Welcome to the Growery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
Quote: The next time you head to northern England make sure to stop and take a deep breath of — gasoline.
This strange sounding idea comes from a company that claims to be able to turn fresh air into the same gasoline that runs cars.
Not only that, but the process that small British company Air Fuel Synthesis perfected also extracts ozone-layer-harming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to The Independent.
Shockingly, this miraculous innovation is the real deal according to Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London. AP Scientists in England has created a refinery that turns fresh air into gasoline, a process that promises to lower fuel costs while saving the environment.
“It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process,” Fox said.
The process that the company has created starts by mixing electrofied carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere with sodium carbonate to produce pure carbon dioxide.
The pure carbon dioxide is then mixed with hydrogen produced from electrolyzed water vapor to create methanol, which is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor to create good old fashioned gasoline.
"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into [gasoline]," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive.
There are major stumbling blocks, however, in taking the sensational prospect of air-into-gasoline to the mainstream.
For starters, the company has been running what they call their “small refinery” for three months and have only produced about one gallon of gas.
Besides that is the usual problem that comes with almost all new technologies: cost.
However, Professor Klaus Lackner of Columbia University says that both problems can be overcome given time.
"I bought my first CD in the 1980s and it cost $20 but now you can make one for less than 10 cents. The cost of a light bulb has fallen 7,000-fold during the past century," Professor Lackner said.
That sounds pretty fucking nifty. But I wonder how much energy goes into making the gasoline. As in, how much coal do we have to burn to power this facility? It may not be productive in that sense, but it definitely introduces new ways of developing energy....possible a step in the right direction.
-------------------- Dude she isn't as young as she use to be.
All pretty fuckin rad shit, I read this last night over on boomery
But I agree with hawks, I wonder how energy efficient there process of making gasoline is..if the costs of production are anywhere close to what they are for pulling it out of the ground than the potential economic impact it has is very little.
Apparently they've developed an Algae that can be used to produce diesel. And each acre of it produces crap loads more fuel than and acre of corn or hemp combined.
-------------------- Dude she isn't as young as she use to be.
Quote: hawksapprentice said: Apparently they've developed an Algae that can be used to produce diesel. And each acre of it produces crap loads more fuel than and acre of corn or hemp combined.
Ah someone told me that recently, didn't look further into it though.