

Audi is making fuel from air and water - skreech
http://qz.com/392138/audi-is-making-fuel-from-air-and-water/

======
chrisb
Diesel is essentially a hydrocarbon, so water and CO2 can provide all the
elements required.

The normal problem is that the cheapest/easiest source of hydrogen is from the
stream reformation[1] of natural gas, but here there are using high
temperature electrolysis[2] of water powered from green energy (they don't
seem to specify exactly what this is).

The CO2 comes from atmospheric capture using a device from Climeworks[3], and
biogas. This is CO2 neutral as all this CO2 is either in the atmosphere
already, or will naturally end up in the atmosphere.

This is of course a very small-scale pilot by Audi, but I've often thought
that using hydrocarbon fuels manufactured from atmospheric CO2 and water might
be an excellent solution for transport and space heating. We have all the
infrastructure for distributing these fuels, they are manufacturable using
something like solar energy, and can be easily stored and transported
themselves.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming)
[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
temperature_electrolysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
temperature_electrolysis) [3]
[http://www.climeworks.com/](http://www.climeworks.com/)

