Diesel Fuel From Air and Water

[e-light]

German engineers have created diesel fuel from air and water...and it's already in use!

DailyMail

This is a really cool technology! Would be nice to have a 1 ton diesel truck that came with it's own refinery and could make its own diesel...

[jus2shy]

agesilaus wrote:
You are ignoring the thermodynamic realities of this. The inflexible laws of thermodynamics require that each time you convert energy from one form to the other you lose energy. And the efficiencies are usually terrible, something around 40% or so. So if you have 1000 joules of power from a wind generator then you get 400 joules when you convert it to battery or liquid fuel form. In general that is.

And if you think the Navy is doing this voluntarily, then you are wrong. You can be sure that they didn't want to spend $5/gal for green fuel as opposed to $1/gal for plain old naval distillate. Political appointees and political admirals are behind all of this.

Uhm, energy is neither created nor destroyed (Law of conservation of energy). It's just the issue of entropy (Energy converted to a form that can't be used). We make progress on entropy every day (hell, there are 2 stroke diesels hitting 50% efficiency now). Thermodynamics doesn't dictate any constant loss of energy in any conversion. It does dictate entropy approaches a constant as you get closer to absolute zero. So I personally have no idea what the actual loss/conversion is with this system.

The Navy is actually taking this on for a good reason and it isn't politics. It's logistics. Fueling at sea and maintaining a fleet of boats that are floating gas tanks is a pain. Being able to produce fuel on demand and cut down on the fleet size (or swap with other more useful ships) is a big boon for them. Another article sited pricing of $3 to $6 bucks a gallon equivalent. We'll see if they get there and it may be a boon for us here on land. But for the navy, the extra cost padded onto having to ship fuel from a port onto a barge to keep with a fleet is huge. However, tapping the nuclear ship's extra power capacity to produce fuel for the liquid fueled ships and aircraft could be what the Navy needs (not necessarily what's needed on land). But it's an idea none the less.

[wilber1]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

wilber1 wrote:

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
It's not a start at all. Neither hydrogen nor water are fuels and never will be.

Anybody remember the air car? LOL. Air is not a fuel either.

Just the kind of attitude that has propelled mankind forward. Someone better be working on alternatives or this place is hooped.

This is the company that has won back to back Le Mans 24hrs with diesel hybrid cars and the odds on favourite to do it again.

LOL, and I have won several race car championships also. What does that have to do with breaking energy laws?

It's like saying if I flap my arms up and down faster I can fly. I know I can!!! :R These are laws, not suggestions. They became laws over many, many years of people trying to break them..........and couldn't.


Like I said above, hydrogen is not even a fuel.

A little more reading about hydrogen and why it's not a fuel.

And more reading for those that don't understand laws.

How much new technology did you develop yourself when you raced those cars?

This may be a dead end but how far does has throwing up their hands and saying nothing new is possible got anyone.

This is one of the top three car producing companies in the world. They do have some clue when it comes to the present limitations of what they are doing.

[agesilaus]

You are ignoring the thermodynamic realities of this. The inflexible laws of thermodynamics require that each time you convert energy from one form to the other you lose energy. And the efficiencies are usually terrible, something around 40% or so. So if you have 1000 joules of power from a wind generator then you get 400 joules when you convert it to battery or liquid fuel form. In general that is.

And if you think the Navy is doing this voluntarily, then you are wrong. You can be sure that they didn't want to spend $5/gal for green fuel as opposed to $1/gal for plain old naval distillate. Political appointees and political admirals are behind all of this.

[jus2shy]

For all those dismissing this idea, the Navy is doing the same exact thing with sea water: Navy Article. What Audi is proposing is using excess capacity to make fuel and help displace carbon fuels. Great idea, and the fact that wind power is unpredictable and at times surges when we don't need it, makes this a good way to put that power to use. But then what will win? Diesel? or Batteries on the grid? Both are energy storage mediums.

[BenK]

Still very exciting to me...and of course, as with all things "The
Devil is in the Details"...

As stated earlier...note that they reference windpower as their electrical
source...


Who would have thought that they could split and then join an Oyster
gene with Corn to produce a corn hybrid that is resistant to whatever
they were after? Sister is a scientist at Genentech and know some
of the far fetched stuff they actually are doing

Or that one of my Skunk Teams at SunLabs perfected solid state compressors

Think automotive/home/commercial/etc AC compressors with no moving
parts. Only one $0.50 automotive AC one-way valve so it will pump

Nano IP and was working on commissioning Los Alamos to finish some
materials research my physicists could not replicate after making
a batch


Lots of scam artists working real science for self gain that makes
the real stuff hard to keep going...

[45Ricochet]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
It's not a start at all. Neither hydrogen nor water are fuels and never will be.

Anybody remember the air car? LOL. Air is not a fuel either.

Any of you older guys remember back in the early 60's they had these little toy rockets, mine was red. Anyway you filled water to the proper line attached it to the launcher which had a pump and you pump air into it. Seemed like it went pretty far up into the sky, but heck I was little so maybe it was only 100 feet :W

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

wilber1 wrote:

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
It's not a start at all. Neither hydrogen nor water are fuels and never will be.

Anybody remember the air car? LOL. Air is not a fuel either.

Just the kind of attitude that has propelled mankind forward. Someone better be working on alternatives or this place is hooped.

This is the company that has won back to back Le Mans 24hrs with diesel hybrid cars and the odds on favourite to do it again.

LOL, and I have won several race car championships also. What does that have to do with breaking energy laws?

It's like saying if I flap my arms up and down faster I can fly. I know I can!!! :R These are laws, not suggestions. They became laws over many, many years of people trying to break them..........and couldn't.


Like I said above, hydrogen is not even a fuel.

A little more reading about hydrogen and why it's not a fuel.

And more reading for those that don't understand laws.

[agesilaus]

It's a variation of the Fischer-Tropsch process which was used in WWII by the Germans to make fuel from coal. It is an net energy loser and this process would be worse since you'd have to extract CO2 from the air (very dilute) and stack gas from power plants (less dilute) and then purify it and compress it to liquid CO2. All of that is very expensive from the energy standpoint.

[PRodacy]

Nothing new about this. It's basic chemistry. As noted, however, it takes more energy to make this "new diesel fuel" than you'll ever get out of it. It's basically a publicity effort, not a real product, and it probably never will be.

[Stefonius]

agesilaus wrote:
Yeah there is zero chance that this makes any sort of economic sense. The Germans have already shown their disregard for logic by shutting down their nuke plants, which produce no air pollution, and replacing them with the dirtiest type of coal plants: lignite plants.

No air pollution, but what's a little hard radiation between friends?

[agesilaus]

Sorry, the laws of physics and chemistry are against this. It takes more energy to break apart CO2 and remake it into a hydrocarbon than you can recover by burning that hydrocarbon. It's the same problem that affects this ethanol from corn boondoggle. Once you add up all the energy inputs that go into making it and compare that to what you get back from burning it, you come out a loser.

[wilber1]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
It's not a start at all. Neither hydrogen nor water are fuels and never will be.

Anybody remember the air car? LOL. Air is not a fuel either.

Just the kind of attitude that has propelled mankind forward. Someone better be working on alternatives or this place is hooped.

This is the company that has won back to back Le Mans 24hrs with diesel hybrid cars and the odds on favourite to do it again.

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

It's not a start at all. Neither hydrogen nor water are fuels and never will be.

Anybody remember the air car? LOL. Air is not a fuel either.

[downtheroad]

It's a start anyway. But, needs some serious tweaking.

[agesilaus]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

e-light wrote:
German engineers have created diesel fuel from air and water...and it's already in use!

DailyMail

This is a really cool technology! Would be nice to have a 1 ton diesel truck that came with it's own refinery and could make its own diesel...

I can make gold out of lead too.............it's not profitable that's all. Same way this this stunt.

Yeah there is zero chance that this makes any sort of economic sense. The Germans have already shown their disregard for logic by shutting down their nuke plants, which produce no air pollution, and replacing them with the dirtiest type of coal plants: lignite plants.