this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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116
eFuels pilot plant in Chile officially opened : wind energy enable the nearly CO~2~-neutral operation of petrol engines (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by A_A@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

20/12/2022 Porsche and international partners working with the Chilean operating company Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF) have started the industrial production of synthetic fuels.
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2022/company/porsche-highly-innovative-fuels-hif-opening-efuels-pilot-plant-haru-oni-chile-synthetic-fuels-30732.html

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[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

About one order of magnitude more expensive than the fossil kind.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, of course. But climate change is also costly you know ...

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue is more that we're currently running out of extractable fossils (net energy peak for oil liquids is projected to peak as early as 2025 and the decline into nonextractability is rapid) so it's a question of having liquid fuels and synthetic stock, at all.

What kind of life style we can expect where hydrocarbons and energy in general is expensive is an interesting question. See e.g. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ for analysis of that.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes I agree. I told you a few days ago here.

what I wrote was :
... about this :
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/259-the-way-we-live-next/

Most interesting indeed.
So the cost of energy is a complex topic and this guy has studied many aspects of that.

Amongst other things he wrote :
Morgan, Tim (2013). Life After Growth. Petersfield, UK: Harriman House. ISBN 9780857193391

He discusses the energy cost of energy or : Energy return on investment

He gives an estimate of $130 trillion usd for the global cost of energy transition with a link to the source ... I don't understand how this estimate is made though.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sorry, I haven't started memorizing Fediverse handles yet. Tim Morgan measures ECoE in percent, and real GDP is GDP minus debt, or x units of debt produce a fraction of that in GDP. Plus ECoE accounting. His model is proprietary, so nobody exactly knows how it's computed but he himself.

That IRENA model seems to link some large spreadsheets and notes on that page. No idea how complete that is.

As to investments necessary, some two decades ago I estimated we'd need some 3 TUSD/year, inflation-adjusted, for the next 40 years to transition. As a rough estimate that's as good as any other guess, not facturing in extraction of progressively depleting resources.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That IRENA model seems to link ...

Links please 😌 ...those links are hidden for me. (Maybe because I'm on mobile.)
(also don't be sory it was 11 days ago)

[–] blazera@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wow, they really dont talk about the fuel do they. What system have they found to convert atmospheric carbon into a liquid form with just electricity? Im more interested in the sequestering potential than immediately returning it to the atmosphere.

[–] MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The tech has been known for decades. It just needs clean hydrogen. You can either go the hydrogen fuel cell route, or combine it with CO2 to make liquid fuel, but the source of hydrogen is the crux of the problem.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes and ... ( @blazera Process's - - one of many) useful link : Synthetic fuel

[–] blazera@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

okay so I've got my renewable electricity, and my hydrogen...now what? Im asking about a process here

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im bigger on the fan producing enough fuel for the mining and construction of it and the facility and maintenance and upkeep. This has been a re-occuring point of can we create wind and solar panels just from wind and solar panels without digging up oil. As for sequestration. What is the point if we are still digging up oil and refining it into the same fuel??? I could see it being something if we were otherwise not digging up hydrocarbons but I fail to see how sequestration is better than replacement while we are doing that.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I dont know what your first two sentences are about. As for sequestration, just imagine it as an independent effort to reduce greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yes but what I mean is if we are putting in co2 from fuels then usually it will reduce more to just use the fuel and not pull out additional oil over sequestration. simply due to overhead. the fuel from oil produces co2 and the refining produces co2 and the extraction produces co2.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I dont know what you mean by pulling out additional oil over sequestration. sequestering is just taking carbon out of the atmosphere, to be kept away from the atmosphere in some kind of solid form. Plants are the easiest example.

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

yes. yes. I understand that. but fuel is a fungible commodity and if fuel is created in this process (it is) utilizing it will keep more carbon out of the atmosphere if we are still getting it from oil. If we have completely stopped using oil for fuel then yeah sequestration makes sense, but if its making fuel and we are using fuel (from dug up fossil fuels) the sequestration will result in more overall co2 than using it.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is biochar which can be scaled by providing cheap pyrolysis retorts and training how to bioactivate it. Incentive is increased agriculture productivity long-term. Capture should be done directly from flue gas since not needing enrichment. There are also carbon-negative concretes which have good potential for capture.

Synfuels from 100% renewable are at least carbon neutral, which is as good as it gets.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

that's not taking carbon from the atmosphere, that's just carbon left behind from burning organic materials. That's emitting CO2.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Could be useful for aviation. Otherwise, better alternatives already exist for most uses of petroleum.

[–] Arnj@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, aviation and special vehicles like firetrucks for those kinds of vehicles eFuels MIGHT be suitable, but it for sure should not be used in the day-to-day car used by everybody.

[–] julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

In Berlin there is a hybrid firetruck currently in use and the firefighter are really happy with it, only using the battery for about 90% of operations. Here is an English article about it (German ones are much more in depth):

https://www.electrive.com/2022/12/21/berlin-fire-brigade-goes-hybrid/

It is not mentioned in that article, but the firefighters really like the silence of the firetrucks. They didn’t need to yell as much and could therefore communicate much more efficiently.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't forget lubricants, polymers and chemical feedstock in general.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago

True, I forgot about the chemical industry. That could be a big one as well.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Electrofuel : great potential here I believe.

In September 2022, Finnish company Q Power sold P2X Solutions a synthetic methane production unit to be delivered in 2024 in Harjavalta, Finland, next to its 20 MW green hydrogen production plant.

More here : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrofuel

[–] eleitl@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The more interesting approach is synmethanol, particularly via electrosynthesis. Only half of energy density of gasoline, and suitable for fuel cells, including DMFCs.

[–] skillissuer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Methanol or ammonia, both are good

[–] eleitl@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haber-Bosch for fertilizer, Fischer-Tropsch for synfuel.

But, really, we need something with mild conditions and preferably something directly electrosynthesis driven. Large potential for improvement in both.

[–] skillissuer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean ammonia is pretty decent fuel in itself, it can be decomposed to hydrogen or burned as is

[–] eleitl@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The Haber-Bosch approach to breaking the nitrogen triple bond takes a lot of energy in terms of high pressure and temperature which is not present in the product, hence wasted. Ammonia is a fertilizer either as gas or as ammonium nitrate, and too precious to burn.

Another random fact: half of the combustion enthalpy present in liquid hydrogen has been spent on its liquification.

[–] skillissuer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

No. Haber-Bosch process is very mature by now and it doesn't take much more energy than thermodynamically necessary to do so. You get there by recycling heat and reusing energy of compressed gases. The actual problem is getting that hydrogen in the first place

If you want to use hydrogen as a fuel anyway, you can add that little overhead and get fuel that you can either burn in ICE or go the whole nine yards, crack it back into elements and put that in fuel cells, and, more importantly, this comes with massive advantage of ammonia being about as easy to liquefy as propane, and we already have propane fuelled cars. Energy density is vastly higher than hydrogen this way, less than propane, sure, but it's something

Another option is dimethyl ether, but this thing needs to take carbon from somewhere, just like methanol

[–] skillissuer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And also, you don't need to use Fisher-Tropsch process either. Methanol is good enough fuel that you can get more directly from syngas and getting fractions of hydrocarbons this way is simply wasteful (tar formation, too light products etc). Additional benefit is easier conversion back to hydrogen if need be

That is, unless energy density is critical. I don't think that difference matters in most of the cases

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) still have low power densities ... so maybe we should look at molten carbonate fuel cells or simple heat engines ? Anyway, synmethanol looks great !

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@HubertManne

can we create wind and solar panels just from wind and solar panels (('s energy))

PV (solar cells) : EROIs (Energy return on investment) between 8.7 and 34.2 were found ... meaning : yes ! ... they create much more energy than the energy needed for their production.
it's all in here (also for wind thingy😋) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

[–] HubertManne@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That is good but the specfic equipment needs to run on the energy created. Mining equipment and manufacturing. So if the mining equipment is all electrical then there will be loses in the energy harvested. As far as I know this is an open question. So theoretically the energy is surplus but can just the energy of the wind and solar completely power the equipment. Currently they do not as we use fossel fuel equipment. Of course the energy of the construction of equipment needs to be taken into consideration as well. Also manufacturing that uses massive heat tends to use fossil fuel. Don't get me wrong im not trying to disparage wind/solar. Far from it but last I knew we have not gotten to were we have unhooked fossil fuel from the process so currently it acts as a sort of energy multiplier where rather than burning oil for X amount of energy we can use it as part of the mining/construction process of wind/solar and get that multiplier fro eroi. this is why this article is big to me as its creating fuel which could possibly take fossil fuel out of the solar/wind creation process. at least I hope.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reading, entirely, again, this Wikipedia article you can realize, they are discussing such inputs as steel, "mining equipment" or whatever. They also discuss why there has to be limits on the details of the calculation and why, despite such limits, results of the calculation are still valid.

Technology benefits from simple explanations and sentences. Your comments are hard to read in a technical way.

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Nearly neutral isn't neutral, and neutral still kills the planet. These stop gaps prolong a business division and profits at the expense of climate catastrophe.