SpaceX Alums Find Traction On Earth With Their Mars-Inspired CO2-To-Fuel Tech (techcrunch.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth. Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they're building them to replace natural gas that's pumped from underground. Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic's CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.
"We think that's a big missing piece in the energy mix right now," said Mattison, the startup's CEO. "Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution." At commercial scale, the company's reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It's a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn't necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. "Those are generally going toward electrification," he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn't ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. "Stay tuned," he said. General Galactic plans to deploy its first modules next year. The startup "hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen," notes TechCrunch.
"We think that's a big missing piece in the energy mix right now," said Mattison, the startup's CEO. "Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution." At commercial scale, the company's reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It's a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today. General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn't necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. "Those are generally going toward electrification," he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing. The company isn't ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. "Stay tuned," he said. General Galactic plans to deploy its first modules next year. The startup "hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen," notes TechCrunch.
Alums? (Score:2)
"An alum is a type of chemical compound, usually a hydrated double sulfate salt of aluminium with the general formula XAl 12 H O, such that X is a monovalent cation such as potassium or ammonium."
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They also mistakenly used plural.
Commercial sabatier(-like) reactors? (Score:3)
I'm assuming what they've done is pitch a terrestrial application for sabatier reactors (or the functional equivalent) in order to get the benefit of volume production and a diversified customer base (no more waiting for the next Congressional budget fight to find out if your project has been cut or has continued funding).
That one of their customers might be SpaceX at some point (for terrestrial/mars usage of Starship/Heavy Booster) is incidental.
This might make an interesting alternative to building power line infrastructure for solar farms (or nuclear plants) - build a methane plant instead and feed it directly to a feedstock manufacturing plant colocated with the solar farm.
If you then co-locate a natural gas storage/liquefaction plant, plus a conventional gas fired electrical plant (the CO2 output of which becomes an input for the methane reactor...), that gives you quite a bit of redundancy. Can't wait to try and set this combo up in the next iteration of Sim City...
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If you then co-locate a natural gas storage/liquefaction plant, plus a conventional gas-fired electrical plant (the CO2 output of which becomes an input for the methane reactor...)
Unfortunately, the USPTO refuses to issue patents for perpetual motion machines.
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"Unfortunately, the USPTO refuses to issue patents for perpetual motion machines."
Maybe that will change under the new administration. I'd guess some of those close to Trump don't believe in the laws of thermodynamics.
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What other s
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Especially if any emissions created in the process are fed back into the system, supplemented with atmospheric CO2.
If you're constantly inputting energy from solar, and more CO2 from atmosphere, it can hardly be called a perpetual motion machine.
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It's not perpetual motion if you occasionally add some solar energy to the mix. That's not to say that I think this could work sustainably. I suspect the CO2-methane manufacturing process will be energy intensive enough to make it unviable, but still an interesting idea. Especially if efficiency/cost is not as much a concern (read: Mars, Antarctica, etc.)
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build a methane plant instead and feed it directly to a feedstock manufacturing plant colocated with the solar farm.
Or perhaps use the methane for aviation. Aviation is one of the few applications that requires a hydrocarbon based source of energy.
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Agricultural operations commonly have a pretty sizable electrical service, to run irrigation systems and whatnot.
Instead of making fuel on site, it makes a lot more sense to ship the power to some other location to do it, so that you don't need so many fuel trucks driving through ag country.
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If you then co-locate a natural gas storage/liquefaction plant, plus a conventional gas fired electrical plant (the CO2 output of which becomes an input for the methane reactor...), that gives you quite a bit of redundancy.
I'm not sure burning methane to generate energy + CO2 which you capture and then convert back into methane makes sense. That would just be using methane as a storage mechanism for energy generated some other way (e.g. solar). That's fine, but it seems likely to be a lot less efficient than other energy storage mechanisms.
Creating methane from energy plus atmospheric CO2, or CO2 captured from some other industrial process, might make a lot of sense, though. That methane could then be piped elsewhere to be
2,000L of Methane is 1.4kg (Score:1)
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It won't go anywhere anyway because it's a completely stupid concept.
Use energy to make methane and then use the methane to make ... energy ... with a 30% round-trip efficiency.
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Leaving out a key factor which is consuming our plentiful excess of CO2 which is an important point of it.
When you have no fuel costs...efficiencies matter far less than they do normally; something people just aren't that familiar with since every energy system since the stone age has required on going fuel inputs. Here, it's just a bigger infrastructure one time build out to cover expected the losses.
Now, whether it *actually* results in even marginally net zero climate impacts is definitely not a given.
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When you have no fuel costs...
This process isn't powered by pixie dust.
When your efficiency is 30% just to get back where you started, your fuel costs triple.
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Renewables have no 'fuel' costs generally - just infrastructure. If it's an electric process it can be powered entirely w/o 'fuel'.
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CO2 is in excess, but it is only plentiful at the moment due to having lots of fossil powerplants to capture it from.
At net zero getting a lot of CO2 is a lot harder.
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I doubt that. 450 ppm vs 300 ppm is a rounding error in terms of concentrations; the effects on climate being significantly different obviously.
Have anything to prove that?
Regardless, they are siting their facilities at CO2 producing plants to have better concentrations to work with. I have my doubts it will work in the long term but it's an interesting idea in any event.
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"they are siting their facilities at CO2 producing plants to have better concentrations to work with"
That was my point ... those will mostly disappear at net zero. Synthetic fuel will be burned in mobile applications or small sites, where CO2 capture is not feasible, everything large will be electrified or running on hydrogen (assuming for a moment we can get to net zero with civilization intact).
Direct air capture or ocean capture will be a lot more expensive than catching CO2 at a fossil fuel smoke stack.
Re:2,000L of Methane is 1.4kg (Score:5, Insightful)
You use solar/wind/whatever flavor green energy you want to make synfuels. It's not a new concept. The idea being that methane (or some alkane) is cheaper and easier to transport than hydrogen, and will work in existing vehicles.
energy storage (Score:2)
Yes, on Earth, this should be considered an energy storage solution.
And yes, hydrogen is an alternative. Another one is ammonia.
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If your splitting hairs, methane technically is hydrogen. The carbon seems to act as a catalyst to store said hydrogen. But its not the carbon thats burning. My only concern is that methane that leaks into atmosphere is significantly more of a greenhouse gas than co2. They would have to leakproof the shit out of this system and inspect it for methane leaks nearly daily.
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Its probably not going to leak in vast quantities. That methane is money for the producer. And sorry but you're being pedantic otherwise. The carbon bond makes it much easier to liquify and store/transport than simple H2. Also as I already mentioned, CH4 can be used as a precursor for alkane synthesis, producing larger alkanes (such as octane) that are also much easier to store/transport than H2.
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> Use energy to make methane and then use the methane to make ... energy ... with a 30% round-trip efficiency.
It's easier than towing an acre of PV panels behind your car at night.
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Cool. Now do oil refineries which essentially use energy to turn oil into highly volatile petroleum distillates to make... energy.
Why is that fine, but this isn't?
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Math.
Oil starts with more energy that the products, so you've used a small part of the stored energy to modify the rest.
Similarly, you can use 30% of the energy to coal to covert the rest of it to jet fuel. 100,000 BTU of coal in, 70,000 BTU of jet fuel out.
With this idea you take CO2, add 100,000 BTU of energy (from somewhere) to get some quantity of methane, then burn that to get 30,000 BTU of energy out. Not very useful. Now if you need methane, say to make ammonia, and have infinite PV available then yo
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The whether a fact is mentioned usually is an indicator of whether an informed reader or investor would like the answer.
When talking about pollution solutions and space.. (Score:2)
Things can get quite zeonic, quite fast.
Terraform Industries (Score:2)
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Really liking Terraform's corporate webpage
Cheap Electricity (Score:2)
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This is where being able to turn CO2 into a fuel comes in handy. If one can collect more fuel than batteries, even with a 30% loss, this is a lot better than just having the electricity not be used.
However, I wish there were a better fuel than methane. Methane is corrosive, and not good for mechanical parts. It would be nice if it would be turned into something like propane, isopropyl alcohol, gasoline, or diesel, which are being done, and VW/Audi already has synthetic gasoline being worked on. Syntheti
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Theres a big push for sea faring vessels like cruise ships and container ships to switch to LNG. The big concern would be methane leaks given its crazy ability to trap heat. I could see a system where LNG became the fuel for ships, backup generators, and aircraft while everything else operates on electricity. Taking it from co2 in atmo would likely make it more carbon neutral than fracking.
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Yeah right (Score:3)
I'm guessing you're too young to remember the whole "too cheap to meter" promotion that was done for nuclear power back in the day.
If you think companies will pay to install solar cells as well as paying for/renting the land and maintenance costs then charge their customers near zero you're living on another planet so far away even Elon hasn't thought of visiting it yet.
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It will get stored. People are installing batteries so they can use energy collected during the day at night.
It's really a social issue. People who can't install solar because they don't have anywhere for it, and people who can't afford it, will lose out. Everyone else will end up generating much of the energy they use themselves, at ever falling cost.
artisan bespoke molecules (Score:2)
We don't need more methane. (Score:1)
Methane doesn’t liquify until -258 degrees F, and it’s a potent greenhouse gas, 80-times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Leaky natural gas infrastructure is suspected to be a significant contributor to climate change. Unless General Galactic can all but eliminate leaks at the point of production and downstream, dependence on methane could undermine its carbon neutral claims.
Old News (Score:2)
I see trucks full of portable methane generators [istockphoto.com] every day!