[HN Gopher] Electrolyzer efficiently converts CO2 into renewable...
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Electrolyzer efficiently converts CO2 into renewable propane fuel
Author : conse_lad
Score : 301 points
Date : 2023-08-22 04:34 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scienceswitch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scienceswitch.com)
| ccorcos wrote:
| FYI, there's a startup doing CO2 - Methane conversion called
| Terraform Industries.
|
| https://terraformindustries.com/
|
| I asked the cofounder of his thoughts here:
|
| https://twitter.com/ccorcos/status/1694021803654693342
| molszanski wrote:
| We can add another company in the sector to the bunch:
|
| https://www.prometheusfuels.com/news/dude-wheres-my-fuel
|
| I am curious how do they compare
| flakinur wrote:
| Doing quick napkin math it looks like to process a ton of CO2 it
| will require 1.6kW of energy, burning that amount of propane
| generates at 50% power plan efficiency you get ~3kW of energy
| generation...
|
| 8CO2+24H2O+24e-3C3H8+16O2.
|
| Moles of CO2=1000x1000/44.01[?]22726moles.
|
| Total moles of electrons= 24/8x22726[?]68178moles.
|
| Total charge=68178x96485[?]6.58x10^9C.
|
| E=QxV=6.58x10^9x0.8[?]5.27x10^9J.
|
| E_actual=5.27x10^9/0.91[?]5.79x10^9J.
|
| E_actual=5.79x10^9/3.6x10^6[?]1608kWh.
|
| ----------------------------------
|
| Moles of propane= 3/8x22726[?]8522moles.
|
| Mass of propane=8522x44.1[?]375,670g[?]376kg.
|
| Total energy content=376x50.35[?]18,932MJ.
|
| Usable energy= 10,791/3.6[?]2,997kWh.
| rocqua wrote:
| According to this article: https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-
| transition/the-amount-of...
|
| The cost of carbon capture straight from the air is about 10GJ
| per Tonne (they quote 8.8 and 14 from competing sources). Which
| is about 2800 kWh That would put a serious damper on the
| efficiency, but might make it viable even when 'easy' sources
| of CO2 (like the exhaust of fossil power plants) are no longer
| available.
| rmu09 wrote:
| Please don't refer to power as energy or use units of power
| when you really mean energy, it is bad enough when this happens
| in more traditional media.
| scarytom wrote:
| Burning the propane takes you back to CO2, which you then turn
| back into propane again and repeat? If your napkin maths is
| correct, and the process is net energy positive, doesn't this
| violate the principle of conservation of energy?
|
| It must take at least as much energy to turn carbon dioxide
| into propane as you generate when you burn that propane to
| generate carbon dioxide.
| sveme wrote:
| Isn't the input electrical energy and the output of burning
| the propane heat? If you convert the heat back to electrical
| energy, you get much less than you input into the reaction.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| > If your napkin maths is correct, and the process is net
| energy positive, doesn't this violate the principle of
| conservation of energy?
|
| In theory, yes, but you need to take into account all the
| energy that goes into the process, which includes the
| catalyst, and also the actual capture of the CO2.
|
| The way i read it, this is "just" a way of turning already
| captured CO2 into fuel again in an efficient way.
|
| Still, it does seem a little bit too good that you can obtain
| 3 kWh of energy by spending 1.6 kWh, but i guess time will
| tell.
| sveme wrote:
| Heat pumps can create 3 - 5kWh of heat from 1kWh of
| electrical energy.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| Heat pumps do not create heat, they simply move heat from
| one place to another, which is an entirely different
| beast.
|
| Using a traditional resistive heater, you're roughly
| creating 1 kWh of heat by spending 1 kWh of electricity
| (there is some loss), but with a heat pump you're moving
| heat, which is also why heat pumps become much less
| efficient the colder the temperature as there is less
| heat to move, and many residential heat pumps include a
| regular resistive heating element as a backup.
|
| There's a great explanatory video on how heat pumps work
| here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto&pp=ygU
| gdGVjaG5vb...
| sveme wrote:
| Good point, thanks for the correction.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Correction: heat pumps _pump_ heat from 1 place to
| another. As in: place where it gets pumped out of, gets
| colder.
|
| Fundamentally different process from exothermal chemical
| reaction, or electric heating using resistive wire.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| This is just an educated guess, but . . .
|
| Burning propane produces CO2 AND water. I think the missing
| bit is the energy required to split the water into hydrogen
| and oxygen before the hydrogen is used as an input to
| produce the propane.
| rocqua wrote:
| That is when using propane for electricity.
|
| I think there is a lot more value in burning propane for
| heating houses. Especially in places (like Europe where I live)
| that are already build to use gas for heating.
|
| Especially if you consider the massive gas-storage facilities
| that are common here. We have 12 billion cubic meters of gas-
| storage here in the Netherlands, on a yearly consumption of 40
| billion. That means we could use 'green propane' to load-shift
| about 30% of our heating from winter to summer. That would be
| amazing.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| And if you sneeze at propane it becomes liquid (-42C). Not
| sure how natural gas is stored though.
|
| Heating use is indeed very obvious, and so is transportation
| use. Many countries have an elaborate distribution network
| for LPG and fitting a car to run on LPG is also very easy.
|
| BTW, hot air balloons also run on propane.
| papercrane wrote:
| > Not sure how natural gas is stored though.
|
| Mostly stored underground, but it's also shipped and stored
| in a liquefied state at -162C. Propane is one of the
| components of natural gas, so I would think any facility
| that is able to store natural gas should be able to store
| propane easily.
| amluto wrote:
| My napkin says you have 8C on the left and 9C on the right, so
| your stoichiometry is off. I haven't tried to check any of the
| rest.
|
| I'm guessing the major error is that the -0.8V is "versus
| reversible hydrogen electrode ", so it's a half-reaction and
| you need to fill in the correct other half reaction, and there
| is probably H2 involved. Then you would dig out some free
| energy values to see how efficient it is.
|
| (I only read the abstract.)
| flakinur wrote:
| Thx for the catch!
|
| Fixed the math using chat gpt :P.
|
| Reaction: 3CO2 + 12H2 -> C3H8 + 6O2
|
| Number of moles of electrons (n): n = 3 * 4 = 12
|
| Total charge (Q) in Coulombs: Q = (-395 * 1 * 100 * 3600 *
| 0.91 / 1000) * 12 * 96485
|
| Voltage (V): V = -0.8
|
| Total energy for given current density: E = Q * V
|
| Moles of CO2 in 1 ton: n_CO2 = (1000 * 1000) / 44.01
|
| Total charge for 1 ton of CO2: Q_total = (12 / 3) * n_CO2 *
| 96485
|
| Adjusted charge considering Faradaic efficiency: Q_adjusted =
| Q_total * 0.91
|
| Total energy for 1 ton of CO2: E_total = Q_adjusted * V
|
| Convert to kWh: E_kWh = E_total * 2.778e-7 E_kWh [?] 17707.4
| kWh
| jwilk wrote:
| > 3CO2 + 12H2 -> C3H8 + 6O2
|
| 6 O on the left, 12 on the right.
|
| 24 H on the left, 8 on the right.
| amluto wrote:
| https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-
| d_1085...
|
| Gives a specific CO2 emission for propane of 13.8 kg carbon
| / kWh fuel, so your numbers are at least vaguely credible.
| But your reaction is devoid of CO2, so talking about tons
| of CO2 is still odd.
| shmde wrote:
| Probably the best time to be a propane and propane accesories
| salesperson.
| westmeal wrote:
| I tell ya hwuhat that right there is a CLEAN BURN.
| codeulike wrote:
| Good for Strickland Propane for sure
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| It would be great if natural gas is replaced with propane for
| households. Just imagine to fill up your ICE/LPG car at home, and
| to have a real wok burner without the need to change gas tanks.
| bluGill wrote:
| For most home applications all your need is to replace the jets
| in the appliance - $.25 in parts. Stoves and dryers commonly
| come with both sets, and I've seen furnaces that can be
| converted. I've never seen a water heater than can be
| converted, though it is in theory possible.
|
| The hard part is an entire neighborhood must be converted at
| once. You have all summer to convert the furnace, but things
| used all summer like stoves, or water heaters have to be done
| for the entire neighborhood in one day. This means a lot of
| logistics to get the right parts and labor in place to do the
| work. Though if people are willing to accept propane takes
| outside their house you can delay a bit, but it needs to be
| done before everyone needs heat.
| rini17 wrote:
| You forgot heat pumps, that is what will be everyone
| switching to. It's more efficient to burn propane centrally
| in a power plant and use the electrical grid to power heat
| pumps than distribution/burning of propane locally.
| war-is-peace wrote:
| C3H8 + 5O2 => 3CO2 + 4H20
|
| reminder that propane burns _into_ CO2 - this process doesn 't
| actually unlock any new energy source, it merely just reverses a
| reaction that has already taken place (presumably with
| electricity or some other form of energy)
|
| this isn't some kind of miracle infinite energy source to solve
| climate change woes, more like an interesting way to convert one
| usable form of energy (electricity) into another (a
| petrochemical)
| nine_k wrote:
| But this is perfect. A complete reversion of the reaction,
| without any additional interesting inputs or intermediate
| stages.
|
| You can imagine a closed-cycle, isolated "battety" that
| discharges into sparkling water, and charges back into fuel and
| oxygen.
|
| This is _exactly_ the miracle solution that can turn CO2 back
| into fuel, which can be burned again in existing ICEs and gas
| turbines, then turned into fuel again, powered by solar
| electricity.
|
| Collecting and concentrating the CO2 is going to be a task in
| itself, but things like power plants or steelmaking furnaces
| offer high-concentration, pre-heated CO2.
| war-is-peace wrote:
| that would be cool, but wouldn't something simpler like
| electrolysis of water into hydrogen/oxygen work much better?
| I haven't the effort to do the math, but it would require
| less steps, less complexity, and less cutting edge catalysts
| with unknown lifetimes
| nine_k wrote:
| No.
|
| It's hugely inefficient, so it requires more solar power.
|
| Hydrogen is hard to store and use; unlike propane, it
| penetrates through plastics and even metals. Hydrogen is a
| good rocket fuel if you need top performance and cost is no
| object.
|
| Propane is very convenient, and can be reused across the
| existing LNG infrastructure.
| mtrimpe wrote:
| Hydrogen is very difficult to use as a direct fuel source.
| This recent video gives a good overview of all the
| challenges a hydrogen engine has to overcome:
| https://youtu.be/DGL5g91KwLA
| war-is-peace wrote:
| thanks
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| The value lies in the fact that we already have a lot of
| infrastructure (including storage) that uses propane.
|
| By switching from fossil propane to this green propane we can
| indirectly 'electrify' entire swaths of energy consumption.
|
| It's scary to me how good this is. Because if it works, we can
| effectively continue as normal. Which is not to be expected,
| and might cause us to slack off since the pressure is gone.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| It would work well with wind and solar as energy storage, or
| even tidal or geothermal. Making it great for storing power
| from variable power systems. Propane is extremely easy to
| distribute.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Offtopic... does anybody have a good link to find papers that
| have been written after sci-hub stopped adding papers?
|
| My desire to read papers like this outstrip my funds to do so.
| berbec wrote:
| actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01314-8
| dghughes wrote:
| It's a great idea for places like northern Canada where many
| technologies like solar don't work during a sunless winter. Wind
| is OK but it's complex to set up and maintain in such isolation.
| Diesel tends to be an easy solution but endless propane would be
| great if the regulator didn't freeze.
|
| Propane also needs to be compressed from what I can see to about
| 200psi. Not a huge amount but it would take special equipment and
| power to run a pump.
| bluGill wrote:
| Propane will turn to liquid before it reaches 200psi at normal
| temperatures. The exact pressure depends on temperature. This
| is basic chemistry, though probably a part you forgot about as
| it is simple and doesn't come up much '
| dghughes wrote:
| From what I could find at 1 atmosphere propane is liquid but
| it has to be -42C. At 21C propane has to be at 850kPa (123
| psi) to liquefy it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The actual science:
|
| > Here we report a catalytic system composed of
| 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium-functionalized Mo3P nanoparticles
| coated with an anion-exchange ionomer that produces propane from
| CO2 with a current density of -395 mA cm-2 and a Faradaic
| efficiency of 91% at -0.8 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode
| over 100 h in an electrolyser.
|
| This is almost too good to be true... they demonstrate
| commercially viable reaction rates, efficiencies and timescales.
|
| They have presumably applied for a patent for it, so in 20 years
| when the patent expires this will become the standard thing to do
| with recovered CO2 I'd guess.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| Or in less than 20 years when the patent is licensed. No point
| in sitting in it for 20 years.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Recovered CO2 if it's recovered from the atmosphere.
| Essentially all concentrated CO2 today is recovered from fossil
| fuel consumption, and while turning that into propane and then
| burning the propane (in a ship or home furnace, e.g.) would get
| double duty out of the carbon, it would still release it into
| the atmosphere. So, the real question is the combined
| efficiency of carbon capture from the atmosphere + catalytics
| propane production followed by propane combustion. It may
| pencil out for processes that require combustion heat, or where
| the portability of propane vs electricity are a huge win. Maybe
| as a storage medium for electricity production between
| renewables. All depends on numbers.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| If you capture the CO2 produced when burning the propane, you
| can get more than double duty. If you used this process to
| store energy into propane when electricity is cheap, and then
| produce electricity by burning propane when electricity is
| expensive, you could potentially have a system with close to
| 0 CO2 emission. Compared to batteries, storing propane and
| CO2 even for months looks very cheap.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Organic reactions have a very low efficiency. Most of them
| only less than a 50%. Batteries have a better efficiency in
| the conversion.
| ajuc wrote:
| Humanity uses around 25 000 TWh of electric energy
| yearly.
|
| With batteries storing that is technically possible but
| it would take the whole world decades to build the
| required infrastructure.
|
| With propane or other similar hydrocarbons it's around 2
| million tonnes. 4 million if you account for 50%
| efficiency of turbines (we have better ones BTW).
|
| 4 million tonnes of gas seems like a lot, but currently
| USA has about 5850 bcf (1.6*10^14 liters) of underground
| gas storage ready, at 1.8 kg per m3 you could store about
| 300 million tonnes of propane. Enough to power the
| electricity grid of the whole world for 75 years.
|
| So it's a choice between spending billions and turning
| our whole industrial output to it for years - or just
| using a fraction of what's already there in a slightly
| different way :)
|
| Another point is - once you have one kind of hydrocarbons
| - you can burn them in adapted ICEs or transform into
| other hydrocarbons to be able to use existing cars.
| Suddenly you can continue to use the whole infrastructure
| we built in the last 100 years as if nothing happened
| with net 0 carbon footprint.
|
| It's the only thing that makes sense, really.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I think that you slipped some decimal places.
|
| Propane has a thermal energy content of 13778 watt-hours
| per kilogram [1]. That's (25000 * 10^12) / 13778 =
| 1,814,486,863,115 kilograms, or 1.8 billion tons. 3.6
| billion tons of propane if you recover electricity at 50%
| efficiency. That would make the 300 million ton
| underground storage equivalent to one month of global
| electricity demand. That's still a lot of storage, of
| course.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemi
| cal_rea...
| ajuc wrote:
| Thanks, should have double checked. I always mess up long
| and short scale when combining from different sources.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At some point, cheap trumps efficient.
|
| Propane is easy to store, easy to transport, propane
| storage tanks are cheaper than batteries, require no
| high-tech manufacturing or rare earth elements, and I'd
| guess the energy storage density is higher.
|
| Many (most) existing cars could be converted to run on
| propane and the engines will last longer and emissions
| will be lower as it's a cleaner-burning fuel.
| 93po wrote:
| Some newer battery cell chemistries are using very very
| little rare earth elements
| pengaru wrote:
| A propane tank is basically just the hollow shell of a
| battery, made of even cheaper mild steel since weight is
| far less of a concern. There's no contest in this
| department.
|
| Not that I'm in favor of combustion engines persisting.
| 93po wrote:
| I'm not saying your arguments don't hold. Just that the
| calculations may be closer than stated
| DistractionRect wrote:
| Ah, a perpetual motion machine.
|
| This assumes that co2 recapture and propane synthesis
| require less energy than is produced by burning propane.
|
| This is maybe a workload for excess solar, making renewable
| propane with electric that would otherwise be wasted
| gregable wrote:
| I think the suggestion is that it's a battery with low
| long term storage costs, not that it's 100% efficient
| round trip.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Sure, and that is an option if you're using propane as
| storage for renewable electricity, or for large scale
| industrial uses like cement production. You won't get to
| full recycle, but you can get close. It's not an option for
| propane as transportation or heating fuel, however.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's kind of annoying that this is always brought up as a
| gotcha. Direct air CO2 capture is not a massive contributor
| to the total energy usage. It's still dominated by
| electrolysis itself. The numbers aren't that hard to find,
| either. A kilogram of propane has a specific energy of 50MJ
| and emits 3kg of CO2. Assuming this electrolysis is 50%
| efficient, that requires 100MJ to make. CO2 direct air
| capture is about 4.3MJ/kgCO2, or about 13MJ/kgPropane
| compared to the 100MJ/kgpropane of electrolysis. So it's
| still a pretty small fraction of the total energy costs.
|
| EDIT: note that burning that propane in a cheap generator is
| only gonna net you 10MJ/kg of electricity, maybe 17MJ/kg in a
| large expensive generator. So the roundtrip efficiency is
| just 9-15% efficient. But it potentially saves you a LOT in
| storage costs if you're only cycling this storage once or
| twice a year.
|
| (Note that propane is a great way to store hydrocarbons as
| the pressure is low but it's self pressurizing and thus it
| doesn't get water ingress or have any of the storage
| difficulties of gasoline and diesel, which last only 3-6
| months or 6-12 months respectively. It's also very clean
| burning compared to those two.)
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| I wasn't looking for a "gotcha." Just saying that you need
| to consider all the input costs to know how this pencils
| out.
|
| 50% is almost exactly the paper's claimed efficiency for
| the lab cell, so it's a reasonable number.
|
| Overall, I'm very enthusiastic electrocatalytic methods for
| producing hydrocarbons as a combustion fuel source for
| applications where direct electric technologies are not
| feasible. I'd much rather seen money and energy going into
| making something like this work, than all the effort on
| hydrogen. Propane, or any hydrocarbon in the 3C-8C range,
| is a way better fuel for any fossil fuel replacement energy
| system than hydrogen.
| harvie wrote:
| Can you please explain these numbers of layman terms?
|
| Let's say my car burns equivalent of 100kWh worth of LPG, how
| many kWh of propane i can recover from the exhaust gas and how
| many kWh of electricity i need to provide for that?
| spatular wrote:
| You'd need to spend at least 110kWh to convert CO2 back to
| propane, maybe much more. No matter what you do, LPG -> CO2
| -> LPG cycle has to be energy-negative.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| You wouldn't recover the propane at the exhaust of the car.
| Instead, you'd have a fixed hydro/solar/wind renewable energy
| installation, spending ~25 kWh on an atmospheric capture
| program, or less if you can get it from more concentrated
| flue gasses coming off an industrial furnace/ammonia
| plant/cement plant, and then ~200 kWh to convert that CO2 by
| this process into 100 kWh worth of LPG.
|
| It's not viable (in terms of energy availability, packaging,
| or economies of scale) to run that sort of cryogenic high-
| pressure CO2 purification and storage system on the exhaust
| pipe of a vehicle. I could _maybe_ imagine a solar
| installation with this attached being viable at, say, a
| remote farm with LPG-powered agricultural vehicles, or if I
| stretch my imagination to scifi timescales (and think about
| the number of remarkable compressors installed at scale in
| HVAC systems) to suburban homes with rooftop solar.
| eesmith wrote:
| > They have presumably applied for a patent for it
|
| They have one in this space: "Methods and devices using tri-
| transition metal phosphides for efficient electrocatalytic
| reactions" at
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220154354A1/en with
| abstract:
|
| ] Methods and devices for generating hydrogen gas with an
| electrocatalytic energy conversion cell by introducing a tri-
| transition metal phosphide catalyst at or on an electrode of
| the electrocatalytic energy conversion cell. The
| electrocatalytic energy conversion cell includes a first
| electrode including a tri-transition metal phosphide catalyst,
| such as MO3P, a second electrode of an anodic material, an
| electrolyte disposed between the first electrode and the second
| electrode, and an electric potential source connected to both
| electrodes. Oxidation and reduction reactions, such as hydrogen
| evolution reactions, occur at the first electrode.
|
| (Google Patents says "M03P", the PDF says "MO3P" in the
| abstract, but the text clearly has "Mo3P".)
|
| Even if this isn't exactly the technology discussed -
| Supplementary Figure 20 shows how ImF-Mo3P catalyst improves on
| "pristine Mo3P nanoparticles" - the authors have several other
| related patents, so I have no doubt a patent was filed for this
| technology as well.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The remaining issue is the durability of the catalyst.
| londons_explore wrote:
| They demonstrate 100 hours. That's plenty for commercial
| viability - replacing the catalyst every 4 days is very
| doable. And it's likely that the catalyst lasts far longer
| but the experiment only went on 4 days.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Especially if it can be regenerated, then it's really a
| non-issue.
| ur-whale wrote:
| >The remaining issue is the durability of the catalyst.
|
| And its cost.
|
| Or more generally, where the catalyst sits in the supply
| chain (how easy it is to produce at scale, can it be
| recycled, is it expensive, what is the waste management for
| it, etc...)
| sschueller wrote:
| How much CO2 is generated to make one is the other
| question.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium-functionalized Mo3P
| nanoparticles don't sound very off-the-shelf...
| bluGill wrote:
| The question is can we make it cheaply enough at the
| required scale. Lots of things area off the shelf today
| that were not in the past. Other things used to be common
| and are not made anymore.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Chemistry can sound complex, but the compound mentioned
| is relatively simple for an organic chemist. Metal
| nanoparticles are fairly routine. Since this is a
| catalyst, not that much would be needed (relative to the
| likely difficulty of making it). Probably a rounding
| error in terms of the expense of the entire system.
| varispeed wrote:
| Hopefully any patent will not be granted. That's not how you
| make progress. Understandable that competition would have a
| head start without incurring the substantial R&D costs, but we
| should rather strive to make R&D tax deductible, rather than
| maintaining harmful patent system. This way business that
| incurred substantial R&D expenditure could claw it back from
| the sold product. This also incentivises businesses actually
| using their R&D rather than shelving a patent and then going on
| fishing expeditions to see if someone come up with the idea
| independently and executed it only to slap them with a lawsuit.
|
| Patents? Nope.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > in 20 years when the patent expires...
|
| Well, only if the patent-holder makes no effort to maximize the
| return on its investment in those 20 years. But if the
| technology is really that effective and the patent-holder is
| even a little bit economically rational, then presumably the
| patent holder will be the one pushing hardest to _make_ this
| the standard thing to do with recovered CO2 well before the
| patent expires.
|
| Not that patents are all roses and puppy dogs. But this is too
| big a part of the picture to just ignore.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| The patent-holder has licensed the technology to company with
| a large sunk cost in handling petroleum from the ground. I
| suppose SHV Energy _could_ decide to put up a solar farm
| driving CO2 - > C3H8 catalysis, but where's the money in it
| for them? I would like to be happily surprised, but my guess
| is it's some form of green-washing.
| r00fus wrote:
| Carbon credits. Tesla was only viable in the early years
| all due to carbon credit purchases.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That's backwards is it not?
|
| A fossil fuels company has deep incentive to minimize the
| harm of fossil fuels. A solar company has incentives to
| make fossil fuels as bad as they can.
|
| Even if you generally perceive fossil fuels guys as bad
| guys.
|
| Regardless. Any company has incentives to do this if
| someone (government) will pay for it. It doesn't really
| harm any profits.
| Werewolf255 wrote:
| Right, and the ones who are best able to figure out
| regulations are, of course, the businesses themselves!!
|
| Look how well that's worked out for the financial sector.
| Nothing but good faith actors there. Immaculate.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I'm not saying fossil fuels companies should be in charge
| of regulating fossil fuels companies.
|
| I'm saying that fossil fuels companies are incentivized
| to sell useful co2 converters because this enables them
| to sell more fossil fuels.
| deciplex wrote:
| > A fossil fuels company has deep incentive to minimize
| the harm of fossil fuels.
|
| They have a deep incentive to capture the regulatory
| framework that might hold them accountable for that harm,
| which they have accomplished.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Yes, the sentiment is so completely ignorant of what they
| have actually done during the last four decades that I'm
| now on like the third or fourth take...
| hinkley wrote:
| <hysterical laughter>
|
| No they've decided to go the route of tobacco companies,
| deny everything and party while the sun is shining. By
| the time the lawyers show up they're counting on being
| dead or too old to stand trial.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > A fossil fuels company has deep incentive to minimize
| the harm of fossil fuels
|
| You... you're aware that the _actual_ , historically
| realized, attitude of fossil fuel companies has been to
| _deny any harm exists_ , right? Deny it to the tune of
| 200 million dollars as recently of 2019, and for good
| reason! That spending bought them lots of political
| inaction since the science was settled in like 1990, you
| know: the days where keeping staying below 1.0 degrees
| warming was a realistic goal.
| deciplex wrote:
| what is historical fact compared to what my imagination
| tells me should have happened?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I am aware of that, yes. This doesn't change the calculus
| of today.
|
| CO2 conversion tech is a path to selling more fossil
| fuels.
| deciplex wrote:
| Why spend on tech that might not be a sure thing when
| bribery has been working for decades?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Because that's a gross oversimplification of things that
| sounds punchy but isn't particularly realistic.
| mhb wrote:
| > They have presumably applied for a patent for it, so in 20
| years when the patent expires this will become the standard
| thing to do with recovered CO2 I'd guess.
|
| And how many years would it have taken if a patent wasn't an
| incentive?
| hedora wrote:
| It's a public university, and government funded research. so
| fewer?
| rayiner wrote:
| The history of everything from MIPS to BBN shows that a
| major piece of the puzzle is creating incentives for high
| caliber people to go into public university research, and
| then invest in commercializing the resulting technology.
| The government funding only provides the kickstart.
| Const-me wrote:
| I wonder can they use the same membrane/catalyst for the inverse
| process: oxidize propane with atmospheric oxygen, release water
| and CO2, and instead of heat directly produce electricity without
| too much energy wasted in the process?
|
| If yes, the consequences for energy storage might be significant.
| The energy density of propane is 49.6 MJ/kg. Apparently, Li-Ion
| batteries are about 0.8 MJ/kg, more than 50x the difference.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Propane fuel cells have been around for a while:
| https://www.wattfuelcell.com/portable-power/watt-imperium/
| Const-me wrote:
| Do you know how much WATT Imperium costs? No information on
| their web site.
|
| AFAIK both fuel cells like that, and the inverse carbon
| capture machines, are technically possible for decades now.
| The issue is high cost due to precious metals in the
| catalyst.
|
| Apparently, these guys have solved the issue with much
| cheaper stuff for the catalyst, molybdenum phosphide.
| biomcgary wrote:
| If it is possible, this would make off-grid living nearly
| trivial (from my perspective in the US Southwest). Solar panels
| to generate electricity, this system to create propane or
| electricity, and a large off-the shelf propane tank for cloudy
| days (or weeks!).
| civilitty wrote:
| _> and a large off-the shelf propane tank for cloudy days (or
| weeks!)_
|
| Months. I have a residential sized propane tank for gas and
| backup power that only gets refilled once a year at most.
| Worst case scenario I can go off grid for two to three months
| in the summer on a generator (tested frequently) and this is
| a pretty standard size for exurban houses in California.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| > I have a residential sized propane tank for gas
|
| Could you elaborate on that? I imagine most people do not
| have any concept of that. Are you talking basketball,
| person, tiny car, SUV, or something else in terms of size?
| I'm imagining something between tiny car and SUV.
| compumike wrote:
| https://www.amerigas.com/about-propane/propane-tank-sizes
| I've most commonly seen the 120 gallon size at homes that
| use it for a water heater.
| UberFly wrote:
| Too early. I'm still healing from the super-conductor that
| wasn't.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Or, the superconductor that is in US or maybe Chinese
| government labs.
| atoav wrote:
| Pk-99? All the scientists that know about material science
| were sceptical.
|
| The material isn't that hard to make, the actual testing is
| the hard part.
|
| But of course maybe there is a secret superconductor
| somewhere in some lab. Maybe there is also a invisble teapot
| circling the moon. We will never know.
| hoseja wrote:
| What form of CO2 does this work with? I suspect highly
| concentrated, not the minuscule amounts in ambient air.
| mdoliwa wrote:
| Stupid question, if we find a commercially viable way of
| converting CO2 into fuel is there a danger of "global cooling"
| because people will get too greedy with this?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| That would be an easy problem to solve. We are very good at
| heating up the atmosphere.
|
| More CO2 should also stimulate plant growth, CO2 is a bit of a
| limiting factor there.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes, and before humans the earth was on a cooling trend, though
| only measurable on a geological time scale (millions of years).
| A little plant matter gets converted to charcoal and then coal
| every years. Though biology mostly trys to get at that carbon
| first.
| hnhg wrote:
| Only if more fuel is created than is used, which would seem to
| be a waste of energy. On the whole, it should be a balanced
| loop and should net off.
| sigio wrote:
| Burning the propane will release the same amount of Co2
| again... So I doubt it will change much
| yetihehe wrote:
| Theoretically it would be possible, but we would just release
| some carbon from other sources, there's a lot of it in various
| rocks if fossil fuels somehow expired (we still have a lot of
| those).
| 01100011 wrote:
| - CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas.
|
| - This process produces hydrocarbon fuel. It will be burned and
| the carbon will return to the atmosphere.
|
| I suppose propane could become a chemical feedstock. Then the
| carbon could theoretically be tied up for a while.
| malfist wrote:
| Even if it winds up back in the atmosphere, it's displaced an
| equivalent amount of new CO2 going into the atmosphere.
|
| Pulling enough CO2 to make a kilogram of propane and then
| burning that kilogram of propane for electricity is still
| better than burning a kilogram of freshly fracked propane.
|
| One offsets consumption. One just adds consumption.
| bluGill wrote:
| Only if your source of electric doesn't add CO2. If you
| burn coal to make propane you are worse off CO2 wise than
| using regular propane. We have a lot of wind and solar, but
| most places they are still a minor part of the electric mix
| (if this applies to you, it wouldn't be hard to get a lot
| more wind/solar in your grid).
| Udo wrote:
| The application of this is not in energy production or -
| realistically - CO2 capture on a global scale. This takes huge
| amounts of energy to do and requires a sophisticated chemical
| synthesis in the background in order to replenish the catalyst.
|
| Pretty much the only reason to do this would be because you're
| specifically interested in generating propane. For example, it
| could be very useful for ISRU on other planets, or to generate
| propane "for free" from a solar setup.
|
| If your goal is energy production, you'd just use the output of
| solar panels directly without this costly step in the middle.
| If you want to store energy locally, electrolyzing water into H
| and O would be hugely more cost effective. But _propane_ is a
| more dense fuel that would be useful for mobile applications
| such as ships and cars, and can also be used as a raw material
| in chemical synthesis.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Taking the carbon from the atmosphere will always be more
| expensive than from some carbon-rich rocks that form a huge
| fraction of the Earth's crust.
|
| In fact, our most effective ways to take carbon out of the
| atmosphere today all involve a step of letting some mineral
| turn into one of this carbon-rich ones, and extracting it from
| there.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It'll always be more expensive to extract carbon from the
| atmosphere, but if it produces a valuable byproduct and the
| power to run the process is very cheap (excess solar) it
| might still pencil out.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I fail to see anything that doesn't apply equally to the
| rocks.
| neolefty wrote:
| When you have surplus photovoltaic capacity -- an
| increasingly common situation -- you could turn it to
| electrolysis. You still have to pay for the equipment,
| but it sounds like it could be pretty cheap.
|
| It would cut out the cost of mining, and possibly a lot
| of transportation costs, if you can use the products
| nearby.
| pjc50 wrote:
| No: the atmospheric CO2 is at the bottom of the energy hill. In
| order to turn it in to fuel you need to pump in all the energy
| originally extracted from the fuel, then some more.
|
| _After_ you 've re-expended the entire 20th century's worth of
| fossil fuels energy equivalent in sucking CO2 out of the
| atmosphere, not burned it, and stored it in a country-sized
| propane tank, then maybe we're back to 19th-century
| temperatures.
| bluGill wrote:
| The earth is not a zero sum game, we get energy from the sun.
| Photosynthesis reverses the process turning co2 into sugar
| and o2.
| pjc50 wrote:
| And? So?
| bluGill wrote:
| That means co2 is not the bottom of the energy hill.
| api wrote:
| In the photosynthesis case the bottom of the energy hill
| is helium in the sun's core.
| XorNot wrote:
| Well and also the CO2 isn't acting as a fuel, it acts as
| a battery or resource.
|
| Plants make sugar from CO2, and also burn that sugar back
| to CO2 (plants respire overnight - they're not pure CO2
| consumption machines).
| Udo wrote:
| "Bottom of the energy hill" is a chemist's short hand way
| of saying that we can't practically extract energy from
| CO2 reacting with anything useful, meaning chemically
| this is at the bottom end of reactions that happen
| without energy input. To convert it into something
| reactive, you need to invest energy to split it up again
| into its constituent parts, which is what happens during
| photosynthesis.
| bluGill wrote:
| "Bottom of the energy hill" is a useful term in a lab.
| However the earth is not a chemistry lab. We cannot
| ignore photosynthesis outside of a lab as it is a factor
| that exists.
| Udo wrote:
| _> We cannot ignore photosynthesis outside of a lab as it
| is a factor that exists._
|
| I apologize if this wasn't clear. It's an expression
| about energy potentials, and as such it's _not_ just
| useful in a lab, it 's an essential piece of information
| about the substance.
|
| For example in the original context of this comment
| thread, a person asked whether there was a danger of
| people exhausting our atmospheric CO2 because they got
| too greedy with this technology - a question that can in
| fact not be answered meaningfully without talking about
| energy deltas. The fact that CO2 cannot be practically
| processed in a way that releases energy is the _only_
| pertinent information when talking about this.
| Tade0 wrote:
| The press in my corner of the world is going to have a field day
| with this, considering that over 13% of passenger cars around
| here are dual-fueled with petrol and LPG (so mostly propane) -
| they put it even in hybrids.
|
| Hilariously enough even at this rate of adoption few underground
| garages allow entry for such vehicles.
|
| I suppose it won't see adoption in cars anytime soon because
| looking at electricity prices it can't hope to be less expensive
| than fossil fuels.
| bertil wrote:
| There's no clear indication whether that would require some CO2
| or a concentrated atmosphere of CO2 without O2. Extracting CO2
| from the atmosphere at 0.4% is expensive.
|
| 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?
| _hypx wrote:
| It's funny to see people suddenly say this is doable, even
| though many posters in the past have claimed that it is totally
| impossible.
|
| 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.
| avar wrote:
| "Must" is debatable, but I've got a propane patio heater of a
| fairly common model here (NL) that tops out at 13000 watts.
|
| If it were electric it would require a 13k/220 = 60 amp
| connection, triple the domestic wiring standard here.
| bertil wrote:
| You'd need a lot less power if you use infrared lights...
|
| 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.
| rocqua wrote:
| We will need all the electrification we can get for
| electric cars and heat pumps. offloading some of that to
| other energy sources, using pre-existing infrastructure,
| would be amazing!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| You have a lot of industrial processes that produce highly
| concentrated CO2 - for example, cement production which is
| responsible for about 8% of _worldwide_ CO2 emissions.
| bertil wrote:
| I'm not convinced that the overall cycle is sustainable:
| cement >> concentrated CO2 >> electrolysis >> propane >>
| burn into the atmosphere still leaves that 8% of CO2 in
| the air.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| It replaces equivalent 8% of CO2 from fossil fuels that
| would be burned otherwise.
| yetihehe wrote:
| Cement is absorbing some of that CO2 back when it's
| curing. Some of CO2 is emitted by processing (crushing
| and heating), that part could be eliminated by renewable
| fuels, some is inherent in making cement (releasing CO2
| from limestone) but most of that part is absorbed back
| during curing. There are also carbon-negative
| alternatives in works[0]. That propane from cement could
| be used for synthesis of other materials instead of oil
| (not used yet because it's not needed only because we
| have cheaper oil) instead of being burned.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/dec/31/c
| ement-c...
| goodpoint wrote:
| Patio heaters should be illegal.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Patio heaters: for when the planet isn't warming fast enough
| and you want to pump heat directly into the atmosphere.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's good.
|
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is true, but it's also explaining a joke. The real
| point is that patio heaters are necessarily very
| inefficient because they're operating in an uninsulated
| space that's open to the elements - almost all the heat
| will be immediately lost to the atmosphere. Heat lamps
| are better, but really patio heaters are used by people
| trying to cosplay an outdoor culture at a latitude or
| season that doesn't support it, and they should put some
| warmer clothes on or go inside.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Your final observation _might_ be true of parts of the
| USA. But go to Berlin in winter, or anywhere in northern
| Europe really, where "it's cold" and "being outside" are
| not considered oppositional. Take a winter walk down a
| Berlin street with outdoor restaurant seating, and see
| people sitting under blankets, with warm coats on, and
| hats ... enjoying dinner ... _and_ patio heaters.
|
| They are not cosplaying at anything. It's just how it is.
| lxgr wrote:
| Patio heaters (at least the gas-powered kind) are
| prohibited in most German cities. Berlin has only
| temporarily allowed during Covid, as far as I know.
|
| > 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I lived in Berlin in 2008/2009. They must have been
| banned since then, because they were very common at that
| time.
|
| 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).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, the amount of heat added to the atmosphere by human
| activities is negligible compared to what we receive
| every day from the sun.
|
| It's the heat that is retained that is the problem.
| rocqua wrote:
| > 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.
| konschubert wrote:
| it's probably still more efficient to burn the gas in power
| plants and use heat pumps for heating.
|
| Also saves us from maintaining a residential gas network.
| wokkel wrote:
| Maybe, but if everyone starts using heat pumps we have a
| problem in getting enough copper in the ground everywhere
| on time. So even if it's temporary (20 years or so) this is
| still a great solution.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Maybe, but if everyone starts using heat pumps we have
| a problem in getting enough copper in the ground
| everywhere on time.
|
| 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.
| apexalpha wrote:
| The copper is mostly already in the ground. At least in
| the Netherlands it is.
|
| 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_.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| At energy level a heat pump never made sense, it merits are
| with the fossil fuel transition.
|
| 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.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| A gas furnace isn't 100% either (103% is impossible, they
| lie about what 100% means), and gas to electric can go up
| to 60%. Heat pumps can also go over 300%, so it's
| definitely possible for a heat pump to beat a gas
| furnace.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| About the gas furnaces, their efficiency exceeds 100%
| because of water vapour condensation. It happens both in
| the furnace and in the plastic exhaust pipe that
| exchanges heat with the outside air inflow. Gas comes in,
| liquid goes out and your law of thermodynamics is
| preserved. AFAIK the majority of housing is using this.
|
| 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).
| konschubert wrote:
| This calculus changes if you consider that on most winter
| days, a big part of the electricity will come from wind
| instead of synthetic gas.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| No, your point was on using propane gas to produce
| electricity for heating. If your consider/complicate the
| equation with other energy sources (coal, wind, ...) the
| outcome is more random.
|
| 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.
| rocqua wrote:
| Yes, heat pumps are more efficient. But they require lots
| more infrastructure.
|
| 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.
| konschubert wrote:
| I don't disagree
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > this sounds to good to be true.
|
| This post seems to have gotten a lukewarm reception. People
| are maybe extra sceptical after the lk99 dud.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| CO2 concentration in atmosphere is .04% not .4% But Yes is too
| low as a source for this process.
| rocqua wrote:
| Estimates I found (in one article, I linked it somewhere
| else) put the energy usage of CO2 capture from ambient air at
| about 2800kwh per ton of CO2, someone else calculated one ton
| of CO2 would produce 376kg of propane. Which is about 5254
| kwh. So it would be a significant hit to efficiency, changing
| it from about 90% to 60%. But that doesn't bring the
| efficiency to stupidly low levels.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| So lets pump more CO2 into the atmosphere.
| gcanyon wrote:
| > .04%, not .4%
|
| Give it time, we're working on it...
| zaroth wrote:
| > _Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere were as high as
| 4,000 ppm during the Cambrian period about 500 million
| years ago, and as low as 180 ppm during the Quaternary
| glaciation of the last two million years._
|
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Are there use cases where we must burn propane because we
| can't replace that process with electricity?
|
| 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.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Liquid hydrogen or ammonia are both very much feasible and
| carbon-free.
|
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| If the carbo is being extracted from the atmosphere, does
| it really matter it gets rereleased? It would still be net-
| zero.
| rocqua wrote:
| Might be better of extracting the carbon and just storing
| it, rather than releasing it again.
|
| Net-zero is nice, but extraction and storage is net-
| negative.
| regularfry wrote:
| By the time any of this hits a reasonable scale we'll be
| past a reasonable CO2 level in the atmosphere. The best
| thing to do may well be to use it as plastic feedstock
| and just chuck it into landfill.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| Hydrogen has the problem with thick-walled heavy fuel tanks
| - problematic for both cars and planes.
|
| 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.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Hydrogen has problems, but at the end of the day it's
| viable and are the best option for planes/ships _if_ we
| don 't find anything better. On ships fairly easily, on
| planes with a fair bit of re-engineering. Local pollution
| aside, renewable hydrocarbons would be a better option,
| _if_ they 're viable at all.
| Retric wrote:
| Green hydrogen is still horrifically expensive, wind
| powered cargo ships are currently more valuable though
| not actually viable without a massive carbon tax.
| Batteries can provide enough power for ships electrical
| systems. There's some niche fully battery powered boats
| which work fine for trips up to a few hundred miles.
|
| A full EV transition would also free up quite a lot of
| biofuels. Not enough on its own, but still significant.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| If the efficiency of propane production (from atmospheric
| CO2) can be made even close to that for hydrogen from
| hydrolysis, then the systems benefits of propane over
| compressed and/or liquid hydrogen will blow liquid
| hydrogen out of the water. Hydrogen is an awful fuel.
| It's only real advantage is the potential for being
| carbon neutral, and the fact that it doesn't create
| noxious air pollution when used in a fuel cell. It's
| claimed advantage of energy density is at best a wash in
| most applications - higher density by mass, but much
| lower by volume. But everything to do with hydrogen as a
| fuel system is hard, complicated, and expensive, compared
| to the alternatives.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Storing propane is much easier than storing hydrogen. It
| liquifes at reasonable pressure so it can be stored as a
| liquid in uninsulated, relatively lightweight tanks (the
| tank under your BBQ grill is an example).
|
| 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.
| speedgoose wrote:
| One ship could always go nuclear, or use wind.
| pfdietz wrote:
| A fuel-powered ship can ramp output up and down as needed,
| since the per-power costs of the powerplant aren't that
| high.
|
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Wind doesn't work with container ships, the sails are in
| the way of the cargo cranes at port. Might be an
| interesting idea for passenger ships though, but even
| there... there are ports which have a height limit (e.g.
| Hamburg) because ships need to pass below bridges.
|
| Nuclear in civilian hands is an absolute no-go for
| proliferation / terrorism concerns.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Someone should tell theses guys about wind power.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/travel/wind-powered-cargo-
| shi...
| sandos wrote:
| Yep, and those smartly can fold down! Also used for
| storms I assume.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Those only provide about 30% of the ships power.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Well there are cranes at the port, make the sails
| detachable and dismount them to load.
| smileysteve wrote:
| 2 proposed solutions for wind are
|
| 1. Kites attached by cable (deployed, high altitude for
| consistent winds)
|
| 2. Magnus effect cylindrical turbines that rise out of
| the ship.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Civilian nuclear-powered cargo ships have actually been
| tried in the past, a large issue was that a lot of ports
| refused them entry if I remember correctly.
| codersfocus wrote:
| There could be nuclear "tanker" ships that recharge
| electric battery ships on their routes.
| pydry wrote:
| There's also the minor issue that they are, like most
| forms of nuclear power, hellishly expensive.
|
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They are expensive because they don't externalize their
| environmental costs upon the rest of the world.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The environmental costs of renewables (other than
| biomass) are minor.
| eesmith wrote:
| I don't that that's the major issue. At least, the
| Wikipedia entry for the NS Savannah only mentions being
| excluded from Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#C
| ivi... 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."
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Nice picts and walkthrough [0] of the NS Savannah, "the
| world's first, and only, nuclear-powered cruise ship. The
| Savannah is the only nuclear-powered merchant ship the
| U.S. ever built, and the only nuclear vessel in the world
| designed with passengers in mind."
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1182973358/step-
| aboard-the-nu...
| noir_lord wrote:
| Russia tried that for nuclear, it wasnt a success.
|
| Though that was because it was badly mismanaged and the
| technology wasn't there yet.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > Are there use cases where we must burn propane because we
| can't replace that process with electricity?
|
| 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.
| bertil wrote:
| Not if it's a lot more expensive.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| You can run ICE cars on LPG (propane + butane, would
| probably work on pure propane as well), with minor (<1000$)
| modification in the fuel injection system and fitting a
| proper tank.
|
| 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.
| bertil wrote:
| Yeah, but that solution means your gallon of gas, or its
| propane equivalent, costs 45$.
| nnevod wrote:
| Electricity is way cheaper at the poont of generation
| than for residential consumer.
|
| IIRC, solar now gets to about 3$ 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.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| How are you arriving at this number?
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| What about cooling? As engines get smaller they quite
| often will dump in extra fuel under load to ensure the
| cylinder doesn't melt.
|
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > in many countries you can't park in an underground
| garage with LPG
|
| I'm not sure why parking with LPG is a problem but
| parking with 10-20 gallons of gasoline is not?
| jaclaz wrote:
| LPG is a gas, and it is heavier than air.
|
| 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).
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| I'm not a mechanical engineer, but for one I have driven
| my father's LPG-converted car, and the cylinder didn't
| melt so far, so I think this is already more-or-less
| under control. Many car vendors in the EU (especially
| south and east) offered LPG-petrol bi-fuel powered cars
| out of the box. (I know of Dacia and Fiat for sure, and
| according to my brother LPG converted hybrid Priuses are
| popular in Poland for insanely cheap operations by cab
| drivers for example).
|
| 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.
| ed_balls wrote:
| > will dump in extra fuel under load to ensure the
| cylinder doesn't melt
|
| 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.
| coderenegade wrote:
| This. There's no way the global car fleet is switching
| over to electric any time soon. Globally there are around
| 1.2 billion cars, with 65 million or so sold each year,
| which puts us at 15-20 years for the fleet to be replaced
| if every single car sold from today were electric.
|
| 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.
| hannob wrote:
| > 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.
| aqme28 wrote:
| What? This is a thread about a new technology that is a
| proposed commercializable "renewable propane" generator.
|
| This whole conversation is a hypothetical. Restricting the
| discussion to only existing technology makes no sense.
| hannob wrote:
| I haven't said you can't discuss them, I was pushing back
| against the idea that this is easy.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > It's something that is not produced at any meaningful
| scale anywhere. There are no industrial processes to do so
| yet.
|
| 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.
| hannob wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| emptybits wrote:
| > Are there use cases where we must burn propane because we
| can't replace that process with electricity?
|
| "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.
| bertil wrote:
| That process relies on DAC, plus electrolysing H2 and that
| conversion processes, which means the propane would have to
| be at the equivalent of 15-45$ per gallon. What is less
| affordable?
| bluGill wrote:
| The current iteration does. Research often brings costs
| down, though there is no guarantee.
| jokoon wrote:
| I don't like those techs because they don't guarantee that they
| will offset fossil fuel extraction.
|
| What's really needed it's culture change on growth and
| consumption.
|
| The best technology is light technology.
| red_admiral wrote:
| The answer to this kind of claim is in the book "The Wizard and
| the Prophet", which was reviewed on ACX/SSC here [1].
|
| To summarise the review: there are two approaches to solving
| humanity's big problems, from food production (mostly solved)
| to climate change. The Prophet approach is to go around saying
| "we must live within our means!" and "technology bad!", and the
| Wizard approach is to seek techological solutions. And as the
| reviewer writes:
|
| > Though Mann insists from the start that the book is not meant
| to advocate for or condemn either side, it was initially
| difficult for me to read it as anything but two-and-three-
| quarters cheers for Wizardry.
|
| It turns out that Prophets tend to be misanthropes at best, and
| racists at worst. William Vogt, Mann's archetypal Prophet,
| founded (according to Mann) much of modern-day environmentalism
| but also (according to the review, which I personally trust)
| called people in India "backward populations" who "breed with
| the irresponsibility of codfish". Says the reviewer:
|
| > _Which_ people deserved to live in harmony with nature in the
| ensuing pastoral utopia and which would be relegated to the
| dustbin of history was not an exercise they left to the reader.
|
| (Meanwhile Norman Borlaug, the Wizard, was busy producing a
| Green Revolution that ended up raising rice yields in India
| from 2 to 6 tons/hectare and lowered rice costs from $550 to
| $200 a ton, according to the Wiki page.)
|
| [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-
| the-w...
| bawolff wrote:
| Sometimes i think one of the biggest hurdles to
| environmentalism is greens insisting on wishful, return to
| edan, thinking instead of practical solution.
|
| Convincing everyone in the world to do a massive cultural
| change involving large standard of living decreases is not
| happening except at the point of a literal gun. The world can't
| afford to wait for impractical solutions.
| pjerem wrote:
| No, it's more a narrative issue than anything else.
|
| Nobody says we should go back to Stone Age but we should
| unleash our narratives of what is a nice future.
|
| Living in a world where everyone is eating healthy local
| food, where you live longer because it's safe to use your
| bicycle and hard to use the car. Living in a world where you
| can walk everyday because there are trees to give you their
| shadows. Living in a world where work is meaningful. For me
| that's a bright future.
|
| Nobody says we have to abandon all of our technological and
| cultural advances but that we have to prefer some over
| others.
|
| Like my grandfather said, plant 2 trees when you build your
| home and you'll never need air conditioning. His idea wasn't
| that you should ban A/C but rather that you can use it way
| more efficiently just by adding some shadow.
|
| That's the world we must live in now : consuming energy is ok
| but not if it is a countermeasure to our own stupid
| decisions.
|
| It's the same with cars. Ok they are nice sometimes. But they
| are stupid if we use them to go in a far office with the same
| computer you have at home.
|
| We don't need to go back to Stone Age but we need to dream of
| a future where we don't use the energy for stupid things. And
| this implies being able to see what is stupid and who have
| interest in keeping a given stupid thing, stupid.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Living in a world where everyone is eating healthy local
| food, where you live longer because it's safe to use your
| bicycle and hard to use the car. Living in a world where
| you can walk everyday because there are trees to give you
| their shadows. Living in a world where work is meaningful.
| For me that's a bright future.
|
| That sounds nice and all (although as a canadian, too much
| heat due to lack of shade is definitely not the issue
| around here ;) ). I'd even go as far as to say that those
| types of life style changes have an important part to play.
| However, even if implemented to the fullest extent
| possible, i don't really think it solves the greenhouse gas
| problem by itself or even comes close.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > i don't really think it solves the greenhouse gas
| problem by itself or even comes close.
|
| Well, yeah...ok, everyone rides around on bikes. Someone
| has to make the bike. Is it done by hand? How do you
| scale that to 8B people? Or is it done by a scaled
| industrial process, and if so, how do you power this?
|
| The answer to these questions isn't to limit technology,
| it's to _limit population_. The scale of our population
| is the cause of all of these strange threshold-breaking
| externalities we 're now facing. And you can't point at
| the technology and say "SEE?! It's ruining everything!"
|
| The technology is just a companion to our population.
| Real primitivists should be arguing for drastically
| reduced population (however that is achieved ethically),
| not a reduction of technology.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Living in a world where everyone is eating healthy local
| food, where you live longer because it's safe to use your
| bicycle and hard to use the car. Living in a world where
| you can walk everyday because there are trees to give you
| their shadows._
|
| As someone who dislikes physical movement or being
| outdoors, this sounds terrible. Local food is often heavy
| in ingredients I don't like or to which I am allergic, or
| doesn't fulfill my nutritional needs and desires. This is
| not the idea of an ideal world for many modern people.
|
| I'd much rather we solve the issues related to being
| sedentary with technology than we try to figure out how to
| make everyone bike everywhere, which most people don't want
| to do, even given the option. I don't wash my clothes by
| hand and I'm not sure why bicycling is seen as some ideal
| correspondingly. I'd take a 200 year perfect artificial
| heart over safe bike lanes. I'd take better solar (to run
| more AC and dehumidification) over more trees. I've
| swallowed enough bugs whilst cycling for more than one
| lifetime.
|
| Your position, to me, is still just a yearning for
| historical lifestyles that we abandoned en masse for good
| reasons. Using energy on air conditioning and
| transportation are perhaps the least stupid things one can
| spend energy on - right alongside spending energy on
| washing machines for your bedclothes and underwear, which
| nobody seems to regard as some insanely wasteful luxury.
| Why is energy for heating seen by europeans as OK when
| energy for cooling is regarded as a senseless waste? It's
| just cultural bias and tradition.
|
| When the majority of humans live in space or on bodies
| without an atmosphere, this whole "fresh air and trees"
| meme will finally die, I hope.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Why is energy for heating seen by europeans as OK when
| energy for cooling is regarded as a senseless waste?
|
| I'm not the type of person who would want everyone to
| cycle - chiefly because four wheels > two everywhere and
| everytime, but there's an argument to be made against
| overusing AC, namely: you're just moving heat around and
| producing some in the process, so the net effect is that
| the area around you gets extra hot.
|
| AC is a pretty blunt tool and there are ways of keeping
| places cooler without it.
| megaman821 wrote:
| The heating vs cooling this always gets me. Living in
| Arizona and cooling your home 30-40 degrees down with a
| 50% carbon-free electricity mix and 3 or 4x COP is seen
| as unsustainable, but living Illinois and heating your
| home 50-60 degrees up by burning fossil fuels is fine.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Expecting technology to solve all our problems is just as
| wishful.
| sneak wrote:
| Everyone who made it out of childhood thanks to antibiotics
| and vaccines should probably reject takes like this.
|
| Technology has solved the vast majority of all of the major
| problems of human beings throughout all of human
| civilization. Agriculture is technology. Writing is
| technology. Inks and paper are technology. Pharmaceuticals
| are technology. Heart surgery is technology. The modern
| industrial supply chain is technology. Transportation is
| technology. Seatbelts and blood typing to enable blood
| transfusions - technology.
|
| It is theoretically possible that technology could solve
| the problem of death itself.
|
| To make claims to the contrary, which would be
| extraordinary, something a great deal more substantial than
| a handwavey dismissal is required.
| rini17 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is talking here about going without
| antibiotics or modern agriculture. More like curbing
| excess production of concrete (making construction more
| sustainable) and metals (reducing automobilism and other
| wasteful means of transport).
| tchaffee wrote:
| The revolutions or sometimes evolutions resulting in
| democrat nations with regulated market based economies
| are what allowed the rapid pace of innovating you are
| praising. Those revolutions were radical social changes.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Nothing in your post rebukes the claim made by the
| parent.
| mdiesel wrote:
| Sure, we now survive childhood based on vaccines, but
| remember that there was a time between the disease
| appearing and the vaccine being developed, and in that
| time we used simpler methods to try survive.
|
| The issue is not what the world will be like in 200 years
| when the climate crisis is solved, it's how we get there.
| Tech takes decades to research, design, and develop; we
| need ways to limit the damage that can be implemented in
| years to limit the effects we'll see in our lifetimes. I
| agree tech will be the end solution, but continuing to
| burn at current rates while we wait for that is going to
| cause, or already is causing, massive problems.
| tticvs wrote:
| > Sure, we now survive childhood based on vaccines, but
| remember that there was a time between the disease
| appearing and the vaccine being developed, and in that
| time we used simpler methods to try survive.
|
| 50% of children died before their 5th birthday
| reacharavindh wrote:
| IMO, we need both - people screaming out loud to reduce
| consumption and rooting for truly green technologies that
| create a revolution. While some silent practical warriors
| change the status quo one kg of CO2 at a time until those
| revolutionary changes kick in.
|
| I think no sensible person would protest a more sustainable
| solution than the current fossil burning tech even if it is
| not 100% renewable.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > IMO, we need both - people screaming out loud to reduce
| consumption and rooting for truly green technologies that
| create a revolution.
|
| Nuclear fusion for energy generation purposes has been
| promised for, what, 60 years now? Hoping for that to
| eventually succeed will only lead to one thing: it won't
| work out and whoops, suddenly humanity is out of options
| because everyone had refused to change in the hope for a
| miracle.
|
| It is more sensible to prepare for the worst case now.
| bawolff wrote:
| Fortunately nuclear fisson technology has been here for a
| while and solves most of the immediate problems we have.
|
| Too bad we barely used it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| We barely used it because it's a textbook case of
| overpromising and underdelivering.
|
| A nuclear project on average has a probability of going
| over time and budget somewhere between an IT project and
| organizing the Olympics.
|
| These are not great odds, especially that renewables are
| on the other end of the same scale.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| It is one of those things that genuinely polarizes
| people's opinion. On the one-hand you have a solution
| that used carefully could simply replace fossil fuels for
| a large set of use cases. On the other hand, as little as
| it may be, their wastes are an undealt problem that is
| only wish washed away. Ironically, it also needs one of
| those revolutionary discoveries before it is truly safe.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Convincing everyone in the world to do a massive cultural
| change involving large standard of living decreases is not
| happening except at the point of a literal gun.
|
| ...or when you have millions of people on the Western borders
| fleeing from climate change and its side effects (we're
| already seeing just how cruel politicans behave towards the
| relatively small amount of people at the borders currently -
| imagine how the situation will look like with just 10x as
| many!), or entire of _our_ states being devastated by
| wildfires, hurricanes or tornadoes. Probably it 's going to
| take the latter until politicians wake up, when the situation
| is undeniable even to the hardest MAGAts and other deniers.
|
| The key thing is: humanity is using more resources (no matter
| if you're talking about food, drinkable water or fuel) than
| nature can regenerate, each year. We are currently digging
| into reserves that took (in case of groundwater) sometimes
| many millennia to create.
|
| > The world can't afford to wait for impractical solutions.
|
| It can't afford doing nothing, because continuing as-is
| without managing sensible degrowth may work out for our
| generations, but the ones born after 2010? They're fucked.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Even if I believed degrowth was a good solution (I mostly
| don't), I would still hope for the success of these
| technologies as a backup plan.
| tticvs wrote:
| If the price is competitive the market will guarantee it.
| Otherwise regulations can.
|
| Why would you oppose technological solutions in favor of
| ideological ones? Unless of course you don't care about solving
| the problem...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Energy policy based on being "nice" will never have
| significant longevity.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| We(as humanity) has done this several times in the past. If
| there is an alternative we could regulate our way out of
| not harming ourselves. It sure takes time but it has
| happened in the past. Cue. Asbestos, use of Lead pipes, use
| of CFCs, now ongoing reduction of single use plastics.
| [deleted]
| tchaffee wrote:
| Except it already has. Car emissions regulations are a good
| example. Not just regulations on manufacturers either. Look
| at London's ultra low emissions zones quickly pushing folks
| to go electric.
| westmeal wrote:
| Would be nice if instead of using car emissions as a
| boogeyman they focused on the cargo shipping industry who
| burn metric fuck tons of bunker oil instead of using
| alternative fuels. Instead you just get taxes in the
| guise of 'fixing the environment' by penalizing the
| working class who in reality contribute very little to
| co2 and nox emissions.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >What's really needed is culture change on growth and
| consumption.
|
| It is not.
|
| At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static. It will not ever be. It will and should be
| exponential. Figure out how to make that happen or go join one
| of the religious groups that stop using new technology.
|
| We want, need, and benefit from growth.
|
| Our energy source just needs to change, and is changing. Plenty
| of earthbound solar and nuclear to satisfy our growth for a
| good while. There isn't enough fossil fuel around anyway if we
| wanted to keep growing with it.
|
| By the time we need it we can produce plenty of energy in
| space. Think square miles of solar arrays in solar orbits
| fixing energy into whatever passes for a future battery while
| also colocating with asteroid smelting and refining facilities.
| pkdpic wrote:
| > There isn't enough fossil fuel around anyway if we wanted
| to keep growing with it
|
| I in all seriousness love this angle and find it super
| refreshing, the puny amount of oil on this tiny planet isn't
| enough to satisfy human ambition. We should own the stars.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Very little oil among the stars, though... Very little
| sunlight or wind on route either.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Fair amount of hydrogen. Get fusion working and you don't
| need much.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| > There isn't enough fossil fuel around anyway if we wanted
| to keep growing with it
|
| There is plenty of coal left and you can make oil out of it,
| so we could burn fossil fuels for centuries to come if we
| don't mind the side effects .. otherwise agree.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static
|
| Indeed countless civilizations collapsed once they depleted
| natural resources.
| jokoon wrote:
| > At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static.
|
| So? "The limits to growth" was published in the 70, you
| should try to educate yourself on finiteness of earth.
|
| Good luck with your space dreams. Smells like the Elysium
| movie.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| > At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static.
|
| Generally: correct. _So far_.
|
| > It will not ever be.
|
| Yes, it will. This will be forced by 2 factors:
|
| a) The Earth we live on is essentially a closed system. Yes @
| some point we might be able to mine asteroids, use
| extraterrestrial energy sources, move people off-planet etc.
| But this depends on technology to make this feasible. Until
| such technology appears, we're stuck on this rock. And thus,
| have to make do with what _this rock_ provides. Which is a
| lot, but finite.
|
| b) The laws of physics (those related to energy, in
| particular).
|
| The "eternal growth" is a classical economist's view. Which
| (sadly) is very pervasive.
|
| Historically, population growth, raw materials consumption,
| energy use, and technological progress have been tightly
| coupled.
|
| But this coupling _will_ be loosened.
|
| Technology will probably keep progressing ..somehow.
|
| Energy use _might_ increase if eg. we can get nuclear fusion
| to work. Even that is not 100% a given, btw (apart from the
| timescale). How energy is generated will be very different
| 30..50y from now.
|
| But raw material consumption can NOT keep increasing. There
| is finite amounts of [insert material here] on this planet.
| Never mind agri stuff like phosphor, pollution, or the amount
| of CO2 we can release 'safely'. And it's not feasible to
| recover 100% of any reserve.
|
| Same with population. Earth is already too crowded. Would you
| want continued growth until entire Earth surface is covered
| with humans? Stacked 50 humans high?
|
| No? Then population growth _will_ stop. Not to mention that
| population growth eats any gains made elsewhere (10% more raw
| materials, 10% more energy, 10% more food, followed by 10%
| more people = back to square 1 despite the gains).
|
| Historically this wasn't a problem because those limits
| weren't hit (well... they were, locally, which caused past
| civilizations to collapse). But we are hitting those limits
| now - globally.
|
| It's this decoupling of growth factors that's a hard pill for
| people to swallow. Especially economists & politicians.
|
| But don't worry! The laws of physics are very reliable.
| colechristensen wrote:
| > @ some point we might be able to mine asteroids
|
| Essentially, we can do this now. There is no real
| technological barrier and several organizations are
| actively developing solutions. We're at over a billion
| dollars invested. Go read a report on the status of things
| [1]. This isn't far off science fiction but something
| practical folks are throwing money after.
|
| 1. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-
| reports/space-mi...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static.
|
| From the 1200s to 1600s England went through a period of zero
| or extremely low growth.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Mostly due to the plague killing some massive fraction of
| the population in the 1300s?
| tchaffee wrote:
| > At no point in the history of human civilization has growth
| been static.
|
| This is a bold and hard to believe claim. Weren't the Dark
| Ages in fact a reversal? Can you provide a source for your
| claim?
| jskrablin wrote:
| I really fail to understand how you can push "light technology"
| while using a modern computer connected to the Internet - both
| are very very far away from being light in terms of technology
| involved. In fact the technology making both run is incredibly
| complex/sophisticated with a high environmental impact
| resulting from production, assembly and shipping of components
| required to make it work.
|
| Wanna go light? Ditch your computer, phone and most of
| electronic/digital devices you use every day (for a start, then
| follow up with car and basically anything that depends on
| "heavy technology" to exist and run). But that is probably not
| the lifestyle you're imagining ATM.
| jokoon wrote:
| you're attacking the messenger, not the message
|
| im using a low performance computer, and computer have enough
| power to do things.
|
| it's about the ressources spent to make a computer.
| api wrote:
| Propane always struck me as a potential lower carbon aviation
| fuel since it easily liquifies under modest pressure, making the
| whole system lighter and more compact than natural gas or
| hydrogen.
|
| Batteries would AFAIK need a 2-4X power/weight density
| improvement to do anything more than short haul electric flight.
| Short haul electric planes are possible today but not beyond a
| few hundred miles range.
| Animats wrote:
| Whatever happened to a similar announcement from Stanford in
| 2019?[1]
|
| [1] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/10/17/new-catalyst-helps-
| turn...
| tuetnsuppe wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Ear...
|
| Ruthenium and Iridium are known stable catalysts that are also
| among the most rare elements. Their structure used Ru. This new
| paper seems to propose only abundant materials. If it can be
| used at scale and proves to be stable that would be an
| important advancement.
| murkt wrote:
| > 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium-functionalized Mo3P nanoparticles
| coated with an anion-exchange ionomer
|
| How hard/expensive are all their materials to produce at scale?
|
| Molybdenum is not as rare and expensive as platinum, so that's
| certainly a win.
| 01100011 wrote:
| 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium is a fairly simple molecule and
| already used in industry.
| Derbasti wrote:
| So, we could take concentrated CO2 from a furnace, and instead of
| releasing it into the atmosphere directly, convert it to Methane,
| and then burn that incrementally?
|
| Or could we possibly fit an exhaust-gas tank onto our engines
| that holds all the combustion products, and is collected and
| recycled at the gas station?
| rocqua wrote:
| It's easy to capture at places that produce lots of CO2. Say
| fossil fuel electricity plants, and apparently also the
| production of Cement. Long term, these sources will hopefully
| dissapear. But short term, concentrated sources of CO2 are
| sadly still quite abundant.
|
| It would be cool if, long term, the CO2 released by burning
| this in home furnaces for heating can mostly be re-captured.
| XorNot wrote:
| This doesn't work. You need energy to convert CO2 back into
| propane. The CO2 is coming from fossil fuels, which you're
| still ultimately going to burn again to get energy
| back...putting the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
|
| Only now you've thrown away some of the energy in losses
| doing the CO2 to propane conversion.
|
| This would lower the efficiency of a fossil fuel powerplant,
| and this increase the CO2 emitted overall.
| malfist wrote:
| Only if you use energy from fossil fuels to do the
| conversion. Earth's energy isn't a zero sum game, we have
| plenty of decarbonized energy sources.
| rocqua wrote:
| I meant to do the CO2 capture at gas furnaces in homes.
| Because the electric power available for heating is ofte
| limited, but might still be sufficient to gather CO2 from
| the exhaust of the furnace.
|
| It'll cost energy, but it is a cheap source of CO2 for this
| electrolysis.
| XorNot wrote:
| To convert CO2 back to propane you have to put in every
| bit of energy released when burning it and then some.
|
| So again, it wouldn't work because as you note: the
| electric power available is less than the gas.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >It's easy to capture at places that produce lots of CO2.
|
| Not easy enough apparently, the US gov started
| subsidizing/taxcutting this because there was demand for CO2
| in enhanced oil recovery but the price was too high.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Electrolyzer reactions tend to be reversible...
|
| If they could do the reverse (water+propane to
| CO2+hydrogen+electricity) at the efficiency claimed (91%), they
| can replace all gas turbine generators (who typically have
| efficiencies of only 60% at best)
| murkt wrote:
| Reversed electrolyzer would be called a fuel cell then? What
| are their typical efficiencies?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yep. Fuel cell efficiency varies widely, but the efficiency
| of the reverse process is a good guide - typically efficiency
| is fairly symmetrical.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Gas turbines scale much better than fuel cells, and can achieve
| great power density, are durable, can be produced without too
| much exotic materials needed, are a proven technology. If you
| can solve the storage of intermittent renewable production as
| conversion to propane, you already won!
| rjmunro wrote:
| I wonder if you can have the same plant act as both a propane
| producer at times of extra power available on the grid, but
| also generate electricity when there is a shortage. Then the
| power density and exotic materials are irrelevant as the
| plant already exists.
|
| You'd use the plant mainly to make propane, just run it
| backwards when electricity prices were the highest.
| londons_explore wrote:
| At a current density of 395mA/cm2 @0.8V, these already won on
| the power density and scalability front.
|
| 500 stacked 0.5mm layers of this would make 400 volts for an
| ev battery or stationary AC generator. It would have a power
| density of 6.3 kilowatts per litre, far exceeding both
| lithium batteries and gas turbines.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Propane fuel cells already exist, and are in use for remote
| power. The problem with using them for cars is that they
| operate at high temperature, so you spend a lot of battery
| warming the cell for steady state, but most trips are short
| so you would be there before it got to temp. Might make
| sense as a phev sort of thing where you punch in a trip and
| it decides to warm it up or not. You'd always leave enough
| battery to warm the cell while driving so you never get
| stuck.
| cduzz wrote:
| Several tesla superchargers near where I live have fuel
| cell setups, presumably to shave peak loads for the rare
| cases that the charging stations are all in use and all
| charging at peak rates.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I suspect they have batteries rather than fuel cells?
|
| Tesla is known to colocate them for exactly the reasons
| you say - also to shift load to cheaper hours of the day
| and to get paid by the grid for balancing services.
| sp332 wrote:
| I think the current ones don't use generators, but that
| one time they used a gas generator to charge Teslas,
| called it a "battery swap station", and got a bunch of
| money from California that was supposed to go to zero-
| emissions car projects. I doubt they'll ever live that
| down.
| londons_explore wrote:
| High temperature isn't a problem for cars. It's simple
| enough to have a small fuel cell which can be heated up
| quickly, which in turn can provide the energy required to
| heat up a larger cell if needed. A small battery can
| drive you a few miles while that process is happening.
| The small fuel cell could then recharge the battery while
| parked if most journeys are only a couple of miles,
| avoiding the energy cost of heating the large cell except
| for extended journeys.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Not sure why no one has done it? Not carbon neutral I
| guess, but paired with this and solar power it would be.
| Batteries are already so good is probably part of it too.
| But adding about 25% travel time on long drives is
| annoying.
| infinityio wrote:
| Up until this point I'd imagine there was no significant
| advantage to creating propane vehicles unless they could
| be made significantly more efficient than petrol or
| diesel (which I'm guessing is not known to be the case)
|
| by comparison, this discovery _could_ make it a green-vs-
| brown fuel debate, at which point it would be much more
| valuable to invest in for vehicles
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Propane combustion vehicles are common, and I'd guess a
| fuel cell would extract roughly 30% extra energy from the
| same fuel. They typically have battery efficiencies.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Did they? Are they capable to be scaled to 100 MW scales
| with MTBF of years already?
| legulere wrote:
| Shouldn't the chemical reaction be: 4 H2O + 3 CO2 <=> C3H8 + 5
| O2
| londons_explore wrote:
| The reaction described in the paper doesn't have spare oxygen
| on either side, presumably because oxygen has a habit of
| destroying catalysts and being explosive when mixed with
| hydrocarbons. Instead hydrogen is required.
| bertil wrote:
| So you would need to have two separate electrolyzing
| processes, one that isolates H2 and one that runs this
| operation? How much energy would have to go into the first
| one?
|
| I'm asking because a lot of the demand for hydrocarbon that
| I see mentioned is for processes that have more efficient,
| non-hydrocarbon equivalents.
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