Carbon Neutral Gasoline

[Ianab]

Is now a thing. 

Porsche?s synthetic gasoline factory comes online today in Chile | Ars Technica

Upside? The process uses wind / hydro / solar electricity to produce hydrogen. React that with CO2 from the air or industrial waste stream to form Methanol, and process that into gasoline. So it can basically make a current IC powered vehicle "carbon neutral", and can use existing storage and distribution systems. 

Downside... It won't be cheap. 

I suspect part of the issue will be the intermediate Methanol stage is worth more than regular gasoline, and then you lose some of that in the next conversion stage. 

[Southside]

From the brief description it sounds more like flex fuel type of gasoline that dosen't run in many vehicles. 

[Ianab]

The Methanol is an intermediate step in the system. If would be more efficient to sell that as "flex fuel", but like you say, only a small % of vehicles can run on it. If might also be even more efficient to simply use the hydrogen as fuel, but there are even less vehicles that can use that. Hence the idea to make fuel that existing cars can use, because 1 billion+ gasoline cars aren't going away any time soon. 

The further processing (into longer chain hydrocarbons) converts it into synthetic gasoline. That's an established process that was used on an industrial scale here in NZ when they processed Natural gas -> Methanol -> Gasoline for a while. The synthetic gas was simply blended in with the regular gas to get the octane rating right, and sold normally. Exact chemical composition of gasoline can vary, as long as the octane is correct it's generally OK. 

The plant was scrapped when the supply / price of oil came back to normal and they worked out the Methanol they were using was worth more $$ on the world market than the gas they eventually produced.  Half the plant is still there, but now only does the methanol process.  But the conversion to regular gasoline is a proven process. 

The tricky part with this will be to get the "green" electrical power to run it. But it seems this part of Chile is pretty windy. It does have the advantage that it doesn't need 100% consistent power supply. On a calm day you simply don't create much hydrogen, but you can store that (and the syn gas) for those days. 

[Southside]

I would say the tricky part is getting it well under the $8 and into competition with regular gasoline.  Seems ironic that Porsche is buying all of the green gasoline so they can run it in their race line basically - not exactly a "necessity".  I don't see even the diehards paying that much for gasoline.  

[Ianab]

I would say the tricky part is getting it well under the $8

Yes, that's the main problem from the economic / political standpoint. It's more that it's at least practical to make "green" gasoline. Economics of it still needs work.

With the local road and insurance taxes we already pay ~$8  gal (local dollars). We complain of course, but life goes on. 

[Ron Wenrich]

I saw the same article.  They are using wind power in Chile.  Seems like a long way to transport a fuel.  

[Don P]

How far do you reckon regular gasoline travelled? 

When we compare these products to pump gas, it is probably more realistic to compare it to the worldwide price average. 

[Tarm]

All this is good and fine but a wind turbine does not grow out of the ground by itself. It sits on a huge cement foundation. Cement is produced by heating limestone in natural gas fired kilns. The tower that support the rotor blades is made from steel. Steel is smelted in a coke (coal) fired blast furnace. The blades are composite petrochemical based. Petrochemicals come from oil and natural gas. The generator and other equipment is manufactured from minerals mined in the earth. Mining equipment runs on diesel fuel. Plus the electricity needed to make all this happen and the added diesel fuel to transport all this stuff around.

So they are going to burn up coal, oil and natural gas to make a wind turbine to make synthetic gasoline. Huh?

I hope the PR is worth it.

[barbender]

I was filling in at the concrete batch plant driving mixer truck for the construction company I used to work for. I hauled mud out to a new power line project that had the bigger, steel column type poles. I can't remember how many loads went in the hole for the foundation for those things, it was around 8 iirc. You just backed up to the hole, and dumped it all in. I can't imagine how much goes into the base for one of the wind turbines.

[Don P]

Petro has similar infrastructure in drilling/ pumping and refining equipment. It is a switch of raw material extracted. From burning buried poop to burning water and CO2. Yup I can see why we're lining up to shoot those guys down :.

[Ron Wenrich]

Its not so much if a product can feasibly be produced, but the infrastructure isn't in place to bring it to the commercial markets.  We still have areas of the country that don't have broadband internet.  How long has that been out?  This is a market with proven demand.

[SwampDonkey]

Take fossil fuels out of the picture from the start to the finished product and the green game comes crashing down. You're not allowed to use it at any step of the process. See how far it gets. ;D

[Ianab]

but the infrastructure isn't in place to bring it to the commercial markets

That's an advantage with the synthetic gasoline. The infrastructure is already in place to distribute / store and use it. Other alternative fuels are more of a problem. You can build a hydrogen powered car, but where do you buy the hydrogen? No ones building a distribution network, because there is currently no demand. Chicken and Egg scenario. This fuel could be distributed exactly as gas is now, and fuel current vehicles. 

We always hear that "Big oil is suppressing these new technologies" etc. But they don't care where the product is sourced, as long as they have something to sell you, there is potential profit to be made. This would fit in with the current distribution network. 

[barbender]

I'm not suggesting that renewables shouldn't be allowed their necessary infrastructure. But people act like there's just magically a wind turbine there, ready to crank out this completely green energy. 

[Ron Wenrich]

If you can make methanol from wind power, you can do the same with making hydrogen from wind power.  You can also make hydrogen using solar power.  Seems that you can localize the hydrogen production better than a big wind turbine and sucking carbon from the atmosphere.  We already have a method for natural carbon sequestration.  Also eliminates a huge distribution network.  I know, pie in the sky thinking.

[Ianab]

f you can make methanol from wind power, you can do the same with making hydrogen from wind power

A local fertiliser company is building a Wind - Hydrogen system. Long term plan is to sell it as fuel, but H2  powered vehicles aren't available yet. Again, it's a chicken and egg scenario. No one will buy a H2 powered vehicle if they can't readily buy the fuel. 


The plan currently though is to use the hydrogen to make Urea fertiliser, which they currently make from Natural Gas. (releasing a ton of CO2 in the process). So even if H2 vehicles never actually appear, they still earn their investment back making "greener" fertiliser. So it's not completely pie in the sky if industrial scale plants are actually being built, and they have options for their product, no matter what the future brings. 


The Sth American plant uses H2 as an intermediate step, because again there are no H2 powered vehicles or distribution system. There is both already in place for gasoline. 

[Don P]

Going down the methanol rabbit hole is interesting. It sounds like my truck might have been designed around M85, methanol, and they simply substituted readily available ethanol to make E85. They behave similarly enough, both are the simplest hydrocarbons that are liquid at standard temperature and pressure. (H2 compressed to 3000psi has about 1/4 of the oomph of a similar volume of gasoline)

Methanol as a fuel for internal combustion engines - ScienceDirect

Syngas, wood gas being one form, can be used to make methanol. Really any biomass.  Alky burns cleaner and meaner in the truck. Where a woodgas truck is ~70% power and fussy, an alcohol truck picks up ~10hp. It is blowing through more alcohol fuel than running on gasoline. Neat stuff.

[Tarm]

The plan currently though is to use the hydrogen to make Urea fertiliser, which they currently make from Natural Gas. (releasing a ton of CO2 in the process). So even if H2 vehicles never actually appear, they still earn their investment back making "greener" fertiliser. So it's not completely pie in the sky if industrial scale plants are actually being built, and they have options for their product, no matter what the future brings.

The use of nitrogen fertilizers have doubled worldwide crop production. Doubled it! Four billion of the eight billion people alive on this earth today owe their existence to nitrogen fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas. The hydrogen on the methane is stripped off with a catalyst, combined with nitrogen from the air and processed into ammonia. There is an estimated 53 year worldwide supply of natural gas left. (Proven reserves divided by annual consumption). I don't see any program in place to lower the world's population by 4 billion people in the next 50 years. So unless we want mass famine an alternate method of nitrogen fertilizer production must be found. Ianab is right. Hydrogen can be produced by the electrolysis of water. (This is seven times more expensive than getting it from methane!) The electricity for electrolysis can be produced by wind turbines. Since hydrogen gas can be stored on site the intermittency of wind power is not a problem. I can foresee vast wind farms in high wind speed areas producing most of the world's nitrogen fertilizer in the coming decades. It is also much easier to transport fertilizer across oceans than electricity.
We will need nitrogen fertilizer much more in the future than we will need synthetic gasoline.

[Ianab]

Yes, nitrogen based fertiliser is important. In another thread there was discussion about CO2 increasing plant growth. But it only occurs if other nutrients like nitrogen are sufficient. Lack of nitrogen is a major limiting factor for plants.

[Southside]

Well as of just a week or so ago there was a war on nitrogen fertilizer in the EU. Mandatory reductions, forced farm closures, etc. How is this going to fit in? Seems the N was the issue, not how the N was made.

[Ianab]

Over use of nitrogen fertilisers results in the excess leaching out and polluting ground water and streams with excess nitrate. Can make peoples drinking water unsafe and causes blooms of algae etc.  The regulations are about using the optimum amount. 

Like most things, more is not always better. You want to be adding just enough nitrogen to supply what the plants need, and that relates to the type of crop, the season  and the existing nitrate levels in the soil.  Rather than just spreading X tons and having 1/2 of it wash away.

[newoodguy78]

I'm all for cutting the use of synthetic fertilizers and seeking alternative practices. However when you cut the rates of fertilizer applications by the numbers they are talking and in the timeframe they have in place crops will suffer and drastically.

You absolutely can't go cold turkey like that on ground that has been farmed using practices heavily dependent on commercial fertilizer and expect yields to stay the same. The drastic reduction of N and other components needs to be made up somehow. The real trouble comes when using alternative methods and products is the actual time it takes to implement them. The modern farmer simply doesn't have the time and or resources to apply them. Application of commercial fertilizer is a relatively fast process and needs to be to get the acres covered in a timely manner.
Alternative methods are out there but implementation of them on the massive scale that is commercial agriculture today in my opinion is not feasible in the time frame that's being talked about in my opinion.

[dougtrr2]

Just to let you know of the sophistication of farming methods.  My brother owned a company that made fertilizer spreader controls.  I was surprised to find out that farmers are tracking their yield with GPS as they harvest.  Combined with the GPS coordinates they can tell you what portions of the field yield better than others.   They then take that data and feed it into their fertilizer spreaders in the spring.  They vary the amount of fertilizer, to correspond with the previous years yield, i.e. heavier where the yield was light, and lighter where the yield is good.  So they are definitely doing their part to be good stewards of their portion of mother nature.

I am always amazed when the finger gets pointed at farmers for "ruining" the environment. They, probably more than anyone else, have a rooted interest in protecting and nurturing their land.  They aren't in it for the short term, and they can't just pick up and buy a different farmstead if they wear one out.

Doug in SW IA

[Don P]

If it was easy anyone could figure it out  .
That comment brought on a memory.
The eastern farms were depleted and abandoned as the colonies practiced more of a slash, burn, move on type of farming. This plantation was acquired after the soil was burned out with tobacco and corn by the 1840's. This is not too far above Jamestown so it had some age and abuse. He was one of the first to bring land back to good productivity by treating the soil better.

DHR – Virginia Department of Historic Resources » 042-0020 Marlbourne

[Southside]

Oh it absolutely can be done, and I can show you the proof. The issue is time and economics.

Organic certification calls for three years with basically no synthetic chemical use, that's not when you have healthy, viable, productive soil. It's a time frame that hopefully guys can endure and survive while they continue to transition. 

Seven years is about where you start to see actual soil and crop improvement and that's as long as you aren't "organic by neglect" and simply mining your soil.

This instant, cold turkey, foolishness will harm consumers and farmers alike, same as trying to make everything electric all at once.  Ask the folks subject to rolling blackouts right now in sub 20F weather how prepared our grid is for an all electric world.