If this is meant to use concentrated CO2 coming out from a furnace, would that need to be local, piped in over a long distance, or using bottles? Are there use cases where we must burn propane because we can’t replace that process with electricity?
I think this might slot in everwhere we currently plan to use hydrogen, with the added benefit of larger storage.
Here in Europe we have massive natural gas storage facilities so we can buy gas during summer to use for heating in winter. We will need something similar but renewable. If we can fill that storage with green propane, that would be amazing. It would mean we can keep our heating infrastructure. And we have an amazing use for the solar over-production in summer.
Honestly tho, this sounds to good to be true.
Also saves us from maintaining a residential gas network.
Not only is that going to be expensive and thus impopular. It will also be a delayed transition, and use up an incredible amount of resources.
Not that we should do this instead of heat-pumps. We can do both. Heat-pumps in new houses and if possible when replacing old furnaces.
For all the existing stuff, this could be a great stop-gap.
Trenched gas lines require extensive infrastructure; while each point of use also has electrical service. How is gas less infrastructure?
Apparently decades ago some absolute madman genius decided that we should put down 5 copper cables to every house and building for 3-phase power, even though they only needed one phase for the coming decades.
You know. just in case.
In New Zealand everyone uses heatpumps and there is no problem with everyone running them. Heatpumps don't use a huge amount of power even on cold days. If the grid can handle everyone cooking dinner at 6pm, it can handle heatpumps running throughout the day keeping the house warm.
Fast electric car charging on the other hand draws a lot of current.
Example, a gas furnace runs at 100% efficiency (103% I believe). Heat pump at 300%. Gas to electricity to home goes at 30%. End to end they both perform at 100%. So on efficiency perspective the gas furnace equals the heat pump - but at a much lower cost.
Retaining the gas network saves us from the massive investments needed in the electricity network.
It would surprise me if gas turbines exceed 40% on average, and then the electricity still needs to be distributed. New turbines, probably particularly when using propane could do much better indeed.
My heat pumps all advertise a SCOP of around 5 for heating, and I guess the domestic hot water it would be 2.5 (don't have that, using solar for that myself). And there is a lot the installers can and will screw up, just read some user forums on this. And which consumer actually checks the real COP? So large numbers of heat pumps will perform far from optimal without somebody noticing. The 'screw up surface' of gas furnaces is much smaller. For example, ground heat sources rarely get replenished in summer (not mandatory for residential in my country).
Heat pumps do not make sense unless the energy transition into the equation (wind and solar indeed). But also then, there are major shortcomings with wind/solar currently not yet fixed. For example, my home produces appr. 12 MWh solar energy per year and the heat pumps use a similar amount. Nice balance, but too bad the is a gap of six months between the two.
This post seems to have gotten a lukewarm reception. People are maybe extra sceptical after the lk99 dud.
Yes. Ships, for one - no way you can power an oceangoing large ship with batteries for the entire trip, but doable with LPG (which is essentially a propane/butane mix). Assuming that further technology (chemical or biotech) gets developed to combine it to form larger hydrocarbons, it can also be used as a precursor for airflight synthfuel.
Both Yanmar and Kawasaki are developing large marine four-stroke piston engines for hydrogen, with 2025 as launch date.
Ammonia-fuelled piston engines are easy, their only problem is idling due to the poor combustion properties of ammonia, which you can solve in the pragmatic way by using a little hydrocarbons during idle - combined with power from shore during docking, that still gets you >95% emission reductions.
Ammonia to my knowledge has a problem of both potential toxicity (both if gas escapes in refuelling and NOx emissions after burning) and needing enriched pure oxygen rather than running with atmospheric air.
Propane or other hydrocarbons look superior to both of these to me.
I'm saying that hydrogen is a bad option, but if e.g. this renewable propane turns out to cost $1000/litre then hydrogen wins by default. It wouldn't be that surprising, current synthfuel is expensive AF. And this new headline hasn't been commercialized yet, so it might not be viable after all.
The benefit of hydrogen fuel is that, while it works poorly, it does work and is already in use today, in e.g. forklifts. It was in use decades ago, in fact. It's boring and low-risk, if we can't find anything good.
Hydrogen leaks out of almost everything, embrittles steel, is hard to store as a liquid and needs very high pressures to store a meaningful amount as a gas.
A full EV transition would also free up quite a lot of biofuels. Not enough on its own, but still significant.
To my knowledge wind-powered cargo ships can only supplement cargo ships and can't fully substitute for a proper fuel source, but I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.
The bulk of biofuels are a dead end (although some types of biofuels are valuable in recycling waste products), because modern agriculture basically just turns oil into food; BEV tractors basically don't work due to the range and charging-times needed on an already very heavy vehicle.
I don’t think green hydrogen or synthetic fuel is a realistic option yet. As to a fully wind powered boats, the last fully wind powered cargo boat used commercially lasted until the 1960’s it lost but not by some huge margin. So yes fossil fuels win, but they don’t win by such a huge margin that a fuel costing 4x as much also wins.
Hybrid battery/solar + wind boats are still a common thing for houseboats and pleasure craft in part because of the cost advantages. At even a 2x cost bump over bunker fuel I suspect bulk shipping would start to go a similar route. Militaries and billionaire super yachts might go with hydrogen or synthetic fuel’s it just a question of how quickly their prices fall.
It is going to be some kind of chemical fuel, it is just a question of what and when. The alternative is just people not doing their physics homework and being totally wrong.
Wind is what provides power and scales incredibly far, we already have individual floating 16MW wind turbines. The very largest ships are approaching 60MW, but rarely operate at full power instead “slow steaming” to conserve fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_steaming
The cost of the ship alone is irrelevant if you’re trying to sell fuel at 4x the price almost nobody is going to be willing to pay when they’re not even willing to pay full price at todays fuel prices instead choosing to travel slower than sailing ships while still paying for fuel.
PS: As to battery weight, ships scale really well around weight which is why we have ships moving 200,000+ tractor trailers worth of cargo. There’s fully battery powered ships traveling hundreds of miles for local delivery to remote areas. Which actually means going from Asia to Europe or Africa with some battery swapping is viable. Higher upfront costs and extra stops, but drastically reduced fuel consumption.
You're going to need chemical fuels to solve this problem. You really have to get to grips with basic physics here. Global warming can't be solved by science deniers.
PS: How are you going to battery swap on a ship? Nevermind the cost of such a thing. This is just another absurd idea stacked top of an already absurd idea.
I am not suggesting a wind turbine is an ideal fit for a cargo ship just mentioning how much power we’re already extracting on floating devices that move with the ocean.
Ultra slow steaming is 40% of max power for a 46MW cargo ship that’s 24MW so we’re in the ballpark what comes next is hardcore engineering by companies who understand the industry and they say the math is really close to working at current fuel prices. It’s you who wants people to swap to ultra expensive fuels and I’m just point out that “bunker fuel” > wind but wind > ultra expensive fuels.
Again, the wind turbines you are suggest are far too big for a ship. It is totally impossible. You are not going to get more than a tiny percentage of power from wind from this. At best, you are just going to have literal sails that take off some of the power demand from the engine. The ship will still have to be powered predominately by chemical fuels.
Look, you're flat out denying the physics of this problem. You cannot solve this problem with science denier. You are doing the same thing that climate change deniers are doing.
“Flat out denying the physics of this problem” you’re arguing that sailing ships don’t work.
Maersk the largest shipbuilder in the world already got flettner rotors to provide useful levels of propulsion, ADD a kite system and you’re traveling faster than commercial shipping doing slow steaming. As I’ve said repeatedly they don’t quite work at current fuel prices, but you want to increase fuel prices.. Read up on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Onego_Deusto for why kite’s didn’t take off it was all about the economics not the underlying physics.
PS: Without paying for fuel the economics changes enough we probably aren’t going to see 200,000+ TEU ships and routes would optimize for winds. But that’s not an inherent problem it’s just a tradeoff, perhaps we invest in larger port’s that just an expense not a deal killer.
This is just you handwaving the problem away. You will need a very reliable supply of energy for this. It actual makes more sense to convert that green energy to something like hydrogen for powering ships. If done at scale, cost will be not much more than the cost of the wind and solar energy itself. Which is potentially very low. And nevermind the fact that you have nowhere near the capacity of batteries to power your ships.
> “Flat out denying the physics of this problem” you’re arguing that sailing ships don’t work.
The largest sailship ever has a displacement tonnage of around 5,000 tons. Modern cargo ships are closer to 250,000 tons. Sailships don't work at the scale you're imagining them. It is basically going back to the 19th century in terms of shipping capacity.
> Maersk the largest shipbuilder in the world already got flettner rotors to provide useful levels of propulsion, ADD a kite system and you’re traveling faster than commercial shipping doing slow steaming.
Skysail just reduces fuel consumption somewhat. It also seem to have disappeared as a serious idea about a decade ago: https://www.ship-technology.com/features/feature-skysails-br...
Solar is extremely reliable as long as you have an oversupply when all you want to to charge batteries. At sub 2c/kWh it’s highly variable but build in 50% extra and you’re only at 3c/kWh and now very consistent across a full week. Obviously, there’s varying tradeoffs so if the cheapest solution is to stick them on a boat and charge em in another country that’s what would end up happening. There’s also obviously tradeoffs between moving shipping containers vs moving electricity but again that’s an optimization problem not some inherent limitation.
Skysail isn’t viable at current fuel prices, the technology works just fine. Current sail designs are of limited value along current routes, but those routes are also optimized for fossil fuels.
Club Med 2 built on 1992 was 15,000 tons and a quite traditional design for aesthetics, again Skysail can significantly boost propulsion. Thousands of economically viable modern cargo ships are 50,000 ton panamax ships and plenty are well below that, those 250,000 ton monsters are an economic optimization between a handful of major ports not some inherent requirement.
The total crew size is largely independent of cargo size, but even relatively small ships are moving 100’s of TEU per worker. At that point it’s only a question of what’s the most efficient design economically not what’s the largest ship.
Seriously, you seem like someone who is obsessed with doing it with batteries, not a person even remotely interested in finding a working solution.
Meanwhile, the alternative, just making hydrogen with the same renewable energy source and powering your ships with it, is sitting right there as an obvious answer. If you already admit to the existence of $0.02/kWh electricity, then the rest of the cost equation is also going to be low here. You've already solved the economics of the issue. The rest is scaling up, and this time there is no need for sails or downsizing ships.
Real world capacity factor Capacity factor 27.9% (average 2017-2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Mountain_Solar_Facility that’s surprisingly close to the theoretical maximum for the location and design. Some break 30% but again it’s not about maximizing output just how much it cost to guarantee we can fill X TEU worth of shipping containers per ~week. Thus it don’t matter if there a 18 hour period one day when they aren’t being charged as long as you can charge enough on average.
> Meanwhile, the alternative, just making hydrogen
Sure let’s pay vastly more per gallon that’s an easy selling point. Hydrogen has maximum limits imposed by physics that severely limit end to end efficiency. It’s a dangerous bitch to store, transport etc. Low density, damages metals it comes in contact with etc, even rocketry got away from the stuff even though it has significant advantages for them.
Nobody is using the stuff because it’s got huge problems.
You've already admitted that solar is just $0.02/kWh. You can do the rest of the math and realize that hydrogen will also be very cheap. You're entirely thinking in cliches now. It is "battery = cheap, hydrogen = expensive" despite your own argument contradicting that claim.
In reality, people will just some kind of chemical fuels. If not hydrogen directly, then something derived from it like ammonia or synfuels. It is already happening in fact, and your obsession simply won't happen.
Look at hydrogen fuel station pricing sometimes even using fossil fuels and compare costs vs bunker fuel. There’s projections it could possibly get close to US gas prices in 20 years, but that includes road taxes, high refining costs, transportation, etc and are therefore much higher than bunker fuel actually used by boats. So the optimistic projections are doubling a ship’s fuel costs and current prices are much higher than that.
As to your “nonsensical idea” complaint, companies actually saving companies money today using it. This isn’t some hypothetical, actual ships on the ocean are using large scale batteries to save on fuel costs. Further, the absolute largest car carrier in the world is smaller than the largest sailing vessel ever built, they load and unload from the front so sticking sails on top wouldn’t be a problem. Fossil fuels are cheap, but hydrogen isn’t viable today which is why ships aren’t using it and it’s not projected to be viable for decades. Anyone who tried using hydrogen would simply be eaten alive by the competition.
The thing about hydrogen is that is made from an extremely plentiful resource: water + green energy. That puts the cost floor at below that of bunker fuel. In fact, the cost floor is pretty close to zero. So you are basically repeating the generic "renewable resources can never be cheap" argument. But it has been discredited.
Nobody uses anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. You are making up imaginary scenarios.
Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel.
> Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel.
Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it.
Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.
The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different?
Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs.
FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.
Only at a significant loss. You can go out and buy a hydrogen powered car today and pay more for the car, have worse range, pay more for energy to move that car, and have to deal with limited infrastructure. People are operating battery powered boats at a profit, that’s a monumental difference.
Limiting yourself to “free” for electricity means spending more money on equipment. Actually making industrial scale hydrogen requires expensive electrolysis equipment and having that sit idle 95% of the time is expensive independent of electricity costs. Similarly aiming for seasonal storage requires investment in storage so it’s there when you want it. This isn’t free and no you can’t just reuse natural gas systems, even just detecting small leaks requires different equipment, the demand is higher, hydrogen embrittlement is a serious problem, and the energy density is different.
You can consistently get ~3c/kWh for close to 8 hours a day via building your solar farm, but that means your electrolysis equipment is still idle 66% of the time and your still paying 3c/0.18 = 16.7c/kWh just for electricity ignoring other costs to get 1kWh of useful energy at the end.
This is why Hydrogen is currently expensive, until something fundamentally changes with the underlying economics due to new technology it’s going to stay expensive.
Nuclear has both economic and risk issue. Legislation impacted individual countries but a handful are built each year. It’s not even just disasters, several nuclear projects have gone wildly over budget scaring both small countries and free market investors. The risks are high even ignoring accidents and the rewards don’t match those risks.
Westinghouse top executives were convicted of fraud for over covering up project failures in two canceled South Carolina nuclear reactors: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-exe...
That’s part of a long list of failed US reactors and an even longer list globally some of which where even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_pow...
That said, I acknowledge politics has played a role it’s simply not the most important one. Japan was happy with nuclear until an unexpected 500 dollar bill, other countries look at that and get concerned.
Please stop making shit up. We already have seen people reuse or at least test natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen. There are no showstopper problems. It is a fully solvable problem and is going to happen.
You literally are making up your own fictional scenario to rationalize how you can disconnect $0.02/kWh electricity from cheap hydrogen. This is pure incoherent rubbish.
Ultimately, you are creating an alternative reality to rationalize your delusion that batteries can power anything while nothing else can. No fucking idea why are you ranting about nuclear safety either. It is one of the safest energy sources out there.
Hydrogen systems still being classified as prototypes after decades of research should tell you something. Nobody is making hydrogen boats because they’re simply inferior in just about every conceivable way. Cars got heavily subsidized, billions in R&D over decades, and are a failure. Hydrogen boats aren’t even vaguely worth trying to bring to market.
Economics uncovers bullshit, you can’t hand wave away the cost of infrastructure, someone needs to pay to create and maintain it. Solar can hit 2c/kWh for a few hours per day in a few areas of the globe, but now you’re both idling infrastructure and stuck with long distance transportation of Hydrogen and or electricity which has their own associated costs. Just do X sounds great, but doing X always has associated costs.
For comparison, including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. It’s horrifyingly polluting, but dirt cheap.
Scale alone isn’t going to fix green hydrogen it requires a fundamental breakthrough.
Seriously, who do you work for? I can't imagine you not having an agenda here.
Economics isn’t rubbish. Yes you can get X kWh at below Yc/kWh every month, *as long as you are willing to let equipment sit mostly idle. My point about 3c/kWh is simply the point where you can both operate equipment 1/3 of the time in most locations thus minimizing transmission issues, and you aren’t limited by the surplus of the local electricity grid. It’s simply a point of comparison. Sure, you can get
It’s also meaningful when including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. https://agtransport.usda.gov/Fuel/Daily-Bunker-Fuel-Prices/y...
Include overhead and green hydrogen generation is currently dramatically more expensive and it needs drastic efficiency gains to be viable. That’s simply the truth.
You should stop doing logical backflips and making nonsensical comparisons.
Net-zero is nice, but extraction and storage is net-negative.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1182973358/step-aboard-the-nu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... comments the major issue is the costs of specialized infrastructure, and points out how research about a modern design concluded "further maturity of nuclear technology and the development and harmonisation of the regulatory framework would be necessary before the concept would be viable."
Several have been built and people have generally gone "huh, thats cool but it's way too expensive".
Thats the main reason why theres currently only 1 in the whole world.
Nuclear in civilian hands is an absolute no-go for proliferation / terrorism concerns.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/travel/wind-powered-cargo-shi...
1. Kites attached by cable (deployed, high altitude for consistent winds)
2. Magnus effect cylindrical turbines that rise out of the ship.
Though that was because it was badly mismanaged and the technology wasn't there yet.
Nuclear power plants are much more expensive, and require a much higher (and more expensive) level of labor. These fixed costs are not reduced when full power is not needed.
Put your reactors on land, when the grid has too much power you direct it to something like this (or the hydrogen generator that showed up here a few days ago) and convert it to chemical energy.
That's not relevant in the short term. There are so many things using propane right now and it's a lot easier send them "renewable propane" than to entirely retrofit them to be electric.
I see statements like this every now and then, and I really wonder where that comes from, because that is not at all obvious, and most likely in most cases wrong.
If you imagine that "renewable propane" is something that you can just get, then it may appear easier to use your existing devices. But it's not. It's something that is not produced at any meaningful scale anywhere. There are no industrial processes to do so yet. You're talking about creating a whole new industry using technologies that don't exist yet, and by the way, a new industry that needs massive amounts of renewable energy. A lot more of that renewable energy compared to direct electrification. Nothing about that is easy.
This whole conversation is a hypothetical. Restricting the discussion to only existing technology makes no sense.
As opposed to...replacing every single ICE with an all-electric equivalent. I think scaled up renewable propane would be a much cheaper cost overall than rebuilding every single vehicle in existence.
I don't think you have any realistic idea about the energy costs of synthetic hydrocarbons. We're talking about something in the range of 5x the amount of energy you need. Think 5x the number of wind turbines and solar panels, and then reconsider if you still imagine that is a cheap solution.
This could make millions of older cars cleaner, also in the developing world. LPG is already cleaner, would benefit the developing world, and ICE engines can be produced without needing exotic materials, can be recycled 100% by smelting, are a proven, well known, durable technology, unlike lithium batteries (which are also proven, but recycling and exotic materials are problematic), and are and will be a popular technology in the developing world for a long time.
Also it would allow for cheaper and cleaner cars in the developed world, where not everybody can afford the electric dream many here are living.
It would also be somewhat suitable for long haul and heavy machinery, but most likely in a hybrid drivertrain setup.
Also it would solve the big issue of the German home heating and industry: how to stove away the sun and wind from the summer to the winter, when in the windless dark days nowadays coal is burnt, as battery of hydro storage cannot be scaled beyond a few days capacity at extremes.
There is already built, or cheap technology to gas powered solutions, no need to transition to new technology hastily. This would give runway to the green transition, as it could be net zero carbon footprint solution with less disturbance to the existing solutions.
Like it or not, internal combustion cars have many advantages, a big one being that they can run on different fuels. Converting to green LPG or (my pick) methanol will have to happen if we're serious about reducing transport emissions, because it's the only immediate non-cost-prohibitive option.
E85 does that even better, as the cost of being less dense. But it cools so much better you can run higher boost.
What about LPG?
And if we want LPG to be something we still have to deal with legislation, like in many countries you can't park in an underground garage with LPG.
For engines getting smaller: the LPG operation of petrol engines provides lower power output (and lower torque), so an uptick in LPG powered (dual fuel?) cars would probably mandate slightly different engines sensible (bigger ones), the market would surely adapt to it.
E85 would also be fine if it wouldn't be manufactured from intensively farmed monocultural agricultural products, which make it totally non-sustainable and non-renewable factoring in the sustainability problems of industrial agriculture (soil erosion, carbon depletion of soil, death of soil microbiome, groundwater depletion, etc)
The parking ban for LPG in closed garages is a real problem, I have faced it myself. Though it is justifiable, but then it would also be justified for the BEVs as there were cases already where (heat from) a battery fire compromised the structural integrity parking complexes, so it is a manageable risk probably, and probably mostly legislative.
They dump extra fuel to prevent knock. It's hard to melt cylinders.
> can't park in an underground garage with LPG
And yet people park. I haven't heard about an accident in the last 5 years. Maybe it could be managed by an extra detector?
LPG engines could be excellent generators (back ups or range extenders for cars and trucks). The emit less particulate matter and NOx.
I'm not sure why parking with LPG is a problem but parking with 10-20 gallons of gasoline is not?
In case of a leak there is a risk in case of a not-ventilated enough underground garage it is possible that the gas accumulates in the lower parts before it can be sensed/sniffed, and a mix of just 2.1% with air is already at risk of explosion if a spark is generated.
Security norms changed in the EU around 2001, the norm is the ECE/ONU 67-01 (though different countries may have implemented differently in the local Law) and LPG powered cars conforming to that standard are allowed (generally) to be parked in underground garages BUT only on the first underground floor and only if the garage is conforming to some (earlier) ventilation standards.
AFAIK cases of explosions/fires related to LPG car tanks are extremely rare (thanks also to the added safety measures mandated by ECE/ONU 67-01), whilst fires/explosions originated by domestic LPG use, while not common, are more common than what they should be (the tanks in themselves are generally safe, but the - often underground - pipings often are not).
IIRC, solar now gets to about 3$ per Mwth, so purely energy cost would be about 0.33$ per kg of propane if 100Mj of input energy per kg of propane stands for that electrolyser plus stated 13Mj for Co2 capture for 1 kg of propane. So, the cost is not negligible, but could be competetive even now, and solar is likely to get cheaper.
If it were electric it would require a 13k/220 = 60 amp connection, triple the domestic wiring standard here.
But also a bit misleading. Pumping heat into the atmosphere isn't really at the heart of climate change - adding insulation to the atmosphere is. It probably isn't great to pump heat into it either, but the mechanisms for radiative loss of that extra heat are (were) pretty good, and it would take a gigantic amount of heat (more than we've produced by burning fossil fuels) to shift the energy level in the atmosphere by much over longer time frames. However, effectively adding another blanket to the atmosphere is far more impactful. Last credible estimate I saw was the atmosphere now contains about an extra 8 peta-watts compared to pre-industrial times, and almost all of that comes from a reduction in "radiative forcing" (loss of heat to space, essentially) rather than additional heat generation.
They are not cosplaying at anything. It's just how it is.
> It's just how it is.
It's a fairly new trend, and as mentioned above, one that's probably already over. Germany has had outdoor Christmas markets for much longer than patio heaters have existed.
And yes, the christmas market version of being outside is obviously much older, but in my experience (also, Heidelberg in 1986) was less sitting around and more moving around outside (or in heated tents).
It's the heat that is retained that is the problem.
Still: better grid connection or home batteries are much less complicated to install than a whole new CO2 conversion set-up, plus we are going to need those if people are going to drive electric cars. The cost (energy or money) of capturing CO2 in the atmosphere into concentrate for that catalytic process.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/dec/31/cement-c...
Give it time, we're working on it...
So a range of 0.018% to 0.4% over the last 500 million years. We’re currently at ~420ppm, and human impact is estimated to have been about +140ppm since the 1700s where we had been at 280ppm for the ~10,000 years prior.
If the planet ever hit 0.4% again it would be due to natural not anthropogenic reasons.
"Must", no. But hundreds millions of cars and trucks on the road right now can be converted to propane. It's relatively easy and well understood and you keep your same motor and drivetrain.
Converting existing cars and trucks to electric is so intensive it's almost unthinkable ... cost, energy input, waste, etc.
If the cost of this technology could be brought down within a decade, it would be a way of reducing emissions for the large chunk of the fleet that isn't electric, in a cost effective manner.
The other, more pragmatic, answer is that internal combustion engines aren't going anywhere. They have too many advantages over their competitors to ever fully go away, so we need cost effective ways of running them that are also carbon neutral or negative. Some of the links in this chain, like low cost electrolysis, are vital for other reasons (e.g. the food we grow uses fertilizer made from hydrogen split from fossil fuels. We need the fertilizer or the planet starves, and we need a source of hydrogen that doesn't also produce 11 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of hydrogen produced).
The problem ultimately is that CO₂ capture from the air is another expense that has to be paid, both in terms of cost and energy. Sure, if the entire process becomes so cheap and widely available that this no longer becomes issue, then we can certainly do it. But until then, it is a major stumbling block.
The other problem is that if all you want is something more "practical" than hydrogen, you will stop at methane. Same basic idea as this, but you only need the Sabatier process. And we already have many facilities capable of dealing with methane. So we do not necessarily need to go further. But if you insist on long carbon chains, why stop at C3? Keep going until you reach C8, or even C12-20, at which point you have the equivalent of gasoline or diesel. Basically, get to the point where you have a liquid at room temperature, and it will be even more practical than propane.
That is, of course, very true. Per calculations upthread, the energy cost of DAC isn't that huge, but indeed it's for the time being a very immature technology that hasn't been demonstrated at scale.
> The other problem is that if all you want is something more "practical" than hydrogen, you will stop at methane. Same basic idea as this, but you only need the Sabatier process. And we already have many facilities capable of dealing with methane. So we do not necessarily need to go further.
In principle yes. I guess it's a question of cost. Is the cost of an H2 electrolyzer + the Sabatier reactors etc. lower than this propane electrylyzer? If this propane electrylyzer thing could be done cheaply, that could be the gamechanger. Not the fact that it's technically possible to manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons, we have multiple ways of doing that, though all of them tend to be both expensive in terms of capital cost and somewhat inefficient.
> But if you insist on long carbon chains, why stop at C3? Keep going until you reach C8, or even C12-20, at which point you have the equivalent of gasoline or diesel. Basically, get to the point where you have a liquid at room temperature, and it will be even more practical than propane.
Indeed, from a handling and transportation point of view, the longer hydrocarbons are pretty much optimal. But like above, it's a question of cost. Fischer-Tropsch installations tend to be very capital intensive, yield is an issue etc.
So if this propane electrolyzer turns out to be industrially feasible at a low enough cost, maybe it's overall more efficient to deal with pressurized storage systems.
All I’ve seen so far are speculations based on a small prototype in Iceland that is still very expensive and has access to free energy. I’ve had to add up the costs that you list myself (you are not giving any numbers), and it ends up being a prohibitively expensive gallon of fuel—an order of magnitude more expensive than it is now. How is that reasonable when most states would lose their head with a 10% increase?
My concern is that most of the time, the math goes: “Let’s assume electricity is free, and people somehow still want to drive an ICE.” and conclude with, “We just have to continue subsidizing a pathologically dangerous pollution by 90%.” hoping to capitalize on the heads of states fear of a revolution.
I can see why that looks tempting to people who refuse to admit that we must shift away from fossil fuels and latch on to plans to paint their industrial assets as renewable. Still, it ends up being an inefficient Rube-Goldberg machine, where adding solar panels on the roof of wherever you need energy works. I’m all for failing convincingly, but you must admit when it’s not working.
I’ve heard that mining equipment was too large and could never be electrified… Those converted the fastest (custom engines, high torque, regenerative power, far away from fuel supply but sunny/windy location) and with glee (lower maintenance when technicians have to fly in by helicopter). Prototype boats and airplanes can work “indefinitely” because solar panels can generate enough energy for them to work 24/7.
I’ve yet to hear about a single industrial process that needs carbon-chain fuel to work.