The Best Approach to Synthetic Fuels: Doty WindFuels
A reader asked if I would comment on this piece on using the carbon in CO2 to produce fuels.
Yes, I’ve seen this, and yes, it works, if we want methanol, which generally we don’t. I believe that the best answer to synthetic fuels is presented by Doty WindFuels, which will be using a different set of chemical processes to manufacture high grade diesel and high octane gasoline.
It sounds like a great way to perform the flying circus of chemistry to get your end product. Huge inputs of green electrical energy drive the process. Can you show that the end use for this syn-fuel is better than just using the green electrical power directly for propulsion?
If we can displace the use of X kilotons of CO2 by using electrical power directly, why should we go through all the hoops to capture CO2 and eventually put it right back into the environment?
The elegant solution is often the most direct path to the goal.
The value of this approach is really energy storage. It relies on off-peak wind (or nuclear, or anything else). Until electric transportation becomes ubiquitous, we’ll still need liquid fuels; this is a carbon-neutral way to address the issue.
Larry,
Upgrading the American transportation system to EV’s, then upgrading the electricity grid to distribute sufficient energy from the wind-rich plains to the entire U.S., then upgrading storage across America to resolve the intermittancy issues with wind and solar, then installing rapid-charging infrastructure across America, then upgrading the last-mile energy capacity of the grid to accommodate widespread at-home charging… … …
All told the price tag for the above will be in excess of 15 trillion dollars. That’s not a typo, and it’s not an exaggeration. This is essentially a dead cost to the consumer so they can drive one type of car rather than driving another type of car…
The WindFuels solution allows a market-driven solution which continues to use liquid fuels to drive our national transportation system. It’s profitable as is with no additional cost to the consumer or taxpayer. As Craig pointed out, the WindFuels paradigm fully integrates renewables onto the grid, so there is no impediment to greater build-out of wind, nuclear, geothermal, and to a lesser extent solar power. This allows real growth in renewables industries, again without additional costs to taxpayers or consumers.
Ohkam’s Razor states that: “all things being equal, the simplest explanation is probable the correct one”… but in the world of economics and technology, simple is not always the least expensive solution. The economic law of gravity states that “all things being equal, the lowest-cost solution will win.” That’s what we need to focus on in order to actually accomplish something.
😉
If the competition is between ICE’s and EV’s… ICE’s are FAR lower costs. Since the externalities of fossil fuels are not priced into the market equation, there is literally zero chance that EV’s will make a dent in the market.
WindFuels are inexpensive enough that they directly compete with crude oil (they would cost less than today’s current price), so the inexpensive ICE vehicle could run on inexpensive WindFuels and have a sustainable zero emissions profile, for less than half the lifetime ownership cost of an EV. Costs matter.
Until electric transportation becomes ubiquitous, we’ll still need liquid fuels;
Yes, and that is what petroleum is for and it does the job quite admirably.
The investment in syn-fuels that consume so much more energy that they deliver seems to be a poor trade-off.
The development and infrastructure costs associated with this process could be spent more wisely IMO on direct green energy projects such as additional geothermal wells, solar thermal storage and a host of other projects crying for money and attention. As soon as you move sideways in energy production it costs time and Carnot cycle losses which make wide scale adoption unlikely.
Investment in new direct process green energy can offset the continued use of liquid fossil fuels more than a process that converts CO2 back into a fuel. There will be a net reduction of CO2 from bringing new green energy on-line and a net gain of CO2 emissions from the convoluted path to synfuel.
I hear you. I’ve had this exact discussion with the people at Doty Windfuels, and trust me, they’re pretty convincing.
I’m from Missouri, show me!
This all boils down to the numbers.
Yes it can be done but is it competetive with other routes to the same goal of global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?
Whether investors hop on board this train depends on how convincing the numbers actually are.
See what I just sent you, and tell me what you think.
Craig,
One other thing that is important to note about the Air Fuel option is that they are scrubbing CO2 out of the dilute atmosphere using sodium hydroxide.
Technically, there is no advantage to scrubbing the CO2 out of the dilute atmosphere vs scrubbing the CO2 out of a highly concentrated smokestack. At the end, a million tons of CO2 that is separated and stored reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a million tons… there’s no gain.
But the Air Fuel solution not only scrubs CO2 from the dilute atmosphere, it does so using sodium hydroxide/sodium carbonate. This process is orders of magnitude more energy intensive than using a high efficiency amine capture system.