There is as yet no method to mimic Jesus Christ and turn water into wine, but German chemical engineers have proved they can perform miracles of alchemy. They are now finalizing the assembly of a rig that changes water into gasoline.
The German company says it has developed an engineering installation capable of synthesizing petroleum-based fuels from water and carbon dioxide. The ‘power-to-liquid’ rig converts gases extracted from water into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
“I would call it a miracle because it completely changes the way we are producing fuels for cars, planes and also the chemical industry,” Nils Aldag, Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Sunfire GmbH told RT’s Ruptly video agency.
The Dresden-based company expects the technology to have a big impact on the future fuel market.
The electrically-powered installation uses a process known as Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis, first developed by German chemists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1925.
The Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) reaction converts colorless, odorless, incombustible carbon dioxide gas (CO2) extracted from water, and hydrogen gas generated from water vapor, by electrolysis into liquid fuels such as diesel, jet kerosene and other chemical products.
The conversion process takes place in a series of reactors at temperatures between 150 and 300 degrees Celsius.
However, the F-T fuel technology “will always be more expensive” than getting conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuels from oil or coal, Aldag warned.
“What is important is that the value creation happens at the place where you use the fuel,” he said. So there will be no crude oil transportation costs and expensive infrastructure. “You are producing the fuel right where you are actually going to use it,” Aldag stressed.
One might think that much cheaper conventional fuels will always be a sure bet, but this depends on the given conditions. The Pentagon has already been working in this direction.
The US military has spent up to $150 per gallon on alternative jet fuels made from algae, which is a good bit more than the approximately $3 per gallon that traditional jet fuels currently cost in the US.
Although $150 seems a lot for a gallon of gas, the US has spent a fortune on fuel during its 13-year campaign in Afghanistan. The military themselves estimate that the cost of delivering fuel to remote bases is $400 a gallon.
Sunfire believes the technology will be refined, and after obtaining regulatory permission they hope to offer it for commercial exploitation by 2016.
While Nils Aldag considers the technology has a bright future, the will to use it needs to gain momentum.
“I think in a very long time it will actually have an impact on geopolitics. What you always have to know is that the quantities that are required in these industries are so big that it would be difficult for such a technology to make a significant impact in a short period of time,” said Aldag.
I saw this moments ago on Armstrong’s site and was amazed.
Have a feeling there will be many with an opposite point of view knocking it soon.
Suspicious that it came out of nowhere after an oil price crash.
No mention of EROEI.
It sounds to me like it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel generates.
If so, then it is a worthless technology.
Doesn’t the military already make fuel from coal? People need jobs so they have the money to buy gas. Gas usage is down. Because unemployed people don’t drive much.
pffft …. I can covert cabbage into methane gas. It’s a German thing.
Did you know the new Mercedes can hold 20 Joos? Yeah, in the ashtray. Bada boom!!
“It sounds to me like it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel generates”
It does. Electrolysis has been known about for more than a century. But it takes more energy to pull the water (H2O) molecule apart than the energy you get when you burn it.
Also the title is misleading; you can’t turn water into gasoline. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon which means a molecule with both Hydrogen and Carbon and water only has Hydrogen and Oxygen. Of course the second paragraph address that when they mention CO2 so that’s where they get the Carbon atoms.
Anonymous above was me
“No mention of EROEI.
It sounds to me like it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel generates.
If so, then it is a worthless technology.”
Unless you locate the fuel-making machine adjacent to a hydroelectric power plant. Gobs of electricity and water right there.
Coal-fired power plants will always run on coal. But, there’s nothing saying they can’t hook one of these babies up to the backside of a coal plant and start making fuel…
Not to power the plant. For resale. At least it would somewhat offset the cost of the EPA fucking with coal plants…
If faced with the choice between none and some, then I choose some.
Doesn’t the military already make fuel from coal?
Yep. It’s called fractional distillation.
The process is more or less the same as ethanol distillation… put coal in a vessel, heat it up, and the volatiles evaporate away. Run them through a condenser and they convert from gas into liquid…
Kerosene. It was originally called “coal oil”, since it was obtained from the fractional distillation of coal.
Jets just run on a highly refined type of kerosene…
By the way, the tech has been around a long, long time… the Germans were using this process to make synthetic fuel during WWII when they were largely cut off from available oil supplies…
Old news: “As of July 2009, worldwide commercial synthetic fuels production capacity was over 240,000 barrels per day (38,000 m3/d), with numerous new projects in construction or development.”
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
Hoomans aren’t smart enough to use technology like this even if the EROEI is greater. We’d end up converting every last drop of water to fuel to keep our iCrap running and have to use Google to figure out why we are dehydrated and at that point, well, Earth would get a well deserved break.
Electricity can be broadcast through the air much the same as a radio signal. The only reason we have the system we have is to charge you and me the max amount to use it, this will be no different if they perfect it. Hydrogen powered vehicles come out in January 2015 for consumer purchase, if you have 50K to buy one. All manner of new energy sources are on the horizon, get your checkbook ready.
“Electricity can be broadcast through the air the same as a radio signal” It’s called lightning. catch it in a bottle.
Electricity can be broadcast through the air much the same as a radio signal.
I wonder why Tesla didn’t think of your idea? We could harvest lighting.
Doesn’t it take more energy to overcome air resistance? And what if the arc will finds you are a convenient ground? Copper conductors are still the safer and economical way to go.
Hey Roy, at this point Bea is working on saving time in a bottle.
Re converting from one element to another – I believe it is possible, if one wants to expend enough energy, to convert just about anything into just about anything else. It is in fact possible to turn lead into gold, for instance.
“Nowadays nuclear physicists routinely transform one element to another. In commercial nuclear reactors, uranium atoms break apart to yield smaller nuclei of elements such as xenon and strontium as well as heat that can be harnessed to generate electricity. In experimental fusion reactors heavy isotopes of hydrogen merge together to form helium. (An element is defined by the number of protons in its nucleus whereas an isotope of a given element is determined by the quantity of neutrons.)
But what of the fabled transmutation of lead to gold? It is indeed possible—all you need is a particle accelerator, a vast supply of energy and an extremely low expectation of how much gold you will end up with. More than 30 years ago nuclear scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California succeeded in producing very small amounts of gold from bismuth, a metallic element adjacent to lead on the periodic table. The same process would work for lead”
But the conversion, and the amount reclaimed, are not worth the energy expended.
What they are trying to accomplish at present is short distant wireless transmission of electricity. For instance, you would have a wired line to your home, but inside your home you would not have any wires – it would all be wirelessly transmitted.
But we are very far, maybe impossibly far, fro being able to transmit enough energy to be able to power cities, etc., wirelessly.
Here is what happened when Tesla tried it. Pretty funny:
“Tesla based his wireless electricity idea on a concept known as electromagnetic induction, which was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831 and holds that electric current flowing through one wire can induce current to flow in another wire, nearby. To illustrate that principle, Tesla built two huge “World Power” towers that would broadcast current into the American air, to be received remotely by electrical devices around the globe.
Few believed it could work. And to be fair to the doubters, it didn’t, exactly. When Tesla first switched on his 200-foot-tall, 1,000,000-volt Colorado Springs tower, 130-foot-long bolts of electricity shot out of it, sparks leaped up at the toes of passersby, and the grass around the lab glowed blue.”
If it sounds to good to be true it probably is. Condensed version ” Bullshit”.
ok, llpoh, I said it would take a huge potential, 1 million volts, to overcome air resistance , why the thumbs down?
Scoff if you will, the wi-electricity is already in use by DOD. Some whizkid from MIT found a way to send electricity long distance. http://www.fastcompany.com has an article , read all of the different applications down the page. I didn’t pull this out of my ass.
EC- wasn’t me.
Bea – maybe so. The issue is not only distance but amount. Plus the gizmos to receive it. Etc etc etc.
Not in my lifetime.
Why can’t we harness earth’s magnetic field to induce a current in huge coils?
What effect will a magnetic field in your house have on your red blood ells, on your ear crystals?
Llpoh
Not only in your lifetime but from what I understand the first generation products will be out in the next few years. Baby steps sort of like pong evolved into todays gaming products. This is not a new technology, just not made available to the sheep.
EC
That is a good question.
Rube Goldberg remains Americas greatest inventor.
‘Miracle’ machine my a–. I’m a ChemE and work in logistics. F-T process is old. Just take the combustion products of hydrocarbons (water, CO2) and put energy (plus LOTS of losses) back into it to make hydrocarbons again. That energy comes from electricity which comes from….hydrocarbons! The only very dubious angle mentioned is not shipping the gas. But you get no economies of scale making it in hundreds of small F-T units vs. one large refinery and shipping it. No way this makes any econimic, environmental or any sense at all.
T4C
Riddle me this – part 1
Who was Curious George named after? And what does that have to do with Tesla?
I am huge Tesla fan T4C.. Above riddle is not sarc.
Even more amazingly, Germans have discovered a process to convert ordinary humans beings into complete assholes with oversized egos and no conscience. The process is called elections.
“Who was Curious George named after? And what does that have to do with Tesla?”
————- Bea Lever
“Curious George, the famous television monkey, was created by Alan J. Shalleck and Margaret Rey. Shalleck was murdered in 2006 just 3 days before the Curious George movie was released. He had been planning to expose the true identity of George H. W. Bush as the “Curious George” son of inventor Nikola Tesla’s Nazi accountant, George H. Scherff Sr.”
You can read the rest here —> http://www.helpfreetheearth.com/news441_bush.html
Or, you can read a much much much more detailed account here …
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm