Thread: Engineers make petrol out of thin air.

[quote=Koojo;2245904]Th

has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity.



The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.

I know I am not a chemist, but even though, I do have trouble matching up those red bits.....

Getting carbon dioxide from air is old technology. Same for making hydrogen. Hmm Sodium carbonate is washing soda so that's not new.

Why not simply use the methanol? But hey I'm not getting paid to do it.

There goes all the plant life...

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

Hmm Sodium carbonate is washing soda so that's not new.

Is there enough Sodium Hydroxide in the world to make enough fuel to power the world ?

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

Getting carbon dioxide from air is old technology. Same for making hydrogen. Hmm Sodium carbonate is washing soda so that's not new.

Hmm. Cough. Sodium hydroxide, not sodium carbonate.

On edit: the carbonate is what they get mixing the Co2 and NaOH.

On further edit - it all seems a bit off. Sodium carbonate is already mass produced - salt and limestone (both pretty common) - so why would they start with Co2 + sodium hydroxide?

5 litres in 3 months... Must be a refinery the size of a teapot.
I can make all the oil in the world.
I just need a few gigatons of biomatter, preasure and a little bit of time.

If I could collect all of the mulch from cut yards, silage from all the fields, and trimmed branches from the world... I would mix it with my cane sugar.

From there... the Ethanol is mixed with Soy ....

10 % mixed with 80 % soy will give you Bio fuel, the other 10% is a loss.

I can do this with peanuts as well


All of your waste fruit, veggies, wood, grain and anythng that is compost... We can make GAS

If we could reduce the world's population to no more than 1/2 what it is now and keep there, we could have all the raw materials we need for another 1000 years. Yes, shocking isn't it. I'm no expert so I don't know if this is true but what the heck let's give it a try! We could also try to genetically shrink people to barbie doll size. At that size one apple would feed a small city fruit for a day. Let's go nano!

As I understand it, the sodium hydroxyde is used to gather the CO2 and it runs in a cycle so is not consumed.

They also use air humidity to produce the water they need. I could think of easier methods to get water.

Then they use electricity to produce the fuel from water and CO2. Somewhat unclear to me is using NaOH for gathering the CO2. I would think cooling air to produce liquid CO2 would be easier. That is the standard method used presently to produce pure CO2. But maybe their method is more energy efficient. They then produce hydrogen and oxygen from the water.

Making fuel from CO2 and hydrogen is simple. The required technology would be known since early last century. So nothing new there at all. The rub of course is you need a lot of electricity. So unless you have unlimited cheap electricity it is worthless. No need by the oil companies to suppress it. You could see it as a method of storing solar electricity.

Originally Posted by Neo

It's not Petrol from 'thin air' as pulp journalists would like their audiences to believe, it's actually petrol from air and water

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

They claim to get the water from the air too. At their present production rate that would be possible.

Especially with the air in England.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Neo

It's not Petrol from 'thin air' as pulp journalists would like their audiences to believe, it's actually petrol from air and water

Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.

They claim to get the water from the air too. At their present production rate that would be possible.

Especially with the air in England.

T.O,

Rocket fuel is expensive, I forget the ratio.

It takes too much electricity to split water

Originally Posted by Carrabow

T.O,
Rocket fuel is expensive, I forget the ratio.
It takes too much electricity to split water

Certainly, even considered that fuel is less than 0,5% of launch cost. Maybe hydrogen a little more.

BTW Most if not all present suggestions for a manned Mars mission propose making the fuel for Mars ascend locally using a small nuclear reactor or solar electricity.

The Mars atmosphere is mostly CO2 and they could split it to 2CO + O2 and use that as fuel. Or use local water also and produce methane. It has been recently established that there is very much water on Mars, not only on the poles. But not everywhere so you would have to select a location with water for the landing. But locations with water would be preferred anyway because of the (small) chance to find life.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Carrabow

T.O,
Rocket fuel is expensive, I forget the ratio.
It takes too much electricity to split water

Certainly, even considered that fuel is less than 0,5% of launch cost. Maybe hydrogen a little more.

BTW Most if not all present suggestions for a manned Mars mission propose making the fuel for Mars ascend locally using a small nuclear reactor or solar electricity.

The Mars atmosphere is mostly CO2 and they could split it to 2CO + O2 and use that as fuel. Or use local water also and produce methane. It has been recently established that there is very much water on Mars, not only on the poles. But not everywhere so you would have to select a location with water for the landing. But locations with water would be preferred anyway because of the (small) chance to find life.

Our Moon has helium3.

That can be a good source.

Makes sense to put a fort on the frontier and then head out. Gravity on the moon is 1/3 rd of our home. A launch would be gravy

Originally Posted by Carrabow

Our Moon has helium3.

That can be a good source.

I thought so too, given all the hype about He3. But then I looked up on it.

Wikipedia Helium 3

He3 won't help with energy production. It is actually much harder to achieve fusion of He3 than what we are trying to achieve right now in fusion development. It would only help in appeasing the green mob because He3 fusion would produce less neutrons and so less secondary radioactive materials. That is not really important as that radiation is quite easy to handle and much shorter lived and far less than the fission products of our present nuclear fission power plants.

Originally Posted by Carrabow

Makes sense to put a fort on the frontier and then head out. Gravity on the moon is 1/3 rd of our home. A launch would be gravy

That is a major point of contention among us space enthusiasts.

Some believe fuel from the moon would be the key to exploration of the solar system. But that would be oxygen and hydrogen from water found on the moon. There are two major drawbacks for that plan.

One is there is no real hard data on water on the moon. It may be very little and very hard to get.

Second is the problem with hydrogen as fuel. It needs to be cooled extremely deep to be liquid and there are major unsolved problems with storing it for long flights. You can fill it in a rocket but you lose some of it every minute. So good for launch but no good for use at the destination of a long flight.

Look Brother,

In 1969 we hauled ass to the moon...

WTF?

We aint done shite since then ....

Oh... we sent some Robots Mars...

That was 42 years ago. Yer Cell phone has more computing power than the lunar lander had...

The cost of the electricity to make the 5 litres of petrol was what?

Originally Posted by OhOh

The cost of the electricity to make the 5 litres of petrol was what?

What year? Rockets use Hydrogen and O2. That is made from WATER brother.

How much is that in electricity?


Now they say we can use H3, which they say is all over the moon.

^I would suggest that the cost of fuel to fill the average Joe's car is more important than the cost of fuel for a missile or a space mission. IMHO

Originally Posted by OhOh

^I would suggest that the cost of fuel to fill the average Joe's car is more important than the cost of fuel for a missile or a space mission. IMHO

NASA


C'mon bro! They spend in one minute what you spend in a lifetime...

Fookin' 'ell... We aint made it past the Moon

Originally Posted by OhOh

^I would suggest that the cost of fuel to fill the average Joe's car is more important than the cost of fuel for a missile or a space mission. IMHO

If you can make fuel for 5000€ a liter on Mars for lifting people or soil samples from the surface it would be a lot cheaper than ferrying it in from earth.

And don't get me started on NASA wasting money. Even if it is mostly not NASAs fault but politics as the root cause.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by OhOh

^I would suggest that the cost of fuel to fill the average Joe's car is more important than the cost of fuel for a missile or a space mission. IMHO

If you can make fuel for 5000€ a liter on Mars for lifting people or soil samples from the surface it would be a lot cheaper than ferrying it in from earth.

And don't get me started on NASA wasting money. Even if it is mostly not NASAs fault but politics as the root cause.

We need to get our Uni's and scientific students rolling on gravity.

You can float a coil of wire with AC voltage for a time... The key is to pulse the coil, and not overheat it. In space the cooler temps will control the burn.

Originally Posted by Carrabow

We need to get our Uni's and scientific students rolling on gravity.

You can float a coil of wire with AC voltage for a time... The key is to pulse the coil, and not overheat it. In space the cooler temps will control the burn.

The floating coil has nothing to do with gravity. It uses a strong magnetic field. Not very useful in space, maybe in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) using the earth's magnetic field.

But there is something good ready to be used.

Variabale Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket = VASIMR

That's an Ion Drive Engine with much higher thrust than those used so far. It needs several Megawatt of electric power. That could be provided using nuclear reactors or solar arrays. Solar arrays can be made very big in space and might drive Space Tugs soon ferrying freight from LEO to high orbit or even to Mars. Slow but uses far less fuel than chemical rockets.

One very interesting idea would be to shift a Mars ship to the L2-point using VASIMR or similar thrusters. That is a point beyond the moon from earth. When the ship is ready Astronauts could fly there the fast route and then off to Mars. It would save a lot of fuel.

But these Ion drives won't supply enough thrust to lift of from the Earth or Mars or even the Moon. They go slow but steady so good for move in space between orbits.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Originally Posted by Carrabow

We need to get our Uni's and scientific students rolling on gravity.

You can float a coil of wire with AC voltage for a time... The key is to pulse the coil, and not overheat it. In space the cooler temps will control the burn.

The floating coil has nothing to do with gravity. It uses a strong magnetic field. Not very useful in space, maybe in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) using the earth's magnetic field.

But there is something good ready to be used.

Variabale Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket = VASIMR

That's an Ion Drive Engine with much higher thrust than those used so far. It needs several Megawatt of electric power. That could be provided using nuclear reactors or solar arrays. Solar arrays can be made very big in space and might drive Space Tugs soon ferrying freight from LEO to high orbit or even to Mars. Slow but uses far less fuel than chemical rockets.

One very interesting idea would be to shift a Mars ship to the L2-point using VASIMR or similar thrusters. That is a point beyond the moon from earth. When the ship is ready Astronauts could fly there the fast route and then off to Mars. It would save a lot of fuel.

But these Ion drives won't supply enough thrust to lift of from the Earth or Mars or even the Moon. They go slow but steady so good for move in space between orbits.

T.O

I screw around with lots of stuff. Am I smart like you? No... I do understand how stuff works. That is how we got where we are today.


We have been using bottle rockets for years. Now... they talk about ram jets??? The Germans were using those back in WWII???

We aint going forward...