Gasoline from Water, CO2 and Sunlight - News of the week

This is one of the best news i ever read:

Imagine you can produce gasoline, using water, CO2 and SUNLIGHT.
No more war for oil no more CO2 problems...
Sounds like a dream ?

A research team from ETH Zurich, PSI, and Caltech did it:

ETH Zürich Articles

This is such great news.

I need a FULL blueprint and Description of assembly...

Now please...

Does it pollute like traditional gasoline? If so it seems like a last ditch by Big Oil to save it's ass. If it is a clean burning fuel, then this is the best news I've heard.

people will have to keep an eye on this,
otherwise the oil cartels will bury this via patent aquistions, manipulating research grants to the organisations concerned etc.

I cant see them standing by and letting this threaten there profits.

S&F. good pickup. thanks.

Originally posted by Rezwar
Does it pollute like traditional gasoline? If so it seems like a last ditch by Big Oil to save it's ass. If it is a clean burning fuel, then this is the best news I've heard.

Pure hydrogen is probably one of the cleanest burning fuels. This one sounds more like Gasoline to me which isn't all that clean.

But it could save the butts of big oil as you suggest, though only if they get the efficiency up from the current 0.8% to the 15% they claim should be possible.

But if we can create hydrogen with 15% energy efficiency from solar, we should probably do that instead, it would burn more cleanly.

reply to post by svetlana84


from the article:

The 2-step cycle consists in thermally reducing non-stoichiometric cerium oxide at above 1,500 °C and re-oxidizing it with H2O and CO2 at below 900 °C

while solar is a capable of providing the temperatures in question, any appropriate source of heat will do, so it's not strictly a solar application, is it? besides, a solar focal power plant is large scale tech, so i doubt you'll build a DIY version in your backyard anytime soon.

a process running at 1500C is going to require bleeding edge materials and engineering and tbh 'above 15%' theoretical yield doesn't sound very hot, but maybe 'waste' heat could be used for conventional supercritical steam (or Ericcson closed cyle gas turbine).

it produces syngas and that could be converted to butanol.
butanol has the BTUs close to gasoline but burns a lot cleaner as its a alcohol

Butanol is a direct replacement for gasoline and requires no engine modification or or supply chain changes.
plus Butanol can be used in fuel cells.

Originally posted by CitizenNum287119327
the oil cartels will bury this via patent aquistions, manipulating research grants to the organisations concerned etc.

I cant see them standing by and letting this threaten there profits.

I was thinking if this technology is viable, the oil companies will probably be making the gasoline.

Why would they do all that other junk you mentioned like bury it? They need something to sell to stay in business when all the oil wells run dry, so this or something like this could be what keeps them in business.

reply to post by Long Lance


You are right it's not a strictly solar application, anything producing around 1500 degrees would apply.
And of all the solutions i could think of how to produce these temperatures without using lots of energy is the "sun death ray" (rather life-ray in this case) or a "solar focal point plant" .

This is basically a satellite dish, covered with tinfoil, easy-build, there is a video: on youtube of a highschool, they reach around 600 degrees at 9 am.


Edit: actually i just had another idea: we use lots of water to cool down nuclear power plants, so this heat could probably also be used.


@Miccey: above is the blueprint, happy building !

reply to post by Rezwar


the big problem in burning gasoline, is the production of CarbonDioxid (CO 2) .
If you put co2 into water which has no co2, after you burn this "gasoline", the only co2 output will be the co2 you did add to the water. so the whole process does not produce co2.

it just looks like the perfect technology :-))

Originally posted by svetlana84
the big problem in burning gasoline, is the production of CarbonDioxid (CO 2)

If that's true, then how come the "SMOG TEST" that's required for gasoline cars in California doesn't even state any limits for the CO2 level? CO2 isn't even considered toxic until it reaches concentration levels over 100 times the atmospheric concentration. What they DO have limits for is HC, CO, and NO. The CO is much more toxic than CO2 which really isn't toxic, though if you get too much of any gas besides Oxygen and there's not enough oxygen you can suffocate.

www.ratwell.com...

The exhaust analyzer samples five different gasses simultaneously and you have be under the MAX limit for each of three gasses (HC, CO and NO). The C02 and O2 levels are collected from each vehicle for statistics.

So while I disagree CO2 is the biggest problem and that gasoline is the perfect fuel, I do agree with your point that using carbon to make carbon emitting gasoline doesn't increase the planet's carbon footprint, which is nice. But the CO2 isn't what's killing people, it's the more toxic exhaust components.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Bien arbitragé, Arbitagteur !

True that CO is the toxic evil. I had a window-seat in chemistry class, so i mixed those two up.

You seem to have paid more attention. Do you know, if CO would be produced, with this technique ?

reply to post by svetlana84
I think CO is always produced from gasoline combustion but the amount can vary greatly as this press release shows:

www.sauktech.com...

The KOHLER low CO gasoline generators, available from 5-15 kW, significantly reduce CO emissions by 99 percent, which both EPA emissions and Kohler reliability tests confirm.

So burning the same gasoline, they were able to lower CO emissions by 99%, by redesigning the fuel delivery system. That's amazing.

But I haven't seen any reason to believe the CO emissions rates from the synthetic Gasoline would be different than from natural gasoline, and it's very dependent on engine and fuel intake design.

I thought you might have been an "Al Gore Disciple" because CO2 is the one that causes global warming, or so he claims. That may be true but CO kills more people so far than CO2, though if CO2 really does ever cause runaway global warming it may kill more people eventually. But it hasn't so far.