We're saved

[Man at B&Q]

Well, maybe...

[polygonum]

"Company officials say they had produced five litres of petrol in less than three months from a small refinery in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside. "

So how long before we have enough to run a Honda 50 for more than a few miles?

[Martin Brown]

big question is how many kWh of electricity did they consume in those 3 months to make a mere 5L of petrol substitute.

I expect they are actually scrubbing CO2 out of air or flue gas or similar in which case the mix gets a lot more complicated and messy with sulphates and nitrates also being in the electrolyte. If you do it out of air ISTR it isn't even remotely cost effective.

There are a few proposals to take clean(ish) waste CO2 streams from industrial processes and turn them into methanol. Brewing for example although you would need to be careful not to mix up the alcohols!

This is shark infested water.

[Brian Gaff]

Oh really, I was listening to an American station yesterday. This guy suggests that we have it all wrong. We should firstly make sure each house of 500 sq ft has at least an acre of wood with it, and that would make it self sustaining in wood to burn for fuel. simple he says.. hmmmmm.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

I could not even find the full article amongst the pretty pictures and the like and comment etc crap on their site. I often feel that these online papers need a sense of scale and a person to tidy up their layout. Its like throwing it in the air and then where it lands is where it is, kind of publishing. Anyway, as I and others have said, its really rather ridiculous, have these people never heard of entropy? Brian

[meow2222]

that people still fall for these scams.

NT

[Robin]

The company's own account of where they are is here

case it does not play nicely with your reader I have extracted below a bit to show they do acknowledge up-front the laws of thermodynamics.

"Many people have raised the issue of how much energy the AFS process uses? As with any technology there is always a loss in any energy conversion. For example coal-fired power stations are only 30% efficient. However, at AFS our energy efficiency is better than that and will continue to improve as we build larger plants, and, of course we do not contribute to carbon-induced global warming. "

They also make, I think fairly, the importance of liquids such as petrol for energy storage:

"The AFS technology allows us to capture surplus electrical energy, storing it in a way that is better and more useful than batteries. We intend to work with wind farms to capture excess energy that is not able to be used by the grid."

Of course that doesn't mean it's viable. But compared with the vast amounts of public money spent on fusion I'd be willing to see it given a push.

[Man at B&Q]

Read the rest of the article.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

Indeed, but nothing beats petrol, as a fuel for long range vehicles.

The distribution infrastructure is already in place. So what if it costs more but decouples us from our dependency on imports, gives a viable storage medium for "renewables" and runs from cheap nuclear power (assuming we pull our fingers out and build new nukes).

MBQ

[docholliday93]

Easy for him to say - in a country with around 7 acres of land per person that might *just* be possible. The UK has under 1 acre per person...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I did. Bollocks from beginning to end really.

[meow2222]

Lets see, dino-oil is turned into electricity at 30-40% eficiency at existi= ng generating plants, then that electricity is turned to petrol at these ne= w plants at an undisclosed and probably worse efficiency. That will somehow= free us from depending on imports?

its not remotely viable, its financial lunacy

which is relatively expensive

we aren't

NT

[Tim Streater]

It's only a demo so no need to get your knickers in a twist. Ene fule kno that there is a big difference between doing it in the lab, as in this case, and on an industrial scale.

[Alan Braggins]

>Funny that people still fall for these scams.

It's well established that what they are doing is technically possible:

are claiming efficiency improvements and better integration. Might be a scam but certainly not the usual "run your car on water" ones, might be real but still not scaling to anything economically viable, might be the start of something practical.

Some of the news coverage is a bit hyped, certainly, but that's not the same thing.

[Tim Streater]

Are you competing for the Drivel Award 2012, Meow-Mix?

According to the Beeb this morning, the notion is to use juice from renewables to run it, thus addressing the intermittency problem. What they've demoed so far is a process, in the lab (so no surprise that all they've produced is 5 litres). Whether it is viable to scale it so we can stop needing to connect the wind farms to the grid is another matter.

[Jules Richardson]

It would work where I live - but I thought the amount of woodland needed for a typical family was more like 4 acres, not 1.

[The Natural Philosopher]

But wind farm electricity is three times the price of fossil electricity, so at 12p a kwh give or take (at best offshore more like

36p a unit) and 30% conversion efficiency that's 36 p (or a quid) a Kwh or roughly £3.60-£10 a liter

And that's using cheap red diesel to run the stuff that installs and services the turbines.

If they then want to turn that back INTO electricity well oil is about

30% efficient so we can say that the cost of a unit will be between 36p and a quid.

Welcome to the £600 a tank car fillup.

And the pound a unit 'renewable' electricity.

And the work house.

[The Natural Philosopher]

still cant get 100% efficiency and its still not worth doing even then. Not till we have an all nuclear grid and have run out of fossil fuel completely.

[The Natural Philosopher]

10 acres in saxon times more or less.

[Man at B&Q]

You don't say.

The alternatives, such as this, will be cheaper/viable/politically acceptable long before we run out of fossil fuels completely (if we ever do).

MBQ