$1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions?
gizmag.com
gizmag.com
Solar cells with fantastic properties and prices, windmills that produce more power than there is in the wind using configurations that have been tried long ago and discarded for very good reasons, magical conversion processes taking 'ordinary household substances' (to lift a phrase from FightClub) and turning them in to gasoline at lower-than-current-pump prices and on and on. Cars can be made to run on just about anything, almost anything containing carbon can be converted in to petroleum and by extension to its derivatives. That does not mean the process is either efficient, cheap, non-polluting, safe or even feasible in bulk.
These announcements happen with a frequency of about one per month (what was one of the hypes last year again? Solar Cells from human hair ???) never to be heard from again.
You can safely put this right next to the 'cure for cancer', 'a cure for aids', 'free unlimited energy' and a whole bunch of other things that humanity would very much like to have. If it's really that good and applicable it'll be on the shelves and someone will be raking in money hand over fist, they won't be talking about, they'll be selling it.
http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/concentrator/
One of the most fun projects I did back in those days.
I still have the Stirling engine :) (a tiny one, store bought)
I thought that having the Stirling engines on a mobile parabolic mount was a design weakness and figured out a way to do it better.
[1]http://www.solarfeeds.com/greentech-media/15471-so-cal-ediso...
check out LinkVolt ~ http://www.lincvolt.com/lincvolt_lincvoltgazette & at the SEMA address the week before the fire (vid) ~ http://www.shakeypictures.com/NYatSEMAlongvers10_12_10.html
This technology is micron-sized beads of ammonia borane encapsulated in various plastics. So far, they've figured out how to store hydrogen and release it at least modestly safely. They're working on varying the plastics so that they can recharge the beads with hydrogen; so far nothing they can demonstrate.
Problems: they can't recharge it, yet, it would be hella toxic if it caught on fire, and you'd have to handle it using powders-handling equipment. They gloss over this, saying it's "like a liquid", but it isn't; in particular powders are vulnerable to static charge, which in the case of metal hydrides wrapped in jellied gasoline is a Bad Thing.
That, and it's a hydrogen delivery mechanism, making it a chemical battery, not a fuel per se. One still needs to make the hydrogen.
This research, IMHO, is more likely to lead to better batteries than to a replacement internal combustion fuel for gasoline engines.
1. Most battery technologies use hydrogen as the fundamental energy storer. The low energy state is Xx H_N, where Xx is some vehicle molecule, and the high energy state is Xx H_(N-n) + n H. Energy is stored in the battery by converting from the former to the latter, and it is released by doing the opposite.
2. One of the primary challenges of making a feasible battery is that the n hydrogen molecules form into hydrogen gas, which is bulky. To fit the hydrogen into a reasonable volume, it must be either compressed to very high temperature, cooled to very low temperature, or attached to a carrier molecule.
3. This technology seeks to solve the problem by putting the hydrogen in molecules of ammonia borane, H_3 N B H_3.
Is any of that right? What is the purpose of the plastic encapsulation?
The problem these people are trying to solve is how to store and release a high density of hydrogen. The micron particle side and plastic coating is all in the service of tweaking the materials properties in favor of rapid, safe hydrogen release and reasonably safe materials handling.
My observation/guess is that this line of research, encapsulating nanoparticles of hydride materials, will be more useful in battery technology than in hydrogen delivery. A lithium aluminum hydride battery would be great, if we could keep it from exploding.
Energy density is higher than gasoline, but you have to carry around the oxidized boron. Then you turn it in for recharging and get a new batch. If there's only one boron car and one recharging plant, on opposite sides of the country, it's still only 50 cents per gallon equivalent even including the shipping costs. And you can store as much in your back yard as you want, pile extra in the back seat, whatever. Chicken-egg problem solved.
Source: Prescription for the Planet by Tom Blees. (He also advocates advanced nuclear reactors to supply the energy for all this.)
Basically, you have an engine that produces glass, rather than gas. At temperatures that eats most metals, plus a pure oxygen environment: basically it would have to be made from ceramics. Really voodoo ceramics.
The challenge is in the power plant; the rest of it is awesome and relatively straightforward. If someone wants a real epic project, designing a working boron-gas turbine is a plum.
For any imaginable scale of human history, consider that a one-time opportunity.
It has been observed that the global oil peak was apparently reached a few years ago which means that from now on each year will see slightly less oil produced than the previous year. That gives the tangents of monotonically but slowly diminishing supply and monotonically but perhaps not so slowly rising price.
Natural gas is running out as well. Known alternatives, such as hydrogen fuels, electric cars, solar energy, nuclear power, are and remain alternatives. They're either energy containers (such as hydrogen) or represent energy production that just doesn't scale to replace the humongous amount of W/h that we've so far been able to extract from oil almost too easily.
It's out of the scope of this rant to even start about the countless things made possible by oil, but I think I should mention industrialized mass-production of food which is prevalent in modern countries. Fertilizers and pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. Take away food from people and bad things start happening.
That means that the standard of living, for better and worse, is going to radically change in the coming decades. It doesn't take much more than a pike in the price of oil to cause financial and social havoc, such as the one in the 1970's. Maybe we'll get fusion reactors up and running in 2050 but by then I suspect the world has changed already.
We should start taking this into slow but very serious consideration instead of wearing blindfolds and waiting for some scientific research centre to hand over to us the alternative energy source that is the silver bullet which allows us to continue living like the way we do now.
If you think oil's near-term value is mispriced, then oil futures are a solution, yes. But oil futures basically don't trade past the 5-year contract, and contracts longer than 10 years don't even exist. So if you think oil is mispriced in the 20-year timeframe, oil futures don't do you any good.
There seems to be a persistent misbelief that futures markets are a way of hedging or speculating on long-term price movements, but they're really a way of hedging or speculating on short-term price movements, e.g. for airlines to hedge against near-term supply shocks. By far the largest volume is for less-than-a-year contracts, and there is virtually nothing out past 5 years, so they're not really useful or intended for long-term planning.
The root of the problem itself is not at all related to capitalism or other economic models. Capitalist countries are no better off with regard to this than other economies.
The problem is related to the fact that in the coming decades the energy needed to pump a barrel of oil will increase, up until the threshold in the far future where it costs a barrel of oil to pump a barrel of oil. And because modern economies are based on the availability of cheap oil, this change will transform or shatter these economies.
It's an universal cost. If it's not about the price of pumping and buying oil in dollars, it will be the time, effort, and availability of oil.
Like you said, serious work on alternatives is only as serious as dictated by the lack of availability of cheap oil. I call exactly that wearing blindfolds because it is about betting entires nations on the possibility that we'll find an alternative energy store or energy source, in time, that allows us to maintain roughly today's standard of living. I would like to see it happen, too, but from the viewpoint of a contemporary man we'll be just totally and ultimately screwed if it doesn't.
What I suggested is that we should take this into account already and not after 50 years when it might not be possible to do really serious work on alternatives. It's really about taking the hit slowly and adaptively or getting it slammed on your face at once.
Because these are the cheapest sources of the relevant hydrocarbons. If necessary, coal can be cracked down to the right length. Or wood. Or hemp. Anything organic, really, so long as you have the energy input.
It's just that it's cheaper and easier to get it from oil and gas.
I read HN for the high quality content its curation system bubbles up, an article like this making it to the front page is a bug in that system.
http://www.cellaenergy.com/uploads/press/Filling%20up%20with...
Oops, they aren't claiming it is gasoline, either. This is a nice example of how popular journalism works, though. 'it is sort-of liquid and it burns fairly cleanly' is sufficient to gets a press that forgets to discuss:
- where to get the energy from to make the stuff.
- what we will do with whatever is left over after burning the hydrogen in these hydrides (If I google 'hydride' I get the strong impression they aren't made from pure hydrogen atoms.)
- whether that other stuff is rare or abundant, cheap or expensive.
1) How expensive is the equipment to produce this synthetic gasoline?
2) How pollutant is the process?
3) What is the energy yield compared to the oil-based gasoline?
Sure the gas could cost a dollar-fifty but its $500/oz right now and it assumes limitless free hydrogen to encapsulate in our nano-thingees. But hey it could happen right?
Forgive me my cynical skepticism, but call me when its at the gas pump.
Whilst the price is probably "back of envelope", I'm pretty sure the science is sound.
They've demonstrated that the process works at small scales. Whether it'll scale sufficiently to work in a refinery is anyone's guess.
According to Richard Muller's "Physics for Future Presidents," even in liquid form hydrogen has about 1/3 the energy per volume.
Muller also notes that storing liquid hydrogen requires a much stronger, heavier tank than for gasoline. Maybe these "micro-beads" can contain liquid hydrogen, given the researchers' claim they can use their fuel in an unmodified car. In that case, look for 1/3 the range. If instead their microbeads contain compressed hydrogen gas, Muller estimates a car could go in the neighborhood of 10-50 miles between fill-ups.
At the end, the article compares this gasoline with electricity, meaning that electric cars don't polute when consuming energy, but this energy must be created before somewhere, using oil, coal or uranium.
So, what do we need in raw materials and in energy to create a liter of this new gasoline?
It's all electric (581kW (780hp) and 1600Nm) but can charge via twin turbines - yes, of the jet engine variety! Ove advantage of them is that (again, apparently) they can run on just about any fuel out there; it it burns they'll run on it.
Normally Jaguar isn't really my thing, but this, well, this is different :)
That's one slick car! But I'd like to see a more consumer oriented prototype aimed at the mainstream market along the same principles.
The Jaguar / Land Rover companies are actually a subsidiary of Tata, an Indian company.
http://www.langsdemaas.nl/hetvervoer/geefgas1.jpg
During the war years and the recovery period immediately afterwards gasoline was so scarce in Europe that this was a fairly common occurrence.
The article says "our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline." It also says "micro-beads".
That implies they have a new metal hydride material/manufacturing processes that stores hydrogen. IC engines can burn hydrogen "without modification" (replace the fuel injector-based system with a gaseous carburetor system).
Being able to store hydrogen compactly, safely, and efficiently would be a big breakthrough. Having said that, hydrogen is an energy storage method more than an energy source - you have to create hydrogen using some other energy source, e.g. solar, wind, or (currently most commonly) from natural gas (not quite as "green").
Ref:
http://www.ongreen.com/news/stfc-rutherford-appleton-lab-spi...
If you have access to academic journals (university accounts etc.) then the paper can be found here: