Diesel from Water?

Audi has made a synthetic diesel fuel from water using electrolysis and C02.

Think it will be viable?

http://www.sciencealert.com/audi-have-successfully-made-diesel-fuel-from-air-and-water

I think the Navy has been playing with this idea too. Look up Seafuel....

That's cool

Interesting. Wonder how much energy it takes to create the fuel.

Just imagine being able to tear around the countryside in an Audi sportscar, and not having to feel guilty for all the CO2 emissions you're producing. We can't wait.

Um... it doesn't change the amount of CO2 you emit or its damage to the environment.

ProDarwin wrote: Interesting. Wonder how much energy it takes to create the fuel.

Just imagine being able to tear around the countryside in an Audi sportscar, and not having to feel guilty for all the CO2 emissions you're producing. We can't wait.

Um... it doesn't change the amount of CO2 you emit or its damage to the environment.

+1.

Creating chemical energy isn't free. Every time energy is transferred, some is lost, and taking two chemicals that have no energy and making something that has a lot of it would require a lot of energy to make it. With losses.

Dang you science-y folks! Always raining on the parade!

"German car manufacturer Audi has reportedly invented a carbon-neutral diesel fuel, made solely from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources"

Translation: "And then magic happens". The magic being those un-named "renewable energy sources".

volvoclearinghouse wrote: Dang you science-y folks! Always raining on the parade!

There are ways to get energy that we need to work on. Not impossible.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse:

In theory, solar & wind could have been utilized. Basically makes this a liquid battery... with losses all over the entire process. Better batteries and better methods to capture energy from solar or wind would probably be a lot smarter, I think.

alfadriver wrote:

volvoclearinghouse wrote: Dang you science-y folks! Always raining on the parade!

There are ways to get energy that we need to work on. Not impossible.

I know, I was just poking fun, mostly at all the people who write these sensationalist articles promising free, clean energy and the half-brains who buy into it. It's all just 200 mpg carburetors, as far as I can tell.

I'm sure they'll be buying 1 Euro/ liter diesel in the EU in about 6 months, as soon as they ramp up the scale on this technique...and if they don't, it'll have been Big Oil that killed it.

pres589 wrote: In reply to volvoclearinghouse: In theory, solar & wind could have been utilized. Basically makes this a liquid battery... with losses all over the entire process. Better batteries and better methods to capture energy from solar or wind would probably be a lot smarter, I think.

Except that the energy storage density of batteries compared to diesel fuel is still pretty low. A Tesla, equipped with a small turbodiesel engine, would require about a 5 or 6 gallon fuel tank to equal the range of it's energy storage batteries. And it could be refilled in 3 minutes. "Better" needs to be a LOT better to meet these two challenges- the second one being the most daunting.

pres589 wrote: In reply to volvoclearinghouse: In theory, solar & wind could have been utilized. Basically makes this a liquid battery... with losses all over the entire process. Better batteries and better methods to capture energy from solar or wind would probably be a lot smarter, I think.

Correct.

The effective loss is orders of magnitude though. The navy can do this because they have a reactor just sitting there most of the time that they can tap whenever they need to and they have oddles of excess power.

From a side note they save a bit of money doing this but from a deployment perspective this is amazing. You can then make jet fuel with the diesel.

volvo: yeah, I meant better batts as in "we need some better batteries" and not "Audi should have used better batts". See weary's reply.

Interesting point in this link:http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/audi-make-diesel-water-and-carbon-dioxide

"But all may not be as it seems. The process used by Audi is actually called the Fischer-Tropsch process and has been known by scientists since the 1920s. It was even used by the Germans to turn coal into diesel during the Second World War when fuel supplies ran short. The process is currently used by many different companies all around the world, especially in countries where reserves of oil are low but reserves of other fossils fuels, such as gas and coal, are high."

It may be a viable fuel source, I guess time will tell. Them Germans are some crafty folks though.

Well, there have been people making diesel out of CO2 and Water here in the US, too.

Although most of the hard work is done by algae.

"They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude."

Oxygen and hydrogen are two potent, clean-burning fuels--why spend extra energy to convert that into a fuel that is less-efficient and much worse for the environment to burn?

nderwater wrote:

"They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude."

Oxygen and hydrogen are two potent, clean-burning fuels--why spend extra energy to convert that into a fuel that is less-efficient and much worse for the environment to burn?

If they are pulling the CO2 out of the air, it's carbon neutral.

There also aren't many ships or military vehicles that burn hydrogen.

nderwater wrote:

"They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude."

Oxygen and hydrogen are two potent, clean-burning fuels--why spend extra energy to convert that into a fuel that is less-efficient and much worse for the environment to burn?

O2 isn't a fuel, and while H2 is, long chain HC's are more effcient at storing energy.

Even liquified, H2 does not store that much potential energy.

That, and we have cars that burn long chain HC's right now.

Fuel cells, on the other hand.

nderwater wrote:

"They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude."

Oxygen and hydrogen are two potent, clean-burning fuels--why spend extra energy to convert that into a fuel that is less-efficient and much worse for the environment to burn?

Storage. If you have to carry H2 around with you then you're really no better off than just using batteries.

Basically, this kind of process is how you build a viable transportation industry on nuclear power without stupid battery limitations.

alfadriver wrote: Even liquified, H2 does not store that much potential energy.

By weight liquid H2 is the most energy-dense fuel there is, that's why high performance rockets use it. The problem is the volume and the infrastructure to handle cryogenic fuels, so it really doesn't scale down to cars very well.

ProDarwin wrote: Interesting. Wonder how much energy it takes to create the fuel.

Mathematically, it will take more than you'll get from the fuel. It would be little more than a way to store and transfer electricity from generating plant to vehicle, without as many losses. If it's more than 50% efficient, then that is already better than the grid transmission losses in some areas.

Um... it doesn't change the amount of CO2 you emit or its damage to the environment.

Especially since the most likely way that they will GET the CO2 isn't by grabbing it from the atmosphere, but by combining carbon with oxygen... probably get the carbon from crude oil in some form...

ProDarwin wrote: Interesting. Wonder how much energy it takes to create the fuel.

Just imagine being able to tear around the countryside in an Audi sportscar, and not having to feel guilty for all the CO2 emissions you're producing. We can't wait.

Um... it doesn't change the amount of CO2 you emit or its damage to the environment.

Disagree to a point. Excluding any fossil-fuel carbon it takes to produce it, it is carbon neutral. The carbon comes from the biosphere and is being returned to it. Carbon emissions only really count if they come from fossil fuels dug up from below the biosphere and released into the biosphere.

This is the folly of expanding efficiency of fossil-fuel based energy sources. You're still dragging up carbon from down below and dumping it up here. A 1965 diesel running on veggie oil belching out a smoky 4 mpg is still better than the cleanest 50-mpg "clean" diesel burning fossil diesel from the pump.

I am speaking of carbon. There is an entire argument though about how an IC engine takes compounds in fuel and converts them temporarily into harmful things like NOx, CO, and complex HCs, but in terms of carbon it is as neutral as the cost of the fossil fuels used to create it.

codrus wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Even liquified, H2 does not store that much potential energy.

By weight liquid H2 is the most energy-dense fuel there is, that's why high performance rockets use it. The problem is the volume and the infrastructure to handle cryogenic fuels, so it really doesn't scale down to cars very well.

The other problem (other than the insanely explosive nature of hydrogen) is finding a source. You either spend as much energy getting it from water as you get when you re-combine it, or get it from fossil fuels.

curtis73 wrote:

codrus wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Even liquified, H2 does not store that much potential energy.

By weight liquid H2 is the most energy-dense fuel there is, that's why high performance rockets use it. The problem is the volume and the infrastructure to handle cryogenic fuels, so it really doesn't scale down to cars very well.

The other problem (other than the insanely explosive nature of hydrogen) is finding a source. You either spend as much energy getting it from water as you get when you re-combine it, or get it from fossil fuels.

For THIS particular example, the H2 is coming from water. As pointed out in the article. Using renewable sources, or course.

alfadriver wrote:

nderwater wrote:

"They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude."

Oxygen and hydrogen are two potent, clean-burning fuels--why spend extra energy to convert that into a fuel that is less-efficient and much worse for the environment to burn?

O2 isn't a fuel, and while H2 is, long chain HC's are more effcient at storing energy. Even liquified, H2 does not store that much potential energy. That, and we have cars that burn long chain HC's right now. Fuel cells, on the other hand.

I'd like to expand on that...

It is very true. The energy that is released when HCs are burned is from the breaking of the bonds. The more bonds there are in the HC, the greater its energy potential. This is why gasoline has more energy than alcohols and why diesel has more energy than gasoline.

Which does beg the question... why add energy to make a larger HC when (at best) you will only get that much additional energy back out? I think this may be part of Codrus' argument about "you're no better off than having batteries." Batteries store energy without all the energy wasted on changing states of energy.

This is also one of my problems with hybrid cars; they take chemical energy in HCs, convert it very inefficiently to kinetic energy with an IC engine, then very efficiently convert that kinetic to electricity, then convert it back to kinetic. All the while, it stores this energy in batteries that produce so much noxious waste to produce that they are made in third world countries with no emissions laws and then shipped on boats with no emissions controls half way around the globe. Meanwhile, someone else takes fossil fuels and turns them into plastic body panels for the car... but people line up to buy a "green" vehicle that puts out infinitely more non-neutral carbon than a 74 Mercedes burning biodiesel. But, by all means, lets crush those old diesel cars because Jenny McCarthy or some other celebrity says they are killing our children.

Sorry.. off the soapbox.

Ok... back on the soapbox.

But back to the topic: Adding massive amounts of unclean energy to produce something that a consumer considers green is the whole point. No one cares that 80% of their car's impact on the environment happens before and after ownership and operation. They don't care that their Prius is a massive fist-**** of the environment to make and an even bigger debacle when its done; as long as the commercial tells them it saves a kitten and 1 mpg.

I'm waiting for the day that actual science makes its way into energy and not political oil marketing and granola-perpetual-motion-unicorn-tesla-free energy.