So I just read this article about synthetic fuels:

So I just read this article about synthetic fuels:
bosch.com/explore-and-experience/synthetic-fuels/
Why do electric cars get so much attention? Honestly, synthetic fuels seem like a much more promising endeavor.
>would be cheaper than gasoline/diesel
>no need to make massive changes to infrastructure
>has all of the benefits over EVs that normal ICEs have (range, refuel time, doesn't lose power in cold/heat, doesn't require rare metals, etc)
>completely carbon neutral, thus eliminating the EV's inherent advantage environmentally
>lower amounts of other non-CO2 emissions
All you hear about is EVs this EVs that, and as cool as some EVs are it just makes so much more sense to just focus more into synthetic fuels. Why do you barley hear any news of synth fuels?

Other urls found in this thread:

astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~relling2/PDF/pubs/life_cycle_assesment_ellingson_apul_(2015)_ren_and_sustain._energy_revs.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

If it's carbon-neutral then they can't tax you for your carbon crimes. And there's so much invested in the EV idea. Now they're not going to get ROI on that?

I honestly believe that algae based petroleum would save cars, industry and chemistry.

Electric and algae based fuels could be awesome.

Taxes will always be taxes. EV taxes are being cut and now they are figuring out ways to make EV owners pay a huge tax during annual registration because they don't buy gas.

Politicians will always get your money, one way or another. We live in a modern era of indentured servitude.

I like turtles.

>would be cheaper than gasoline/diesel

Far from it. I'd love to see it but I don't think synthetic fuels will take off in our lifetime unless fossil fuel prices skyrocket due to scarcity, or harsh penalties on fossil emissions are introduced. Granted, there is research on it being conducted, but there's no method of economically viable large scale production yet.

Also to make it CO2 neutral you'd have to power it entirely from renewable sources, and the electricity demand to cover all our vehicular activities with synthetic fuels would be IMMENSE. The same point goes for hydrogen fuel cells.

Why bother with synthetic fuels when we have 500 years worth of dino squeezings under us?

Because 500 years worth of dino squeezings will release 50 million years worth of CO2.

Why don't we use that to CO2 to reforest the deserts and grow food and stuff like that?

And synthetic fuels won't? I doubt unicorn farts come out the exhaust when you burn bio fuels.

The article explains that it *could* be cheaper if it was widely used. And yeah it also mentioned that production would have to come from renewables/nuclear so you're not wrong there.

The trick with synthetic fuels is that you can take the carbon for them literally out of the atmosphere, or with biofuels out of plants which in turn take it out of the atmosphere. So apart from the energy needed to split and synthesize stuff it's a closed circle. CO2 becomes C and O, H2O becomes H and O, C and H become hydrocarbon chains (i.e. fuel), O is burned with fuel to make H2O and CO2.

>completely carbon neutral
unpossible
>thus eliminating the EV's inherent advantage environmentally
EV's are hardly carbon neutral.

The production of the fuel is carbon neutral. Assuming it's paired with renewable/nuclear. Either way I'd be lower CO2 than EVs.

>renewable/nuclear
these aren't carbon neutral either. More carbon is emitted in the manufacture of a solar panel that it will ever save.

Yeah, you're right. But you get what I'm trying to say. It's lower co2 than evs/conventional cars.

this. Truckerfag here.

Most truckstops are already blending biodiesel into our fuel, some in Illinois and California blend as much as 20 percent. The silver lining is in Illinois that biodiesel blend fuel is usually cheapest in the country so a lot of people try to fill up there on cross-country runs. CA negates this with all their Jew taxes on truckers most of us refuse to fill up there and all of their diesel tax they make is off of local drivers usually

The problem is new emissions trucks like mine don't take to it very well and our fuel filters get clogged up quickly on prolonged use of B20, but I surmise manufacturers will find a workaround soon.

Nothing is ever fully carbon neutral, electricity doesn't grow on trees. But there are sources that emit far fewer emissions than others. Carbon emissions by nuclear power and hydro power for example are negligible.

Eventually they're talking about running 100% synth fuel with only minor mods to the fuel system.

>electricity doesn't grow on trees
Yeah it does. Trees absorb energy from the sun, in the process converting atmospheric CO2 into O2 as they turn H2O into hydrocarbons.

Technically yes, but woodcoal burning steam engines or woodgas fueled combustion engines aren't exactly efficient.

Sure. That's an issue unto itself though.

btw are trees considered to be efficient? I've never seen somebody work that out. It does seem to take quite a while for them to grow, but OTOH the hydrocarbons make for a heck of a battery.

>powering a car with a tree

>thousands of years ago
get fucked shill

Carbon fixation as a way to convert solar energy into stored energy for a plant is one of the most inefficient fuel systems in existence
t. biochemist

>More carbon is emitted in the manufacture of a solar panel that it will ever save.
That's blatantly untrue. Energy payback time on modern thin film solar cells is below 4 years and falling.
astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~relling2/PDF/pubs/life_cycle_assesment_ellingson_apul_(2015)_ren_and_sustain._energy_revs.pdf

Not same person. In which part of the world? how many years do they last? Does the calculation include shipping?
Do you happen to know the number for wind turbines?

>pro-tip
no fuel source is without drawbacks.
oil is muh ebil arab liquid dinosaurs REEE
EVs are powered by african suffering
biofuel requires too much farmland to be feasible on a large scale
hydrogen is volatile and requires a black box fuel tank

Long story short, the planet doesn't care because it wants you dead anyways

Synthetic fuels are more expensive to produce by a lot.

>The trick with synthetic fuels is that you can take the carbon for them literally out of the atmosphere
This is highly inefficient and extremely expensive.

It takes more energy to rip the co2 out of the air and make a fuel than the energy the fuel would make itself where as with conventional fuels now it takes way less energy to produce it

>Why do electric cars get so much attention?
extreme shilling. also numale nerds that have never seen an engine want something to feel superior about. just look at this faggot.

Easier to build a tank/lake for growing algae than building solar panels. Easier to build tanks than batteries. The price and resource requirements would not even be comparable. Pretty much hut vs space station

They don't and can't know. And they deliberately ignore the fact that most panels are manufactured in China which uses coal as the primary energy source, then shipped on freighters that are the no. 1 source of carbon emissions.

>>The trick with synthetic fuels is that you can take the carbon for them literally out of the atmosphere
>This is highly inefficient and extremely expensive.

Plants and algae do that with the help of the Sun, no one is suggesting separating CO2 and breaking it down.

>Synthetic fuels are made solely with the help of renewable energy. In a first stage, hydrogen is produced from water. Carbon is added to this to produce a liquid fuel. This carbon can be recycled from industrial processes or even captured from the air using filters. Combining CO2 and H2 then results in the synthetic fuel, which can be gasoline, diesel, gas, or even kerosene.

Each industrial process requires energy and cost.
I doubt this could ever be made cheap enough competitive with normal gasoline even, if you were pumping the last drop from under the Arctic Ocean.

You would need some kind of legislative intervention

>Present studies suggest that the fuel itself (excluding any excise duties) could cost between 1.00 and 1.40 euros a liter in the long run.
That's about $4.52/gallon, so the majority of you can see how expensive this is. $4.52 per gallon just to produce the fuel at a minimum just based on speculation, before tax, profits, and all the other shit that gets added on top.

And you say it's cheap?

>Synthetic fuels do not mean a choice between fuel tank and dinner plate, as biofuels do.
What did he mean by this?

>And if renewable energy is used, synthetic fuels can be produced without the volume limitations that can be expected in the case of biofuels because of factors such as the amount of land available.
So basically if limitations were hypothetically removed then there wouldn't be any limitations. No shit.

bio fuels are worse for the environment than burning straight petrol/diesel.

When you factor in the fresh water, arable land, fertilizers, pest/herb/fungi-icides, farm diesel, truck diesel, and processing energy consumed to make it.

the only exception is algae. since you can grow that in tanks and use city waste water.

>Not same person. In which part of the world?
Nowhere specific. It's a collection of metastudies that have been harmonised.
>The “universal” insolation value we used for harmonization was 1700 kWh/m^2yr which is representative of the average global insolation and has also been used for the insolation of Southern Europe.
>The results for the irradiation values of four other places (...) are reported in the supporting information to help give readers an idea of the effect it has on energy pay back time.

>how many years do they last?
The paper assumes 30 years, but that sounds a bit high to me (and they only use it for a minor point at the end). I'd guess 20-30 years, but it depends a lot on the environment.

>Does the calculation include shipping?
No.
>A cradle to gate system boundary was selected for the analysis because there is limited and widely varying data available for the distribution, operation, maintenance, and end of life management of PV systems. Transportation distances are often not modeled or explicitly reported in PV LCA studies and it would not have been possible to harmonize the data for different types of waste management such as disposal in landfill versus recycling. Some existing data for transportation and end of life management show that these stages do not contribute significantly to the life cycle energy demand [21–25].

>Do you happen to know the number for wind turbines?
No, but I'm sure there are similar metastudies out there for them.

>They don't and can't know.
Sure I can. You only have to master the difficult task of learning to read.

>And they deliberately ignore the fact that most panels are manufactured in China which uses coal as the primary energy source
The paper actually talks about energy pay back time, which is independent of the manufacturing energy source.

>then shipped on freighters that are the no. 1 source of carbon emissions.
Of which a minuscule % by mass is PV panels.

>energy pay back time
Carbon emissions only loosely correlate to energy production because it depends on the source.
>independent of the manufacturing energy source
How can you claim to know the carbon emissions without knowing the energy source?

wasn't biodiesel/reclaimed oil diesel already a big meme in the mid 00s?

all this shit sucks anyway, personal transport doesn't make up that big a fraction of emissions, and you get better savings by JUST FUCKING WALKING YOU FAT PIECE OF SHIT. enabling this by having better urban planning and fucking razing suburbs would probably do more to cut emissions than resorting to sci fi cars

seriously, just having people live closer to where they work, close enough that they can walk or bike, would cut out more emissions than having them ride in an electric car or using synthfuel or whatever

true, but it occurs naturally in water, I live somewhere where all our energy is hydro-electric and it's so good we even sell it to the yankees and our labrador slaves

Biofuels can be part of the regular crop rotation as they help the soil regain it's nutrients or some shit

Anyway it's all about investment. You have to understand that Exxon/Shell/"big oil" aren't oil companies, they're energy companies.

Oil is just what makes the most money. Renewable fuels are on the verge of being financially, politically and socially viable so it's just a matter of time.

What sort of communist wants to dictate where people can live and force people out of their cars? Are you Canadian?

It can be made from trees, sustainable forestry is easy as fuck

he's right though, suburbs and mcmansion communities are fucking atrocious and is a terribly inefficient use of land

better city planning doesn't mean you're forced out of your vehicles, it just means less traffic everywhere

Cities are atrocious and filled with deplorable people and criminals. Work is the only reason to ever go into actual cities. Go for a walk through Detroit/Malmo

Keked

this.

I live in the town of one of the main laboratories researching this tech, and it's come a long ways. It's my real hope to be driving a supercharged V8 muscle car when I'm 60. I think it's the only way we will still have that option.

>dat pic
it screams soyboy from every pixel, I'm impressed

You need carbon to make fuel.

If it's some algae it even consumes CO2 directly, to form organic molecules made of C.

If you made large surplus of fuel you could even have less CO2 than there was.

>Carbon emissions only loosely correlate to energy production because it depends on the source.
Yes, but the amount of carbon that the solar panel will offset ALSO depends on the carbon emissions of the energy grid. So long as the manufacturing energy grid and the grid the panels are installed on are somewhat similar, the carbon payback time will match the energy payback time. In reality it might be slightly better than that, as adding solar panels probably won't displace all other generation equally.

It's not ideal, but I'm not aware of a better method to estimate CO2 payback time.