2y ago

eFuels pilot plant in Chile officially opened : wind energy enable the nearly CO₂-neutral operation of petrol engines

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

35 comments

About one order of magnitude more expensive than the fossil kind.
- Yes, of course. But climate change is also costly you know ...
  
  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.
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.
- 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.
  
  Yes and ... ( @blazera Process's - - one of many) useful link : Synthetic fuel
  
  okay so I've got my renewable electricity, and my hydrogen...now what? Im asking about a process here
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  that's not taking carbon from the atmosphere, that's just carbon left behind from burning organic materials. That's emitting CO2.
Could be useful for aviation. Otherwise, better alternatives already exist for most uses of petroleum.
- Don't forget lubricants, polymers and chemical feedstock in general.
  
  True, I forgot about the chemical industry. That could be a big one as well.
- 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.
  
  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.
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
- The more interesting approach is synmethanol, particularly via electrosynthesis. Only half of energy density of gasoline, and suitable for fuel cells, including DMFCs.
  
  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 !
  
  Methanol or ammonia, both are good
@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
- 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.
  
  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.
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.

35 comments