Synthetic petroleum

[JebKeb]

 

8 hours ago, p1t1o said:

The crux of it is, if you want cheap, clean energy, move away from hydrocarbons altogether. Before too long the only thing we will want them for is running vintage cars.

I don't see the dinosaurs of ICE cars and oil companies turning away soon. I don't like my idea, but it seems to be the best way to stop the planet melting.

4 hours ago, Kryten said:

If you really need to replace fossil fuels for vehicles use, generators for wood gas can be bolted right on, meaning you need far less infrastructure. This is commonly used for trucks in the DPRK.

Wood gas is uncalorific, dangerous (carbon monoxide) and requires lots of modification. First you need an LPG engine, then you have to put a giant wood gasifier on the back. It might not seem like much, but if you do it for billions and billions of cars, the price adds up immensely.

[todofwar]

I wouldn't put too much money on any kind of biofuel. A good analogy would be the Haber Bosch process vs nitrifying bacteria. Haber Bosch wins in terms of efficiency and atom economy, and its a completely synthetic process. "bio" is a nice buzzword but really chemists can probably come up with a better system (not something I say often, but it's not like you need elegant natural products for your fuel source). So, using some solid state catalysts we will eventually be able to store our energy in hydrocarbons, but the real question is will that be better than other energy storage means out there? Fuel cells are much more efficient, one thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that all these fuels are still being burned, which has a hard upper cap on its efficiency less than 40% no matter what you do. So eventually you will want to get the energy out electrochemically rather than through combustion. Hydrocarbons have the problem of needing multiple carbon carbon bond cleaving events. Not easy to do. So I would say either hydrogen or methane/methanol would make the best energy storage system until someone gets sodium sulfur batteries to work (not efficient, but very very cheap).

Now, even if not useful as a fuel source, eventually the price of oil will become high enough that harvesting CO2 for other value added products (pretty much everything with a carbon in it is petroleum derived) will be economical. Another fun area of research, because there are some things which we still can't make at scale. This is the area that biopetroleum can really help out with, but it will probably involve cramming a bunch of ag byproducts into a canister and heating it under very high pressures for a few days to make coal tar that will be separable into useful components. 

[wumpus]

The typical (read by far the most economical) means of producing hydrogen is by starting with methane.  It defeats most of the point of this.  There was also a method used by Van Braun's old comrades (there's this word filter you see) that produced oil from coal.  I don't think its all that inefficient (those comrades didn't care so much since they didn't have a source of petroleum anyway) but certainly produces much more CO2 than simply burning oil.  I think the US can keep burning all the gas we want from coal for a couple of centuries, assuming we didn't want to keep Florida anyway (and pretty much turn West Virginia and similar coal bearings states into craters)*.

Generally speaking, the shear size of the industrial scale needed to synthetically produce the oil presently consumed by the world requires roughly the same cost of infrastructure as replacing nearly all the oil burning stuff.  There are a few plants (rapeseed being obvious) that can be used with minimal conversion (but the yield is iffy) while other plants with greater yield that require extensive processing (grasses, including bamboos and whatnot, and probably algae).

* this is hyperbole.  I suspect most of the rise in the oceans will peak a bit lower (due to most of the glaciers already melting), and whatever havok wrought by burning all the coal reserves will be extreme, it is unlikely to cover Florida any more.  Likewise I'm sure there are large enough bits of WV that don't have coal under them to avoid turning them into craters.  Those parts would likely appear like the mountains and ridges on the Moon.

[todofwar]

5 minutes ago, wumpus said:

* this is hyperbole.  I suspect most of the rise in the oceans will peak a bit lower (due to most of the glaciers already melting), and whatever havok wrought by burning all the coal reserves will be extreme, it is unlikely to cover Florida any more.  Likewise I'm sure there are large enough bits of WV that don't have coal under them to avoid turning them into craters.  Those parts would likely appear like the mountains and ridges on the Moon.

The real risk to Florida is the porous rock means once sea level gets higher than the water table, all the groundwater becomes saline. So, the Florida aquifer goes away, and the state becomes essentially a desert. 

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Kryten said:

If you really need to replace fossil fuels for vehicles use, generators for wood gas can be bolted right on, meaning you need far less infrastructure. This is commonly used for trucks in the DPRK.

It was also used during WW2, performance however is horrible as I understand. An modern electrical car would have far better range and power and is simpler to handle. 

[wumpus]

18 minutes ago, todofwar said:

The real risk to Florida is the porous rock means once sea level gets higher than the water table, all the groundwater becomes saline. So, the Florida aquifer goes away, and the state becomes essentially a desert. 

Florida (and Louisiana, while Delaware has an average of 60ft) has an average elevation of 100 feet (thought it was lower).  However, the Florida well FAQ I pulled pointed out that you should expect that the difference between a dry year and a wet year is 40 feet.  Also it talks about 200 foot wells (high point in Florida is 345 ft. and may be an odd hill near Jacksonville).

If this is a real problem, Florida would never really have fresh water (although some parts seem to fight Georgia for it, so who knows).  I suspect that the porous rock filters out the brine.  Note I don't intend to buy Florida real estate anytime soon so haven't done a real investigation.

http://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/files/database/site_file_sets/25/ConsumerGuideWellConstruction.pdf

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/LyraEDISServlet?command=getImageDetail&image_soid=IMAGE%20WI:WI00204&document_soid=WI002&document_version=92864

[magnemoe]

26 minutes ago, todofwar said:

The real risk to Florida is the porous rock means once sea level gets higher than the water table, all the groundwater becomes saline. So, the Florida aquifer goes away, and the state becomes essentially a desert. 

Using up the ground water so the land sink is an far more serious problem. As you use up the ground water faster than its replaced the land sink, if ground water is below sea level salt water get pushed in as an replacement. And yes this is the main reason why land is sinking, Venezia is the best known example, in the north sea the sea bottom fell as they removed oil so they had to extend the oil platform legs. A bit simpler as its no resupply but the same effect. 

However its way more economical to pump groundwater even faster and ask for compensation because of global warming. 

3 hours ago, JebKeb said:

Woah.

The problem seems to be, with biofuela they are not completely compatible with engines today and I don't see any great advantages switching to them over synthetic fuel apart from EROI? 

Synthetic fuel can use the multibillion dollar oil infrastructure by constructing a few basic plants. The oil industry has less stuff to worry about. It can probably be cheaper than oil.

Anyone else got methods of producing hydrogen?

Pretty common to add biofuel to diesel, if you can use cheap products its nice, like McDonald add their old deep fat to their trucks fuel. 
Problem with most bio fuel is that you use farmland who could be used better and you use a lot of energy making it. 
Has been work on cellulose to methane and it would be an gamechanger here. 

[James Kerman]

Graphene is looking quite promising as a hydrogen filter among other very interesting qualities.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, John JACK said:

But cellulose isn't most convenient stuff if you want not just burn it outright

OP talked about synthetic hydrocarbons (not exactly fuel), so I referenced to  cellulose as the most obvious carbon asset..

7 hours ago, John JACK said:

Nah, wood gas is nowhere near efficient.

It's not efficient if you search an efficient energy source. But it's more efficient than just let your wooden wastes to rot. That's why those wooden-gas (gengas?) automobiles were enough popular in the first half of XX century.

 

Back to biofuels. When you cultivate one and same agriculture on the same field, it's a very effective way to deplete your soil and to grow up a population of parasites specializing on this agriculture.
And that's why they had begun to rotate agricultures when growing up foods.
So, if you breed an energetical agriculture on the same place for decades, you would either prepare to get a wasteland, or farce it with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (which both don't look as a wise way).

Edited May 17, 2016 by kerbiloid

[John JACK]

6 hours ago, PB666 said:

If you were going to design a process to make fuel, the better choice is to genetically engineer an algae to make Hydrogen which as we know readily dissolves across thin membranes.

Hydrogen is a bad fuel for everything except rockets and fuel cells. And even those work on methane pretty well, and methane is a joy to handle compared to hydrogen. Methane and other hydrocarbons are already produced by lifeforms, so no need to inventing new genes, tweaking existing may be enough.

5 hours ago, JebKeb said:

I don't see any great advantages switching to them over synthetic fuel apart from EROI? 

EROI of synthetic and bio fuels is pretty bad. Oil is so energy rich and ease to process that any other fuel is much more expensive. Except nuclear, but it's not a subject here. People use surrogates only when they have no access to fossil fuels, or want to be "green". And hydrogen is not even a power source, it's a way to store power. It competes not with petrol, but with batteries.

[John JACK]

5 hours ago, JebKeb said:

First you need an LPG engine, then you have to put a giant wood gasifier on the back. It might not seem like much, but if you do it for billions and billions of cars, the price adds up immensely.

Actually, there's no such thing as "LPG engine". Every ICE can use gas a fuel, with minimal modification and tweaking. Propane and methane are even better for engine life because they make less tar, soot and acids. Wood gas is dirty, even with huge filters ash clogs and wears engine. And it's hot, so underpowered engine also overheats easily.

But gas generators are slightly more than a barrels with some tubes, and are not expensive even in giant quantities. What is expensive in wood gas, that's amount of work to prepare fuel, load it, starting fire, cleaning ashes, managing reaction speed and generally maintaining everything. Even when wood gas is an only choice, it's used mostly for trucks and buses, with dedicated firemen. Only rare enthusiasts may use it for a personal car.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

But it's more efficient than just let your wooden wastes to rot.

It's more efficient than just let your petrol-engine truck to rot. Wood waste is more effective burned in a steam boiler. Wood gas generators just don't generate wood gas if fed with trash and rubbish.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

When you cultivate one and same agriculture on the same field, it's a very effective way to deplete your soil and to grow up a population of parasites specializing on this agriculture.

Yep. That's why we need engineered breeds. With better efficiency to take less area, resistance to pests and diseases, able to grow on poor soil. To plant on wastelands.

[shynung]

6 hours ago, JebKeb said:

Woah.

The problem seems to be, with biofuela they are not completely compatible with engines today and I don't see any great advantages switching to them over synthetic fuel apart from EROI? 

Synthetic fuel can use the multibillion dollar oil infrastructure by constructing a few basic plants. The oil industry has less stuff to worry about. It can probably be cheaper than oil.

We can burn ethanol and syngas biofuels in modern engines today, just need adjustment in compression ratios and boost pressures and the like. Or, if we're talking gas turbines or steam engines, almost no modification other than fuel delivery system.

Also, synth-oil would probably be more expensive than natural crude oil, because natural oil already has long carbon chains straight out of the well. Synth-oil technologies mainly deals with combining carbons from other sources (sugar, atmospheric CO₂, methane) into chains long enough to do the job of natural-oil products. Right from the start, synth-oil production is already more energy intensive by mass compared to natural-oil production, so it will only be cheaper if natural-oil gets very rare.

Edited May 17, 2016 by shynung
Ninjas everywhere.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, John JACK said:

Wood waste is more effective burned in a steam boiler.

Anything is better than a steam boiler with its 10-20% efficiency.

Accroding to ru.wiki, the process is two-stage:
1st stage: an incomplete oxidation wood, coal or anything else carbon-based. You get CO and 1/3 of total heat product of the original fuel.
2nd stage: this CO reacts with water steam (produced either from water itself, or from the water released from the wood), and then - full oxidation.
This gives ~80% utilization of fuel with nearly the full heat product release.  So, its much more efficient than a steam boiler.

2 hours ago, John JACK said:

Yep. That's why we need engineered breeds. With better efficiency to take less area, resistance to pests and diseases, able to grow on poor soil. To plant on wastelands.

Nope. You can't grow plants in three layers, and you can't force them to grow a tonne per day on one acre.
You can't make them suck the air like a turbofan.
You can't force them to consume the light faster than their thin skin layer does.
They are limited with their complicated inner structure (rather than a stupid tank with a mixture of gases).
Any complicated structure (branch, leaf, inner organs) just consumes resources and energy without any output for you.
Any complicated chemical (fat, protein, etc) just consumes resources and energy without any output for you.

The upper limit of this energetical gardening is a huge and shallow basin full of thin layer of algae producing almost pure cellulose (just because it's an easy way to store carbon), which you immediately refine into methane.
And this is very limited in all means.

[WinkAllKerb'']

let's drill for thermo and don't refuel srly ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_equilibrium ... oh the earth energetic overall signature i c ... (what is shadowy place over there, that's the lobbies sciences labs, enough with the markets places shenanigans ...)

 

current generator, and moon cycle generator are way underrated ... use mechanics + magnetics decupler ... might do it ...

 

balance both win win ... one or the other alone won't solve anithing medium/long term

 

[insert super lobbies + supper lobbies + exchange market investor +  sector 2 and mostly 3 workers grumpy like hell here, anyway planet core low battery don't care about cars, biped does ? whose the selfish serial glitchers amongst the chains ... remove, fixed]

Edited May 17, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''

[JebKeb]

OK, let's get to business. Let's start at the very start - What is the best method for CO₂ capture? I'm thinking a Siemens cycle device would go well. but are there other chemical absorption methods that are stable? (quicklime scrubbing doesn't work - the seperation process is unstable)

[todofwar]

5 hours ago, JebKeb said:

OK, let's get to business. Let's start at the very start - What is the best method for CO₂ capture? I'm thinking a Siemens cycle device would go well. but are there other chemical absorption methods that are stable? (quicklime scrubbing doesn't work - the seperation process is unstable)

The siemens cycle requires energy input, but it is the best method for large scale gas separation we have at the moment. I know a couple of people working on specialized membranes, which is actually one of the few parts of nanotechnology that's not completely overhyped bs. Those would be the best bet if someone could get them to work. Once you have the CO2 the question is how to reduce it. I've seen photocatalysts in the literature that can convert it to HCO2H, and maybe a small amount that can get to methane but the efficiency is low. 

[todofwar]

@wumpus @magnemoe It's a two part problem. People are pumping too much water out of the aquifer, with parts of Florida being in a drought much of the year. This lowers the water table, which lowers the land but also disrupts the underground water flow. At the same time you have sea level rise. At a certain point, water pressure will flip and salt water will begin flowing in to replenish the water we pull out of it. Since water will continue to flow in from the north of the state, this won't be an overnight cataclysm but over time the water will become unusable for agriculture. 

[p1t1o]

Are we sure that the atmosphere is the best place to source your carbon? I'm all up for combatting global warming, but to get a significant level of industry going you will have to process an unholy amount of atmosphere (2.5tons per kg of CO2 recovered, at 100% eff.), you're going to spend a lot of energy just moving that much mass of gas around.

[shynung]

@p1t1o is right. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is minuscule compared to oxygen, or even argon. Our best bet for carbon sources, other than oil, are coal (AKA solid chunks of carbon), followed by various biological sources such as wood, sugary crops, and recently cellulosic plant parts.

[todofwar]

12 minutes ago, shynung said:

@p1t1o is right. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is minuscule compared to oxygen, or even argon. Our best bet for carbon sources, other than oil, are coal (AKA solid chunks of carbon), followed by various biological sources such as wood, sugary crops, and recently cellulosic plant parts.

Except those biological sources are just concentrating from the atmosphere, so your ultimate source remains atmospheric. 

[shynung]

Just now, todofwar said:

Except those biological sources are just concentrating from the atmosphere, so your ultimate source remains atmospheric. 

Yes, it is. Several month's worth of absorbed atmospheric CO2, ready for the taking.

Though, the same is true of oil and coal. Main difference is that the carbon from oil and coal was absorbed millions of years ago, and got buried. What we hauled out was atmospheric CO2 from the ancient ages.

[p1t1o]

7 minutes ago, todofwar said:

Except those biological sources are just concentrating from the atmosphere, so your ultimate source remains atmospheric. 

And coal is made from trees so thats atmospheric too. And oil. In fact the atmosphere is from hydrogen fusion anyway so its all just fusion, right?  

edit: ninjas fighting!

Edited May 17, 2016 by p1t1o

[Sereneti]

You can use the syntetic petroleum to carry energy....
or store energy in a small room, like for rockets...

(they produce MW of energy "enough for small countries" arnt a lie")
If you have on big fusion reaktor, or a big solar-farm (or solar-generators), you can store and transport energy in this way...

 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

And coal is made from trees so that's atmospheric too. And oil. In fact the atmosphere is from hydrogen fusion anyway so its all just fusion, right?  

That's why we classify energy sources based on their cycle I guess ?

[John JACK]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Anything is better than a steam boiler with its 10-20% efficiency.

Nope yourself.

Wood gas generation process does yield only 1/3 of fuel energy, that's right. But a steam boiler (slightly more complex than a tin can on a candle) has efficiency of 80-90%. That's almost all energy of burning fuel goes to the energy of superheated steam.
The next step is an engine itself. Here ICE has efficiency of ~30% (in best case) and steam — of 5-10%, though steam turbines are much better, 40-50%. But. Wood gas is a poor fuel for an ICE, because it's not only hot and dirty, but consists mostly of nitrogen (generator intakes air, and only oxygen reacts with wood). Engine efficiency on a wood gas is several times worse than on a proper fuel. So engine efficiency is pretty much same.
Altogether wood gas engine is both less efficient than a good steam engine, AND needs better fuel. Gas generator cannot use waste, steam boiler can. The only reason that people use wood gas and not steam is sloth cost. ICE engines are mass produced for ages, and are dirt cheap anywhere. Gas generator is just a barrel with some tubes. And work cost nothing is you can not even afford petrol. Steam engines are not mass produced for ages, and never actually were. Thought you can make a steam engine, good efficient boiler is not just a barrel with some tubes, but a pressure vessel with high temperature. There are no cheap boilers, there are good boilers and there are bombs. And if you can afford a good boiler — you are rich and can afford petrol, steam is only a hobby.

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

You can't grow plants in three layers, and you can't force them to grow a tonne per day on one acre.
You can't make them suck the air like a turbofan.
You can't force them to consume the light faster than their thin skin layer does.

Right. But plants are not even using a small percent of available anyway.
For example miscantus or hogweed grow to several metres high in a single year. There are plenty of CO₂ in air and solar energy for more, they use just a little percent of available. And there are deserts on Earth, where plants can grow great, but doesn't want to.
Algae basins, on the contrary, have a drawback of low surface area, you need to bubble air (with CO₂) artificially. Also replenish water, watch for contamination and whatever. Weeds grow by themselves, and do it on any unused land, just plant seeds in spring and harvest biomass in winter.

25 minutes ago, Sereneti said:

You can use the syntetic petroleum to carry energy....

You don't need actual petroleum to carry or store energy. Hydrogen and methane are simpler (need less energy) to produce, and work just fine, and are even better for rockets.

Only reason to bother with making synthetic petrol is presence of Otto-engine cars and only solid fuels and need to make them work together.