Technology

I swear Porche was already doing something similar...years ago.

Kind of pretty important and relevant:

The main reason why this process isn't "something for nothing" is that it takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline. As Aircela told The Autopian:

Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.

So basically juat imagine a gas powered generator hooked up to this to power the process of pulling gasoline out of the air.

Ok, see how that's silly?

Right, now, if you do run it off solar power, then sure! That makes more sense.

Hate hyrdocarbon fuels all you want, they are very good at being dense, portable, and exist in the vast majority of pre-existing logistics infrastructure.

But the thing isn't magic, it takes energy to convert air into basically a form of liquid energy.

And... you'd probably have to refine it or chemically treat it at least somewhat.

I'm not a chemist, but I am guessing this is the case, if you want gasoline that is just equivalent to what your car would expect.

The machine also traps water vapor, and uses electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen instead of destroying your car's cooling system.

what the fuck does this even mean

I imagine this as a system that uses spare renewable energy like solar to generate gas that can be used to smooth the curve that is a renewable power source. It's real value is that it reduces infrastructure needs, allowing its use in remote environments. But it does add a lot of additional failure points.

This machine uses 75kWh per day to make 1 gallon of gasoline. Using the cheapest electricity in the country, that's $9.29 per gallon (+ the machine itself is $20k).

remember plastoline? that method of relatively easily transforming plastic waste into gasoline.

good or not, worthwhile or not, i don't think tech like this will take off when the oil industry makes so much money from drilling and fracking for that same gas.

It takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline.

We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume!

Finally a way to turn clean solar into something I can burn.

Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost.

Meanwhile, an electric vehicle could go hundreds of miles on the same amount of energy input...

insert Adam Something's "shitting in the living room" metaphor here

This would actually provide me enough gas each week with my hybrid in office schedule.

Another device of the type that Thunderf00t used to 'bust.'

I wonder is a scaled up version of this could work for grid-scale medium length storage. Smoothing out weeks of dunkleflaute is the main blocker to going to a primarily renewable grid. Gasoline is a lot easier to store than hydrogen and large scale gasoline generators should get close to the efficiency of natural gas peaker plants.