Diesel Fuel from Thin Air? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind! 2

[waross]

Feb. 4. 2010[/b]]
waross (Electrical)
4 Feb 10 13:07
I have had an idea for awhile now. It may be a bad idea. If so, can you tell me why?
Refining petroleum products seems to use a lot of energy. Much of this energy may be generated by burning hydro-carbons with the resulting release of green house gasses.
I understand that there are two basic processes used to upgrade heavy hydro-carbons to lighter fractions. Both involve breaking the molecular chains.
In what I believe is the most widespread process, carbon is produced. Much of this carbon will be in the form of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide (which is generally burned in a boiler to produce carbon dioxide), some will be in the form of coke which is often burned to produce energy.
There is an alternate process where hydrogen is added to complete the shorter molecules. In some instances I understand that this process actually produces more barrels of synthetic crude than the number of barrels of heavy oil used as feed stock.
Now lets look at nuclear.
Imagine a nuclear plant supplying the energy needed to upgrade the heavier oils. With some plants using as much as 40% of their feed stocks to generate heat to drive the process, this alone will be a significant reduction in green house gas emissions.
Now let's use the same nuclear plant to produce hydrogen from water. We can switch over from carbon producing plants to hydrogen based reactions and gain more barrels out than we put in.
As a bonus, a by product may be free oxygen released into the atmosphere.
If thermal power plants are also phased out in favor of nuclear and renewable energy, we may greatly reduce our carbon dioxide emissions while continuing to burn gasoline for many years into the future.
An added bonus is a lot of construction driving the economy followed by jobs n the plants.
Comments??
What are the pitfalls?? (Apart from nuclear hysteria)

Current update:
Over the last few days, I have been doing some Googling on methods to produce synthetic fuels.
I was surprised at the progress that has been made, far past my original idea.
There is a working demonstration plant in Chile producing synthetic diesel fuel.
The feed stack is water and atmospheric air.
The by products are oxygen and water.
The product is synthetic diesel fuel.
The power source is wind power.
The owners of the plant?
Porsche, Siemens and the German Government.
CO2 is captured from the atmosphere.
Water is electrolized to generate oxygen and hydrogen.
The oxygen is released, and the hydrogen is reacted with the CO2.
The carbon is upgraded with the addition of hydrogen to produce diesel fuel.
The oxygen component of the CO2 combines with the hydrogen to produce water as a by product.
There are plans to greatly increase the capacity of the plant.
Why did the Germans build in Chile?
Wind conditions in Southern Chile are three times better than in Germany.

https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/magazine/2022/haru-oni.html

There are a number of plants around the world that are capturing CO2 from the atmosphere.
I have found three different methods in use.
One method uses sort of a combination of an electrostatic precipitater and a battery.
It works at low temperatures and pressures.
A second process uses high temperatures and pressures.
A third method uses chemical extraction.

Carbon neutral diesel fuel is here, albeit in limited quantities.
Carbon dioxide is "borrowed" from the atmosphere and then returned from whence it came.

Similar, wind powered plants but without the carbon capture may someday use sequestered CO2 as a feed stock.
Before you start to scream, this won't happen until and unless conventional sources of CO2 have been reduced or eliminated to the extent that it is safe to start releasing sequestered CO2.

Another bonus:
Chemical feedstocks will become available without dependency on Big Oil. (And without CO2 release.


--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[TugboatEng]

The US Navy was talking about this 10 years ago.

https://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fuel-seawater-0423432/

Using water instead of air of course.

Here is an article from this year. It looks like they are still moving forward:

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/04/us-navy-prowls-for-e-fuels-from-the-seven-seas/

On the subject of carbon neutral, my fleet is currently burning R99 fuel. We started on Jan 1st. It smells like candle wax burning instead of that familiar diesel smell.

 

[TiCl4]

Years ago I worked as an intern at a company that tried to get this technology up and off the ground.

The process is quite simple. Use electrolysis that is powered by wind energy that would otherwise be curtailed - ala at nighttime - to produce H2.

Bring in CO2 via pipeline or other means, run a reverse water gas shift reaction:

H2 (excess) + CO2 -> CO + H2O

Use the produced CO and excess H2 to run a Fischer-Tropsch reaction

(2n + 1) H2 + n CO → CnH2n+2 + n H2O


I specifically worked with catalyst production for each reaction as well as building a lab setup to run and test these reactions.

Even with "free" energy from wind curtailment pricing, the projections were that this would only be cost competitive in the neighborhood of $110-150/bbl.

 

[dik]

It might be that you want to eliminate the fossil fuel, completely.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TiCl4]

Dik,

That's the point. It's a means to provide a carbon-neutral means of producing gasoline, jet fuel, etc, that can be used with existing infrastructure. It circumvents the need to build an entire new infrastructure network (like electric or hydrogen-powered cars require), a process that will take decades. It's a neat idea, but even with "free" energy for electrolysis, it's uneconomical.

 

[waross]

It's a neat idea, but even with "free" energy for electrolysis, it's uneconomical.

Carbon taxes may make carbon neutral fuel economical soon.
And the world has survived costs above $110/bbl several times already.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[BrianPetersen]

I am quite sure that there will be a place for synfuels and synthetic hydrocarbons for applications that defy the use of other technologies. Long-haul aircraft are probably one such application. Chemical feedstocks are probably another. And, there's a fair argument for using the energy-intensive bit of this process (electrolysis) when you have a surplus of non-CO2-emitting electricity supplying the grid. (Most places in the world are not there yet)

But, I wouldn't get too excited about this tech in place of battery-electric for road vehicles ... it's going to be really expensive.

Those windmills produce X amount of power. Out of that X, what percentage shows up in the energy content of the synfuel produced? We know (from existing road vehicles) that from the energy content of the hydrocarbon fuel, somewhere between 15% - 30% shows up as mechanical propulsion of the road vehicle. I don't know the upstream number, but there's going to be energy expended in electrolysis, energy expended in separating CO2 in the atmosphere from everything else, and losses in the chemical conversions from H2 and CO2 to hydrocarbon.

On the positive side, liquid hydrocarbons are a whole lot easier to transport and store than hydrogen is. In a comparison of how much energy in the hydrogen shows up at the point of use after storage and transport, it wouldn't surprise me if liquefaction of H2 ends up being in a wash versus conversion of the H2 to hydrocarbon.

 

[TugboatEng]

If we drastically cut back on our hydrocarbon extraction where are we going to get our noble gasses? All of this renewable infrastructure is going to require a lot of noble gas during construction with all of that welding.

 

[waross]

The cost of running E-vehicles is sure to rise in the future as they become taxed to support a share of highway costs.
And as far as cost is concerned, don't believe everything that you hear.
I found this interesting on several levels:

Towards the end of World War II the United States began heavily financing research into converting coal to gasoline, including money to build a series of pilot plants. The project was enormously helped by captured German technology.[7] One plant using the Bergius process was built in Louisiana, Missouri and began operation about 1946. Located along the Mississippi river, this plant was producing gasoline in commercial quantities by 1948. The Louisiana process method produced automobile gasoline at a price slightly higher than, but comparable to, petroleum-based gasoline[8] but of a higher quality.[citation needed] The facility was shut down in 1953 by the Eisenhower administration, allegedly after intense lobbying by the oil industry.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[waross]

If we drastically cut back on our hydrocarbon extraction where are we going to get our noble gasses? All of this renewable infrastructure is going to require a lot of noble gas during construction with all of that welding.

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

As argon is an atmospheric gas (0.93% vol.), it is generally sourced by separating air.

We will probably make out alright for the welding gases.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[GregLocock]

The problem with electrolysis for H2 is electrode erosion, as I understand it, but given the huge interest I hope somebody gets that sorted. The problem with F-T is that the old plants were messy and dirty, but I imagine that is sortable.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[TiCl4]

Carbon taxes may make carbon neutral fuel economical soon.
And the world has survived costs above $110/bbl several times already.

I was merely pointing out that this is definitely a viable technology for a carbon-neutral economy, but likely won't get much attention unless oil prices get up into the $110-150/bbl region. At what time will that be? I don't know.