UK's First Carbon Capture Plant Turns CO2 Into Jet Fuel (sky.com) 119
"The machines in the facility waft air towards a water-based solvent," reports the Times of London, "which carbon dioxide in the air dissolves into. An electrical current then separates those compounds from the solvent, creating a pure stream of CO2."
More details from Sky News: The UK's first-ever direct air capture plant has been turned on to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into jet fuel. The machine, developed by Mission Zero Technologies in partnership with the University of Sheffield, will run on solar power to recover 50 tonnes of CO2 from the air per year and turn it into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)...
Aviation accounts for about 2% of the world's emissions and Ihab Ahmed, research associate from the University of Sheffield, said the fuel has the capacity to massively reduce the impact of aviation on the environment — and is an important step towards the government's ambitious target to increase the use of SAF to at least 10% by 2030.
America opened its first carbon-capture facility in November in a warehouse in California. While the carbon isn't converted into sustainable air fuel, it can capture a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year/
More details from Sky News: The UK's first-ever direct air capture plant has been turned on to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into jet fuel. The machine, developed by Mission Zero Technologies in partnership with the University of Sheffield, will run on solar power to recover 50 tonnes of CO2 from the air per year and turn it into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)...
Aviation accounts for about 2% of the world's emissions and Ihab Ahmed, research associate from the University of Sheffield, said the fuel has the capacity to massively reduce the impact of aviation on the environment — and is an important step towards the government's ambitious target to increase the use of SAF to at least 10% by 2030.
America opened its first carbon-capture facility in November in a warehouse in California. While the carbon isn't converted into sustainable air fuel, it can capture a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year/
Pushing the problem forward (Score:2)
Effectively this just pushes the CO2 problem forward since the CO2 will still be emitted, it's just recycled once.
Just a Load of Greenwashing. Tax jet Fuel. (Score:2)
Yep. While a little bit better than just burning oil, it still is greenwashing, because it does not scale economically.
We must tax non-renewable jet fuel the same rate as car fuel.
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We must tax non-renewable jet fuel the same rate as car fuel.
That's fine, as long as at the point of taking the CO2 out of the atmosphere there's a equivalent subsidy which at the very least matches the amount of the taxation so that it's fair.
because it does not scale economically.
This is a technological problem. We are starting to have large amounts of excess energy because the primary cost of renewable energy systems, and to a large extent nuclear ones, is capital to set them up so it makes sense to run them continually. That means that the spare energy (sometimes at negative cost with a nuclear plant)
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Continuing after accidental
If plants for doing this can be made much better this becomes a strategic technology. Whoever knows how to do this best becomes the primary supplier of the world's hydrocarbons. Wind power started off as a niche specialist thing that only really got good after government subsidies. Wind is now, in the right places, the cheapest source of energy bar none. China is becoming a key supplier of wind turbines and can dominate the market, pushing out under-subsidised western companies. T
Re:Just a Load of Greenwashing. Tax jet Fuel. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lack of tax on Jet fuel compounds to the problem, because it removes all incentives to find a good solution, and excludes externalizes when burning oil in planes and all ground vehicles in airports....
Re:Just a Load of Greenwashing. Tax jet Fuel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many countries decline to tax jet fuel or even subsidize it, as a way to support their national airline.
This is a form of Lemon Socialism [wikipedia.org].
Countries without national airlines, such as America, also decline to tax jet fuel to prevent unfair competition from countries that do subsidize. So it is a race to the bottom and the climate is the ultimate victim.
Vicious cycle. (Score:3)
There are ways to brake this kind of vicious cycle.
For example, triple the tax when the aircraft goes or comes from a destination that does not tax fuel.
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There are ways to brake this kind of vicious cycle. For example, triple the tax when the aircraft goes or comes from a destination that does not tax fuel.
And then it's cheaper for tourists to go some place else instead.
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Not for long.
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The whole country is out of Superglue lately.
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With the WTO dead, just unilaterally exiting from international agreements preventing taxation and implementing border taxes to prevent your airlines becoming uncompetetive is easy for the US and probably doable for the EU (though even with all the climate change talk, they are far too good globalist lapdogs to do it, if the US doesn't do it first).
Will just need some earplugs for the wailing and screaming of economists.
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Many countries decline to tax jet fuel or even subsidize it, as a way to support their national airline.
How is "declining to tax" socialism? That makes no sense.
I looked for actual cash subsidies for jet fuel, this is what I found https://earth.org/aviation-sub... [earth.org]
"The most obvious subsidy is the general exemption of Value Added Tax (VAT) and the zero-tax policy on jet fuel for international flights in countries across the globe. Some countries like the UK, the USA, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico apply minimal tax burden for international flights. But most do not. In Europe, only seven countries apply taxes on in
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Many countries decline to tax jet fuel or even subsidize it, as a way to support their national airline.
How is "declining to tax" socialism? That makes no sense.
Well, it's what is called "corporate socialism" which is actually closer to fascism than real socialism. It's named like that because the zero taxation for the airlines is paid for by taxing other people. E.g. the airline dumps jet fuel residues and pollution over the area near the airport which causes health problems for the people there who then need government support for their medical bills or the social problems that arise from failing to pay those bills.
Taxes are the way that Rich people and corporati
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Many countries decline to tax jet fuel or even subsidize it, as a way to support their national airline.
How is "declining to tax" socialism? That makes no sense.
Well, it's what is called "corporate socialism" which is actually closer to fascism than real socialism. It's named like that because the zero taxation for the airlines is paid for by taxing other people. E.g. the airline dumps jet fuel residues and pollution over the area near the airport which causes health problems for the people there who then need government support for their medical bills or the social problems that arise from failing to pay those bills.
Taxes are the way that Rich people and corporations should be partially making up for the massive extra costs involved in maintaining them. Failing to tax the rich and corporations means that everyone else has to pay those costs, either in their health, destroyed property or directly in their own taxation.
Mussolini said: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” and the fact is that the way that airlines and other big companies get "corporate socialism" shows that the power of the state is merged with their own.
No tax on jet fuel is not the same as no tax on flights, passengers, or on airlines. As an example, see: https://onemileatatime.com/gui... [onemileatatime.com]
"The United Kingdom has the world’s highest taxes for airline passengers, known as the Air Passenger Duty (APD)."
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At net zero it's competing against liquid hydrogen, not fossil or bio-fuel.
It will still be a close race, but the economic competition at net zero will be more expensive than the current ones.
Re:Just a Load of Greenwashing. Tax jet Fuel. (Score:5, Insightful)
At net zero it's competing against liquid hydrogen, not fossil or bio-fuel.
Synthetic jet fuel is a drop-in replacement that can work with existing aircraft and can be mixed with current fossil fuels.
Liquid hydrogen will require new planes, new fuel trucks, and new infrastructure. And it will have to happen everywhere at the same time.
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It would happen at a couple major hubs first, due to fixed schedule flights it's not that hard to dedicate planes to a subset of airports.
Liquid hydrogen is ridiculously expensive, as is synthetic fuel. It's a battle of ridiculous solutions.
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Synthetic jet fuel is a drop-in replacement that can work with existing aircraft and can be mixed with current fossil fuels.
Liquid hydrogen will require new planes, new fuel trucks, and new infrastructure. And it will have to happen everywhere at the same time.
Synthetic gasoline would be a drop in replacement for fossil fuels. EVs require new cars, new factories, new mines, new charging infrastructure. Since we are spending effectively trillions globally on this I'm not sure the former would not have been a better plan.
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Synthetic gasoline would be a drop in replacement for fossil fuels.
That's true. The thing is, battery vehicles are possible. Battery-powered aircraft are impossible, except in some niche scenarios like air taxis, or very short hops (like SEA-PDX or IAD-PHL).
Hydrogen is a boondoggle. (Score:2)
Nothing is competing with it as it has ZERO chance of implementation or scaling.
Its only role is as feedstock for making fuel out of atmospheric CO2. It will never be used as fuel directly.
Storage alone would basically be like an attempt to start producing airplanes out of lead as fuel tanks would have to be pressurized, thicker and heavier.
While entire fleets would need replacing every few years due to hydrogen-induced cracking.
Hydrogen is a boondoggle.
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Liquid hydrogen isn't stored under significant pressure, don't want it going supercritical.
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CO2 has always been emitted (we literally breathe it out), and has always been recycled (by plant growth etc). The only problem with it is that the emission rate exceeds the recycling rate, so what we need is balance.
If we stop emitting CO2 entirely, we will have an imbalance in the opposite direction which will cause its own catastrophic problems.
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Erh... if we stopped emitting CO2 entirely, we'd have to cease all animal life on this planet.
What's meant with the avoidance of CO2 emission is the emission that we put out on top of what animals on this planet exhale. And that wouldn't exactly produce a catastrophic imbalance, it's how it used to be until about 300 years ago.
And yes, I didn't forget about our ability to cause fires, but let's face it, compared to the fires that occur naturally, that didn't put a considerable dent into the CO2 budget of th
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Erh... if we stopped emitting CO2 entirely, we'd have to cease all animal life on this planet.
Lol... Are you seriously suggesting that life on this planet was not possible before we humans showed up and started emitting carbon?
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You are aware that humans are animals, yes?
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No, he is saying that it would take extincting animal life, including ourselves, to stop emitting CO2 entirely.
Clearly a hyperbolic suggestion.
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Erh... if we stopped emitting CO2 entirely, we'd have to cease all animal life on this planet.
Plants emit CO2 and breathe like we do too.
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True, but there's more CO2 absorbed than expelled in total.
When all fossil fuels have been replaced... (Score:2)
....then we can switch this to locking the carbon up in some permanent form - probably as plastics. And if fossil-fuel derived plastics have been phased out - well, mission accomplished, really. Oil stays underground, where it belongs.
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It could be recycled many times. capture, turn into jet fuel => burn => capture again...
I would be more worried about running the capture plant on renewables and the ecological footprint of building the plant.
Re: Pushing the problem forward (Score:2)
My thought too. Why would you capture pollution and turn it into more pollution? More theatre I guess.
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My thought too. Why would you capture pollution and turn it into more pollution? More theatre I guess.
Why would you wash your dishes if you only plan to make them dirty again?
This isn't "theater" it is closing the carbon loop on transportation fuels. We need to have air transport to maintain our economy, and we need to reach net zero carbon emissions to maintain our environment. With synthesized aircraft fuels we close the carbon loop while we keep flying aircraft.
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Effectively this just pushes the CO2 problem forward since the CO2 will still be emitted, it's just recycled once.
Yes but it doesn't make it all bad. It could be some time until we develop a very long range electric airplane which means it should be used to make jet fuel until we can avoid it entirely. However, to ensure we continue pushing on that development, there needs to be a heavy tax on jet fuel. Sadly, the Tories aren't about to even allow anything of the sort let alone implement it.
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That is an incredibly narrow-minded way of looking at things. The only thing that should concern you is the economic viability of those carbon capture strategy. If it's cost-competitive with fuel derived from petroleum then it's good to go. If it isn't then it needs some work, but it's a step in the right direction.
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This not those, not sure how that made it out of the keyboard. Meh.
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Not necessarily.
If they can increase efficiencies, it means we can make jet fuel as sustainable as firewood - we're taking carbon out of the air to make fuel, and then use that fuel to put the carbon back in the air.
If this can reduce oil drilling, which introduces NEW carbon into the system, then it's a win. And that's probably the best we can do right now without reinventing the entire aviation industry.
Also, if it works for airplanes, it should also work for ground transportation fuels.
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Not just that, but it took energy to do it. Energy is not free.
Capture & release (Score:2)
Re:Capture & release (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, now the UK can recycle 50 tonnes of its CO2 emissions. Only 331,499,450 tonnes more to go, according to 2022 emissions figures. They only have to build another 632,999 of these plants to recycle as much as they emit.
This is the first one. In other words, a prototype. Obviously if this works out, future ones will be much much bigger. Assuming that the future plant is three orders of magnitude bigger, which might be a stretch, but until we try building lots of them we won't know what's optimum, then that means about 6000 plants, which is not really much.
How much does it cost to run? How much of a drain on the UK's energy resources is it?
The UK has huge amounts of potential wind energy, especially offshore off Scotland. The a small problem with that is there is some seasonality, e.g. winter storms cause some of the turbines to shut down so extra turbines are built to keep the supply stable. Creating hydrocarbons during high production periods using the spare energy and then using them in some of the old gas power plants when there's a reduction or when there's a peak in demand could actually supplement the UK's energy resources.
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So you're saying that you don't expect there to be any refinement to this technique that could result in additional capacity or scale? That the first shot is the best this is ever going to get?
Why are you arguing so hard that the present state-of-the-art is as good as it will ever be on an emerging proof-of-concept solution that only the people working at that company have had a chance to look at and improve? That's painfully stupid.
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Well I'm glad that you looked over all their tech and decided for them from your incredibly objective view that there's no opportunity to scale this whatsoever after a complete and detailed analysis. /s if it wasn't clear.
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Creating hydrocarbons during high production periods using the spare energy and then using them in some of the old gas power plants when there's a reduction or when there's a peak in demand could actually supplement the UK's energy resources.
Using the resulting fuel to generate power would be a lot like liquid battery that works in a traditional power plant with few to no modifications. This wouldn't permanently remove the carbon from the atmosphere but it might make a transition to fully renewables easier.
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Using the resulting fuel to generate power would be a lot like liquid battery that works in a traditional power plant with few to no modifications. This wouldn't permanently remove the carbon from the atmosphere but it might make a transition to fully renewables easier.
This might actually be one of the few ways to get to permanent removal. Initially you obviously build all such plants next to producers of CO2. If and when they get to be sufficiently efficient that the fuel is cheaper than mining for or drilling for fossil fuels and transporting them to where you want to sell them, then they will start to be built on mass scale and it would be worth doing CO2 extraction from the air for some of them. Once those plants are built, if you fill up the fuel storage then you mig
Re: Capture & release (Score:2)
You are advocating that if the first prototype doesn't solve 100% of the problem immediately, then it's a waste of time and effort.
Reality doesn't agree with this ridiculous theory. You have a lot to learn about technology and development.
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In the meantime, we're wasting precious resources that could otherwise be used to actually reduce the UK's CO2 emissions in substantial
Re: Capture & release (Score:2)
Now you're advocating that we should only use existing technologies to address problems and not "waste resources" on developing new solutions.
You have even more to learn about technology and development than I previously thought.
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Re: Capture & release (Score:2)
So you also believe that if one completely unrelated project fails to deliver a benefit, then all development in the entire sector should be abandoned.
I think you need a basic education in logic and reason now.
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Re: Capture & release (Score:2)
So you further believe that having your original claims reduced to the point that your only counterargument is that the project is "bullshit" is an indicator of your wisdom.
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Re: Capture & release (Score:2)
And we're back to my third point, it seems you are both out of rationalizations and ways to move the goalposts any further.
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Because I'm sure the guys that put this together have said "well that's that, problem solved!" and have no intention to increase efficiency or scale at all.
Sure glad you're here to tell us that the proof of concept isn't going to solve climate change in one flick of the switch.
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Fifty whole tons? (Score:2)
Wow - and a single 737 (the smaller one) carries a fuel load of over 16 tons.
So this entire plant could supply fuel for three planes. Once.
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Wow - and a single 737 (the smaller one) carries a fuel load of over 16 tons.
So this entire plant could supply fuel for three planes. Once.
No. This is wrong.
50 tonnes of CO2 is 18 tonnes of carbon. The other 32 tonnes are oxygen.
The 18 tonnes of carbon are then hydrogenated to produce 21 tonnes of jet fuel.
So it produces enough fuel each year for ONE 737 flight.
But it is a university research project, so how much fuel it produces isn't the point.
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Do you expect every unscaled proof-of-concept research build to take care of global scale issues all at once, the first time? I guess it's lucky that this kind of thinking isn't being deployed at scale among people trying to solve big problems, as nothing would ever be solved in any context.
Fun student project (Score:2)
Then you consider a single B-777ER can take 181,283 Ltrs (47,890 US Gal) on board.
How many of these installations do we need? 6 years of such capturing installations per flight.
Capturing CO2 is a greenwashing scam.
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How many of these installations do we need?
It is a university research project, not a commercial facility.
Capturing CO2 is a greenwashing scam.
Yes, of course, but someday it will make sense, so it makes sense to do some research.
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Yep. Which is exactly what should be happening right now - research for the future, so once 'green' energy is sufficiently plentiful we can use excess power to start reversing the damage we've been doing over the past century and a half.
It'd be kind of silly to wait until then to start the research phase when there is no need to do so.
The only real problem is that this kind of effort - which is in immediate practical terms a joke - is used by polluters for PR to convince us they aren't so bad and shouldn't
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Right. But you still have to ask the question -- "If this technology looks like it might be promising, how many of these facilities will we need?"
This is a tiny research project. An actual facility will be much, much bigger.
If the goal is to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it, the best location is next to depleted gas and oil fields. For millions of years, they held CH4, which is far more mobile than CO2. So the CO2 can be pumped down-hole and will stay there.
If the goal is to synthesize jet fuel, the best location is where electricity is cheapest. Perhaps co-located with a wind farm or nuclear power plant.
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You assume, like others, that each facility cannot be further scaled, and the only way to scale this solution is mass parallelism.
This seems like a ridiculous assertion on it's face without some form of fact-based evidence to back it up.
Why would you build a proof of concept as large as a production installation would be intended? If your proof-of-concept fails, you've wasted an inordinate amount of resources trying to shoot the moon in one hand.
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The number is not the interesting question. That is how much electricity would this take. My guess it that the answer would be probably about our current renewable output, so quite a lot.
After that, it is how much space does chemical side of the process take (as opposed to the electricity), and is the equipment cheap enough to be run intermittently. If the answer to the last is yes, then, there would already be a market for this, placed at onshore substations for our wind farms, which would really reduce th
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Why do you think nobody would try to scale this technique up, now that it's been proven to work?
Do you know of some part of the process that absolutely cannot scale, thus providing your ridiculous opinion that ignores the history of literally every technological advancement ever made?
For example, the Wright Brothers didn't start with an SR-71, now did they? And when we started playing with wireless communications, the iPhone 15 wasn't the first prototype device, was it?
Sometimes it takes a while to turn a
Yet another greenwashing stunt (Score:2)
Sorry, still not convinced that planes aren't the big polluters. Your whole effort created enough fuel to fuel up three small commercial airliners. That's what, the hourly takeoff frequency of some backwater airport nobody gives a fuck about? Or a minute in Atlanta.
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Sorry, still not convinced that planes aren't the big polluters.
They're just not. Americans just driving their cars around is about the same 2% of worldwide emissions. But Aviation spans the whole world, not just 1 country.
Aviation accounts for about 2.5% of CO2 emissions, road transport accounts for 15% of total CO2 emissions.
... so on average Americans driving their cars around emit approximately 6 times as much CO2 as Americans flying around their country.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org]
https://www.iea.org/data-and-s... [iea.org]
Cars are banned (Score:2)
>> so on average Americans driving their cars around emit approximately 6 times as much CO2 as Americans flying around their country.
Cars are banned now in USA, only trucks are allowed on the highway.
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>> so on average Americans driving their cars around emit approximately 6 times as much CO2 as Americans flying around their country. Cars are banned now in USA, only trucks are allowed on the highway.
I amend my previous statement:
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And what portion of worldwide transportation is done by planes for these 2% emissions? How many people compared to cars, how much freight compared to ships?
Don't forget the NOx and particulate pollution (Score:3)
CO2 is not the only problem of burning jet fuel in airliners.
Using SAF does not solve the NOx and particulate pollution from jet engines.
Burning H2 in aircraft engines also needs to take care about NOx pollution.
The only clean solution is to use electric motor based propulsion. The energy source could be a H2 fuel cell and batteries.
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The only clean solution is to use electric motor based propulsion. The energy source could be a H2 fuel cell and batteries.
Aren't fuel cells pretty much inherently too heavy for aviation use? Obviously it could be a small fuel cell for cruising and battery trickle charging and batteries for take off and landing, but is there a route to making this really practical for large passenger aircraft?
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Lion batteries: 270 wh/kg .78kg = 9800 wh / 780 gram vs 270 wh / 1000 grams or 550 wh / 1000g for solid state.
Solid state: 2x lion
Jet fuel: 9.8 kWh/liter (9800 wh/liter)
A liter of jet fuel is 780g =
https://dragonflyenergy.com/wh... [dragonflyenergy.com].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Batteries are way way way heavier than jet fuel per energy unit.
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>> heavier than jet fuel per energy unit.
Wrong consideration. Plane combustion engines are wasting 60 to 80% of the input energy.
When most of the energy just heats up birds, the correct question is :
"how much thrust per weight" can this achieve, accounting for the complete propulsion system, not only the fuel weight.....
And there, the gap is probably less than 15-30x today.
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Ok, I'm just sharing numbers from my own research I did to answer my own curiosity.
If we take your worst case 80% waste figure for jet fuel then 5x more energy/weight unit for fuel still tips extremely heavily in favor of jet fuel.
If you want to include the weight of the propulsion system then you need to also include the weight of the electrical propulsion system used in place of the jet engine.
Also, once the fuel is burned the weight of the plane drops but in a battery system it's always the full weight e
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The gap is around 20x or so. That is, jet fuel has a 20x distance advantage over pure electric.from a weight/volume perspective.
For road vehicles, the gap is between 2-5x.
The difference comes from the fact road vehicles rarely need lots of power all at once, but they need engines able to provide that power when it's needed most.
You may need say, 80hp just to get the vehicle moving, but once you're at speed, you only need 10hp or so to keep going at speed. It is this reason why road vehicles don't need as mu
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Batteries are way way way heavier than jet fuel per energy unit.
Absolutely, let me defend the grandparent for a second, though, even though I'm not convinced.
In terms of energy density, hydrogen is better still than jet fuel. That means that, if we get the same energy from Hydrogen we should have weight to spare which we can use for our fuel cells and batteries. Fuel cells and electric motors can also be pretty efficient, which should help. The batteries you would use are very small (look up "series hybrid" or motor driven "range extender electric vehicles" and are real
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To be clear, I was not attacking. My intent was just to provide the numbers in answer to his general statement.
I didn't know and was curious so I was sharing my research.
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In terms of energy density, hydrogen is better still than jet fuel.
While this is true by weight , it's not true by volume unless the hydrogen gas is compressed/cooled to a liquid.
And, of course, liquid hydrogen is decidedly non-trivial to transport and store, never mind releasing the stored energy at a rate sufficient to power an aircraft... at least, without destroying the aircraft in the process, or putting it into orbit.
Just the parasitic weight of the liquid hydrogen storage, fuel-cell and associated plumbing would make aviation use not commercially viable any time
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Yeah, sure. But (continuing my devils advocate stance) these are technical problems that we are getting better at and there have already been demonstrators [wikipedia.org] so this might just be in the range of what's possible. Airbus is taking them seriously enough to have research projects and prototype designs [airbus.com]. I still think renewable hydrocarbons are likely to be an easier win but I'm not 100% sure.
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Yeah, sure. But (continuing my devils advocate stance) these are technical problems that we are getting better at and there have already been demonstrators [wikipedia.org] so this might just be in the range of what's possible.
Fair point.
Airbus is taking them seriously enough to have research projects and prototype designs [airbus.com].
Again fair, although the "prototype designs" could be more correctly termed "designs for prototypes" - there's nothing even close to flyable yet. Further, there are substantial tax-breaks for this sort of R&D in the EU, so they'd be fools to themselves not to be doing this anyway, irrespective of when - or if - it bears fruit. Not quite corporate green-washing, but...
I still think renewable hydrocarbons are likely to be an easier win but I'm not 100% sure.
If production can be done at scale, you're right - not least because all the handling, transport and storage issues were sol
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Batteries are way way way heavier than jet fuel per energy unit.
It's even worse than that for batteries. Planes get lighter as the fuel is used up. You'd still have to lug around the empty batteries for the whole flight.
Essentially it's very bad greenwashing (Score:5, Interesting)
It wastes valuable energy to put forward a questionable idea.
At best, this is carbon-neutral, but only if we have an excess of renewable energy. And that excess would need to be huge.
The sad thing about this is that for many applications of jet-aeroplanes, we already have much better solutions. For example you can put special kinds of cars onto roads made from 2 long "rails" which are grounded. An overhead wire can then provide electricity to that special car. It's a solution so comparatively trivial that even Germany has implemented it!
For the rest I can only say: Tax jet fuel! Seriously why is jet fuel not taxed?
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For the rest I can only say: Tax jet fuel! Seriously why is jet fuel not taxed?
Politics, it's a handy way to subsidise the airline industry.
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For example you can put special kinds of cars onto roads made from 2 long "rails" which are grounded. An overhead wire can then provide electricity to that special car.
You mean like the bumper cars at the county fair?
It's a solution so comparatively trivial that even Germany has implemented it!
Germany has closed their nuclear power plants and replaced the lost electrical generation capacity by burning brown coal, so I'm not sure we should be taking any advice on energy policy from Germany. I guess even a stopped clock can find an acorn, and a blind pig can tell the right time twice per day, but that's hardly what we should use as examples of what makes a good idea. Germany is also pushing over windmills to get to more coal, do we follow them on t
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It wastes valuable energy to put forward a questionable idea.
My thoughts exactly. Let's separate what they're doing: removing CO2 from the air and converting CO2 into jet fuel. We can do either independently. Specifically, if you want to create jet fuel from CO2, you don't have to use CO2 captured from the air.
At best, this is carbon-neutral, but only if we have an excess of renewable energy.
Exactly. Creating jet fuel from CO2 will most likely be less efficient than creating it from petroleum. Net-net, we'd probably be better off building an extra carbon capture plant and keep making jet fuel the conventional way.
For the rest I can only say: Tax jet fuel! Seriously why is jet fuel not taxed?
Well, that's the argument for a car
Nope. (Score:5, Informative)
>> There is no excess of renewable energy.
Incorrect. For example, in Denmark, electricity prices go to zero regularly for the consumer (negative for utilities).
Many other nations will achieve this in a few years.
>>There never will be.
Nope. It will generalize very quickly. Together with huge scale storage, and better consumer management of grids.
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You are talking about storage. For that we already have a multitude of better ways to do it. For example we have batteries and heat for short term storage, we can use hydrogen for long term storage. Creating Jet Fuel essentially wastes most of the energy with no feasible way to get it back to the grid. This is just as bad as heating up resistors outside, but much more expensive and with some minor benefit for billionaires who can continue flying their aeroplanes.
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Incorrect. For example, in Denmark, electricity prices go to zero regularly for the consumer (negative for utilities).
Many other nations will achieve this in a few years.
Hello from Australia, where negative prices are increasing common, to the point where some areas need to be forced to disconnect from the grid because there is too much rooftop generation and it risks destabilising the grid. It vexes home owners because they can't earn feed in tariff in these cases.
CO2 is not the real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, it isn't, at least not directly. It just happens to be what people have focused on. The urgency, the 1.5 degree targets - those are mostly nonsense - counterproductive attempts to get people to take environmental concerns seriously. CO2 is, if anything, a secondary product of the primary problem: land use. Massive deforestation in places like the Amazon. Monoculture "forests" of fast-growing pines, continually removed and turned into wood pellets. Misguided agriculture, like the corn-to-ethanol subsidies in the US. Etc. etc.. All of those are not only wasteful, but actively damaging to nature.
The primary problem is that humans are using way too much land, and thereby throwing nature out of balance. Let nature return, and lots of CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere.
And that problem itself has an underlying cause: there are too many people. Most first-world countries have are shrinking (not counting immigration). [populationpyramid.net]Second-world countries are mostly stable [populationpyramid.net]. Have you seen the population pyramid for Africa? [populationpyramid.net] If that last diagram doesn't scare you, it certainly should.
The long-term solution for climate is population reduction. Reduce population and return land to nature. Almost incidentally, this will also reduce CO2 emissions.
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Make Room! Make Room! written in 1966 by Harry Harrison , envisaged an Earth of 1999 with a population of 7 billion
The real population in 1999 was 6 billion .... but is now 8 billion ... and still his predictions have not come true
Well, there ya go! (Score:2)
A Boeing 747 tanks hold 193 tonnes of fuel. Let's go to volume. That's around 216,847 liters of fuel.
50 tonnes is 6250 liters of fuel.
Our 747 burns through about 4 liters of fuel per second. Sooo, this miracle will power a 747 for about 260 minutes. Somewhere around 4 hours.
Point is, let's say we scale this up, and completely fuel air travel with CO2 derived fuel. Aside from the fact that we're just removi
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But Boeing 747s are no longer being manufactured. Soon, all planes will be electric and we won't even need jet fuel.
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But Boeing 747s are no longer being manufactured. Soon, all planes will be electric and we won't even need jet fuel.
There's an update on that. Boeing is planning on turning the 747 into a two engine model. At this point, it looks like a go for that. The two engine model will get better fuel milage, and part of the reason is also that long haul ocean crossing flights are not requiring the 3 or four engine setups any more. The 747 was used as an example that everyone knows and is easy to reference.
All that being said, any jet plane gobbles fuel. This 50 tonnes per year isn't enough to put a dent in fuel useage, the needs
Sustainable? (Score:2)
My Main Question... (Score:2)
Do the math.... (Score:2)
So if you run this plant for 2.5 years, you can fly a 747 across the ocean!