the 100,000 gallon/year range, although that could go down over time. We will make modular, mobile systems that don't have to be very big to be profitable. One shipping container will likely be able to do 100,000 gal/yr for example.

The electricity required will be approx. 60 kWh/gallon.

60 kWh is about 200 mi of range in a gen 2 Chevy Volt, while a gallon of gasoline is worth about 40 miles. Just trying to put the efficiency in context using something I'm familiar with.

That shipping container model would be ideal for remote villages in Alaska! Making fuel locally would be so much more energy efficient!

"60kWh/gallon" -- is that gallon of gasoline? Or ethanol? Or CO2?

If you know the figures off-hand (to save me doing the chemistry), how much water and CO2 is required to produce the gallon of output?

Gasoline. Each metric ton of CO2 corresponds to approx. 113 gallons of gasoline. The amount of water is approx. 1:1 by volume.

Very rough calculation:

* 60 kWh / gallon of gasoline * 100,000 gallons / year * = 6 GWh / year * = 3.5 MW solar array (from on-line calculator) * ~ 18,000 m^2 of solar panels (500W, 1.9m * 1.3m) (roughly 3 football fields of solar panels).

Not to be flippant; but doesn't that seem like a surprisingly small installation for ~273 gallons a day?

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