Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Originally posted by nydsdan
Do you know what is going to happen?
No. The inventor is not going to get suicided. The labs are not going to blow up. Black helicopters are not going to swoop down and abduct the scientists.

What is going to happen is the synthetic gasoline will "have to undergo vigorous testing and is years away from commercial application". And then you will never hear about it again.

Just like the highly efficient solar cells some researchers at Ohio State University started developing in 2007/2008. These cells absorbed full spectrum and were going to promise a level of efficiency a few orders of magnitude above and beyond current solar cells. Commercial application of these cells was "a few years away" in 2008. Well, it has been a "few years" and everybody forgot about this promising technology and although solar cells have fallen in price, the efficiency is not on par with that was expected by this technology.

We have very short attention spans, and when a new technology has to get tied up for several years for "testing" it is very easy to make that technology disappear. Besides, the military needs to play with it for awhile before it can go commercial anyway.

Exactly. People often forget that when a tragedy strikes, lawsuites are filed left and right against the manufacturer with a claim that the technology was not fully tested for safety or proven street worthy. Especially in a global economy, it is a big gamble to introduce new and revolutionary technology without extensive testing. Most of what we use today was used by the military on a regular basis before it was made available to the civilians. I'm sure the other inventors with similar technologies are either perfecting their claim or perhaps sold it to a corporation who can afford to perfect the invention. Eventually we might see some of the work be introduced to the public if worthwhile and if it makes economic sense.

Originally posted by VonDoomen

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

www.gizmag.com

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow, Oil companies all over the world, I'm sure are already trying to buy them off or kill them. Awesome find partner!

Would be an interesting replacement fuel. Should really tick off the global warming people .....no carbon credits for you. Only thing is things like this have popped up before and been proven either fake or unpratical to produce. Other stuff that was viable gets dissappeared. The oil companies and their investors will never permit it into the market.

I hope they make this happen soon world wide. Then im taking a road trip cross country!

reply to post by franspeakfree


The fuel cell is COMPLETELY different. It is based on using hydrogen at the consumer level to power an electric vehicle. This is a hydrogen based fuel that will burn in a traditional ICE, or internal combustion engine, not a fuel cell that requires an entirely different infrastructure.

Jaden

Another great invention that will die on the first gear shift!

reply to post by ziggy1706



You said that you would not burn anything with hydrogen in it in you engine, but gasoline and diesel both contain lots of hydrogen. Lots and lots of HYDROGEN.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Yeah and we will never see this hit the market. Oil guys are in heaven with the raising oil prices. They would never let anything get in the way. Good invention thought.

You are so right. There are other methods that were made illegal in order to keep to monopolies wood pulp and petroleum. Here's a link to a completely reliable source that we are never allowed to discuss - especially Americans!
Here - lists the benefits of a certain bio fuel.
and here.
Other stuff this stuff can do!
And Henry Ford made fuel from it along with panels for his cars. He really thought this was the direction to go in - in his time that is. See here.

Ford recognized the utility of the hemp plant. He constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber, and even ran the car on ethanol made from hemp. Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.

But of course as long as a rich person (cough - Hearst - cough) can buy Congress we will never benefit for any reason ever.
Poor pitiful us!
Meanwhile over in Europe they have the Lotus Elise Eco which is made of the stuff and run on it too.


When are we ever going to learn?

reply to post by VonDoomen


This is going to be Awesomest!

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
Hmmm.. not wanting to be too skeptical but how much energy is required to produce this stuff? It's usually the case that more energy is used in production than in burning the fuel it's replacing. Fingers crossed for a revolution

I don't know have no tech on this. But, the entire German Army in WW2 ran on synthetic fuel. No one would sell them gasoline. I am running an HHO generator on my Chevy van right now, been using it for over a year now. Trouble is, when you tell people about it, they laugh at you and say it is impossible. I even made a post on it
here, nobody seemed too awful interested. I was able to double my mileage, from 16 mpg to 32 mpg.

If it puts the oil prices down so far, I have absolutely no doubt it will be suppressed and we will never hear of this again, even if it is good for the environment

The problem has not been "is there an alternate fuel source" for a long time. It has been "How can we implement an alternate fuel source"

Really while I appreciate what they have done, this changes nothing and until I see a proposal for how they will implement it, I will give this a grain of salt worth of attention and excitement.

Still see the leader in this race as MDI. They have implemented and are continuing to expand their ZE (zero emissions) solution vehicle.

www.mdi.lu...

Trust me, TPTB will not allow this to replace good ole' petroleum.

I understand where your going but your just creating more demand for electricity which is mostly generated by fossil fuels. Your effectively replacing 100 petrol engines powering cars directly, with,one giant petrol engine powering 100 electric motors remotely.

Very few countries outside oil rich nations get their electricity from burning oil. Oil is way too expensive and dirty to be used to generate electricity when there are such better alternatives. The United States during 2009 was for example: 44.9% Coal, 23.4% Natural Gas, 20.3% Nuclear, 6.9% Hydro, 3.6% other Renewable, and 1% Oil. Over time, it is likely that the percentage of coal will slowly decrease, with the amount of natural gas increasing, amount of nuclear stagnating or increasing, hydro stagnating, and the amount of renewable slowly increasing. Although coal is very dirty, any of those main energy sources is significantly safer than oil. All of those energy sources bar natural gas also have very stable prices and can be sourced domestically, unlike oil. So yes, you're still polluting, but you're polluting less and at least the energy can be sourced from within the country, rather than the middle east.

On top of that, oil in small internal combustion engines in cars is utilized very inefficiently, hence the difference is even higher. Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) are usually around 14% efficient for a gasoline ICE and 17% for a diesel. This does not include efficiency losses during drilling and distribution of the fuel. Electric cars, are however around 80% efficient not including losses from the power plant (but including losses during transmission etc). Coal power stations are around 40% efficient, natural gas power stations are usually around 50% efficient, nuclear power stations are around 35% efficient. Hydro and wind do not have efficiency ratings. Therefore if we multiply it out, electric cars including the power station are around 35% efficient in the United States, ergo to replace 100 Joules of Oil will require only 40 Joules of fuel in the power stations. The fuel used in power stations is safer than oil and can for the most part be sourced domestically. That's a 60% reduction in consumption of fuel. That's a big big big difference.

Where does Hydrogen based fuels come into this? That's coming in my next post.

We either find another way of generating electricity cheaply, safely and very quickly or the majority of us are headed back into the dark ages.

Grid already is much cheaper than oil. An electric car will have fuel costs half that of fuel in the US. And the US has cheap fuel.

You've made the same mistake in thinking that a few others have in this thread. This is not hydrogen gas or a hydrogen fuel cell.

It's a new storage method for Hydrogen gas. You still are required to generate the Hydrogen by either using fossil fuels, garbage, or electrolysis from water. Even if this technology works 100% it only solves the storage issue but doesn't solve any of the other issues plaguing the hydrogen based economy.

• There are two main ways to generate hydrogen at the moment. From fossil fuels, and from pumping electricity through water (electrolysis).
  
• There are two main ways of using hydrogen as a fuel at the moment. Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) and Fuel Cells.
  
• Both the ICE and fuel cell can run on natural gas or hydrogen.

There is very little point in using hydrogen sourced from natural gas as a vehicle fuel, because there are less steps involving in simply liquefying the natural gas and then using that directly in a vehicle. The only possible advantage of such is that the pollution is localized at the site where the natural gas is turned into hydrogen, and the resulting carbon dioxide waste can possibly be sequestered. Carbon Capture and Storage doesn't exist on a large scale, yet. Alternatively we could convert garbage or coal into syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) which could be used as a fuel in cars or power stations. But in terms of resource conservation, electric cars will always win because Internal Combustion Engines have a shocking efficiency of around 15% to 20% whereas a combined cycle gas power plant is 45+% efficient and an electric car is 80% efficient (multiply them out = 0.45*0.80 = 36% efficient total including the power station). Hence you will consume half the syngas or natural gas if you use it through the grid infrastructure instead of burning it through your car (and that assumes no renewables or nuclear on the grid either). The only possible way that fossil fuel / garbage sourced hydrogen cars can come close to the electric car in terms of resource conservation and pollution is if the cars are using fuel cells where they will be approximately equal:

Other than the traditional media, and some presidential candidates, who are as distracted by shiny new objects as my 16-month-old daughter, nobody should get terribly excited when a car company rolls out its wildly impractical next-generation hydrogen car. Too many miracles are required for it to be a marketplace winner.

Take Honda's new FCX Clarity. As the New York Times reported, "the cars cost several hundred thousand dollars each to produce," although Honda's president Takeo Fukui "said that should drop below $100,000 in less than a decade as production volumes increase."

But why would production volumes increase for a car that delivers no real value to the consumer and has no significant societal benefit to motivate government support? Answer: they wouldn't, so prices may never drop below $100,000.

www.guardian.co.uk...

But they're too expensive and might not even dip below $100,000 per car.

Then there's electrolysis, where you get hydrogen from water by pumping electricity through it. Now, all these efficiencies exclude the power station which has its own efficiency rating. The electric car is 80% efficient. The Internal Combustion Engine is 15% efficient. The Fuel Cell is 40% efficient. You are still needing half the electricity to power an electric car as to power a hydrogen powered car if the hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis of water. It just doesn't make any sense using electrolysis because it's extremely inefficient. Essentially to replace 100 Joules of Oil with a Hydrogen obtained through electrolysis will require around 200 Joules at the power station to electrolyze the water. That's absolute crap compared to the electric car which needs about 50. Ergo an electric car needs less electricity than a hydrogen powered car by approximately a factor of four. And the electric car needs less total energy than oil by approximately a factor of 2.


(the technology in the OP gets rid of the issue of compressing the hydrogen and storing it, but other than that it's the same).

The only possible way you can get electrolysis as energy efficient and environmentally friendly as an electric power grid, is by utilizing high-temperature electrolysis and fuel cells. High-temperature electrolysis is where both electrical and thermal energy helps split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, but needs advanced technology like a High Temperature Gas (Nuclear) Reactor, the US is developing one under the NGNP program. Of course, the NGNP is also better at generating electricity... Alternatively we could use special solar concentrating thermal for high-temperature electrolysis. Hence for the hydrogen based economy to make any sense at all requires the assumption that advanced nuclear power plants will roll out (prototype NGNP is supposed to be operational in 2020), the assumption that this advanced storage technology that this thread is about works with no issues, the assumption that fuel cells will go from costing a few hundred thousand dollars per car to a few thousand, and the assumption that electric cars don't get any better over the same period.

Summary
1. The electric car needs significantly less energy than anything that uses an internal combustion engine. It is therefore significantly more environmentally friendly.
2. Electricity used for generating hydrogen through electrolysis is simply better used when directly powering an electric vehicle.
3. Hydrogen based fuel from fossil fuels is better used generating electricity for electric cars rather than powering vehicles directly.
4. Fuel costs for an electric car will be lower than that of an oil powered car, or a hydrogen powered car unless:
5. For hydrogen powered cars to work at all cheap high-temperature electrolysis is required as well proper storage, and special fuel cells. All are currently unviable but are under development.
6. The hydrogen economy is nothing more than a joke probably designed to take away from attention from products that actually work, like the electric car & biofuels that are available now.

If this thing turns out to be both true and viable then there's ZERO chance we will ever be allowed to see it. The instability in the economics world it would cause CERTAIN people would see it removed before it could even start.

Those nations without the ability to control us, never going to happen.....

Originally posted by Freedom_Machine
reply to post by ziggy1706

 

You said that you would not burn anything with hydrogen in it in you engine, but gasoline and diesel both contain lots of hydrogen. Lots and lots of HYDROGEN.

So does literally most everything else.

For example, it might surprise some to know that the stainless steel plates used as electrodes in HHO reactors, or any stainless steel in general for that matter, contains a high % of Hydrogen.

Virtually everything has H as part of it's composition.

www.mdi.lu...










www.google.com...:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a

Originally posted by VonDoomen

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

If the claims are true, I'm sure there's already a plan in place to have everything and everyone related to it's discovery "disappear", quietly or other....