Turning air into petrol
I hope everybody saw a copy of the Independent on 19th October! The front page is an exclusive about a small company called Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS) based in Stockton-on-Tees. It has succeeded in putting together a series of different processes to extract CO2 from the air, and then produce petrol from it. Not much of it so far, but a huge potential for the future.
I visited this plant back in July and, was hugely impressed at what I saw. This is a comment I made at the time: “Just to say how much I enjoyed my visit to AFS. I believe what you are pioneering through AFS is hugely significant, both in the short term (in terms of responding to the needs of certain niche markets) and in the long term. Harnessing the benign properties of CO2 to create genuinely sustainable fuels for the future is still, for many, no more than a ‘distant dream’. I really think you and your colleagues could turn that dream into a reality”.
On the same day, Tim Fox, Head of Energy & Environment at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, was also visiting. He is quoted in the Independent as saying, “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. It’s a small pilot plant, capturing air and extracting CO2 from it, based on well-known principles. It uses well-known components, but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together, and shown that it can work.
It’s still unbelievably optimistic to assume that this really will turn into a great global industry providing huge amounts of kerosene for aviation (which is the real game plan behind the entire project), but this is exactly the kind of hopeful innovation that we need so much of for the future.
And brilliant that one of the instigators of this, Tony Marmont, has seen one of his many dreams starting to come true – he is one of the true pioneers of today’s sustainable and renewable revolution, and just one of the most inspiring people imaginable. Together with Peter Harrison, they’ve created something really special here.
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The compressed air car concept is flawed fundamentally by restricted range - everyone should do themselves a favour and ref David Mackay "SUstainable Enery Without the Hot Air" - available free on interweb:
"Compressed-air cars
Air-powered vehicles are not a new idea. Hundreds of trams powered by
compressed air and hot water plied the streets of Nantes and Paris from
1879 to 1911. Figure 20.24 shows a German pneumatic locomotive from
1958. I think that in terms of energy efficiency the compressed-air tech-
nique for storing energy isn’t as good as electric batteries. The problem is
that compressing the air generates heat that’s unlikely to be used efficiently;
and expanding the air generates cold, another by-product that is unlikely
to be used efficiently. But compressed air may be a superior technology to
electric batteries in other ways. For example, air can be compressed thous-
ands of times and doesn’t wear out! It’s interesting to note, however, that
the first product sold by the Aircar company is actually an electric scooter.
[www.theaircar.com/acf]
There’s talk of Tata Motors in India manufacturing air-cars, but it’s
hard to be sure whether the compressed-air vehicle is going to see a revival,
because no-one has published the specifications of any modern prototypes.
Here’s the fundamental limitation: the energy-density of compressed-air
energy-stores is only about 11–28 Wh per kg, which is similar to lead-acid
batteries, and roughly five times smaller than lithium-ion batteries. (See
figure 26.13, p199, for details of other storage technologies.) So the range of
a compressed-air car will only ever be as good as the range of the earliest
electric cars. Compressed-air storage systems do have three advantages
over batteries: longer life, cheaper construction, and fewer nasty chemical
Further developments in this area - DNV, a partner in Forum's Sustainable Shipping Initiative, are working with Ginko Bioworks to develop a system for converting CO2 into shipping fuel via algae (ie enhanced photosynthesis!) - involves GM algae, which may be of some concern..?
http://www.dnv.com/press_area/press_releases/2012/dnv_and_gingko_biowork...
Further developments in a similar technology, this time for Shipping, from our SSI partners, DNV:
http://www.dnv.com/press_area/press_releases/2012/dnv_and_gingko_biowork...
Jonathon, yesterday I stumbled into a website dishing out various items of trivia one of which stated that the average person consumes 2 litres of oil per day. Having nothing better to do I thought I'd check it out using published data for known reserves and an alternative quoted rate of consumption. To get some kind of comparison I worked out how long our known reserves will last @ 2 litres per person per day (assuming 7bn people) and BPs published 2011 comsumption figures.
The results 53.47 years vs 53.5 - remarkably close - so I guess the 2 litres per day figure is spot on.
What a staggering statistic and all the more reason to welcome developments such as this given the percentage of consumption attributed to the transport sector.
By contrast, I learned on Sunday (from an insider) that the Tata Compressed Air concept car that I had read about earlier in the year (via Sunday Times magazine) has been scrapped. Claims were made in the ST article about its fuel efficiency being in the order of 300km per litre of vegetable oil!
Thta would surely have made a very significant contribution to reducing the human footprint but it seems its just another wonderful motor initiative in a long line of others to have bitten the dust for reasons I can only guess at. Any ideas?
I agree with Jonathan - we need as many inspirational people as possible to come up with innovative solutions such as Air Fuel Synthesis. More power to Tony Marmont, Peter Harrison and the AFS team - and they deserve support!
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