

$1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions? - binarymax
http://www.gizmag.com/breakthrough-promises-150-per-gallon-synthetic-gasoline-with-no-carbon-emissions/17687/

======
jacquesm
There have been so many articles about innovations in the energy sector that
went absolutely nowhere in practice but that were announced with great fanfare
and media coverage that for me the bar has been raised to the point where I'll
literally believe it when I can buy it and not a day before.

Solar cells with fantastic properties and prices, windmills that produce more
power than there is in the wind using configurations that have been tried long
ago and discarded for very good reasons, magical conversion processes taking
'ordinary household substances' (to lift a phrase from FightClub) and turning
them in to gasoline at lower-than-current-pump prices and on and on. Cars can
be made to run on just about anything, almost anything containing carbon can
be converted in to petroleum and by extension to its derivatives. That does
not mean the process is either efficient, cheap, non-polluting, safe or even
feasible in bulk.

These announcements happen with a frequency of about one per month (what was
one of the hypes last year again? Solar Cells from human hair ???) never to be
heard from again.

You can safely put this right next to the 'cure for cancer', 'a cure for
aids', 'free unlimited energy' and a whole bunch of other things that humanity
would very much like to have. If it's really that good and applicable it'll be
on the shelves and someone will be raking in money hand over fist, they won't
be talking about, they'll be selling it.

~~~
stonemetal
I think my favorite technology that never was is the sunflower. It was a
sterling engine with mirrors for solar concentration.

~~~
jacquesm
I spent some time improving on that concept using a stationary receiver:

<http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/concentrator/>

One of the most fun projects I did back in those days.

I still have the Stirling engine :) (a tiny one, store bought)

I thought that having the Stirling engines on a mobile parabolic mount was a
design weakness and figured out a way to do it better.

------
samatman
Did some digging around to figure out what's actually going on here; my
background as a chemist includes some time working in biofuels.

This technology is micron-sized beads of ammonia borane encapsulated in
various plastics. So far, they've figured out how to store hydrogen and
release it at least modestly safely. They're working on varying the plastics
so that they can recharge the beads with hydrogen; so far nothing they can
demonstrate.

Problems: they can't recharge it, yet, it would be hella toxic if it caught on
fire, and you'd have to handle it using powders-handling equipment. They gloss
over this, saying it's "like a liquid", but it isn't; in particular powders
are vulnerable to static charge, which in the case of metal hydrides wrapped
in jellied gasoline is a Bad Thing.

That, and it's a hydrogen delivery mechanism, making it a chemical battery,
not a fuel per se. One still needs to make the hydrogen.

This research, IMHO, is more likely to lead to better batteries than to a
replacement internal combustion fuel for gasoline engines.

~~~
jessriedel
Could you let me know if I'm thinking about this correctly? My understanding
is that...

1\. Most battery technologies use hydrogen as the fundamental energy storer.
The low energy state is Xx H_N, where Xx is some vehicle molecule, and the
high energy state is Xx H_( _N-n_ ) + _n_ H. Energy is stored in the battery
by converting from the former to the latter, and it is released by doing the
opposite.

2\. One of the primary challenges of making a feasible battery is that the _n_
hydrogen molecules form into hydrogen gas, which is bulky. To fit the hydrogen
into a reasonable volume, it must be either compressed to very high
temperature, cooled to very low temperature, or attached to a carrier
molecule.

3\. This technology seeks to solve the problem by putting the hydrogen in
molecules of ammonia borane, H_3 N B H_3.

Is any of that right? What is the purpose of the plastic encapsulation?

~~~
samatman
Not exactly. The basic currency of batteries is the electron. A NiMH battery
is a hydride battery, while LiFePO3 has no hydrogen (one of its major
advantages in fact, nothing to off-gas and explode), just for two examples.

The problem these people are trying to solve is how to store and release a
high density of hydrogen. The micron particle side and plastic coating is all
in the service of tweaking the materials properties in favor of rapid, safe
hydrogen release and reasonably safe materials handling.

My observation/guess is that this line of research, encapsulating
nanoparticles of hydride materials, will be more useful in battery technology
than in hydrogen delivery. A lithium aluminum hydride battery would be great,
if we could keep it from exploding.

------
yason
The thing is that the human kind has been feasting the last 150 years on
energy that is sort of a compressed accumulation of solar energy from the
preceding millions of years. Further, it's been so cheap to dig coal and pump
oil that the cost of energy hasn't had the time to really be an issue yet.

For any imaginable scale of human history, consider that a one-time
opportunity.

It has been observed that the global oil peak was apparently reached a few
years ago which means that from now on each year will see slightly less oil
produced than the previous year. That gives the tangents of monotonically but
slowly diminishing supply and monotonically but perhaps not so slowly rising
price.

Natural gas is running out as well. Known alternatives, such as hydrogen
fuels, electric cars, solar energy, nuclear power, are and remain
alternatives. They're either energy containers (such as hydrogen) or represent
energy production that just doesn't scale to replace the _humongous_ amount of
W/h that we've so far been able to extract from oil almost too easily.

It's out of the scope of this rant to even start about the countless things
made possible by oil, but I think I should mention industrialized mass-
production of food which is prevalent in modern countries. Fertilizers and
pesticides are mostly made of oil and natural gas. Take away food from people
and bad things start happening.

That means that the standard of living, for better and worse, is going to
radically change in the coming decades. It doesn't take much more than a pike
in the price of oil to cause financial and social havoc, such as the one in
the 1970's. Maybe we'll get fusion reactors up and running in 2050 but by then
I suspect the world has changed already.

We should start taking this into slow but very serious consideration instead
of wearing blindfolds and waiting for some scientific research centre to hand
over to us the alternative energy source that is the silver bullet which
allows us to continue living like the way we do now.

~~~
barrkel
This is how capitalism works. As oil's price rises, the expected return to
investing in alternatives increases. That's what drives research ultimately,
not "blindfolds". If you think oil is running out faster than its price
warrants (ie you think serious work on alternatives isn't being done), you're
free to buy oil futures, since it seems you think oil doesn't have its future
scarcity priced in sufficiently today.

~~~
_delirium
> you're free to buy oil futures

If you think oil's near-term value is mispriced, then oil futures are a
solution, yes. But oil futures basically don't trade past the 5-year contract,
and contracts longer than 10 years don't even exist. So if you think oil is
mispriced in the 20-year timeframe, oil futures don't do you any good.

There seems to be a persistent misbelief that futures markets are a way of
hedging or speculating on long-term price movements, but they're really a way
of hedging or speculating on short-term price movements, e.g. for airlines to
hedge against near-term supply shocks. By far the largest volume is for less-
than-a-year contracts, and there is virtually nothing out past 5 years, so
they're not really useful or intended for long-term planning.

~~~
barrkel
You don't need to go with a standard contract if you really believe this,
though; you could go with forward contracts, or - ultimately - by stockpiling
oil.

------
cagenut
Is there any way to see which 57 people voted up this article? Can anyone who
did so please explain how it made it past any of their b.s. filters?

I read HN for the high quality content its curation system bubbles up, an
article like this making it to the front page is a bug in that system.

~~~
jacquesm
Hope.

------
wcoenen
The $1.50/gallon claim doesn't appear in their own press release. They are
just announcing their own launch.

[http://www.cellaenergy.com/uploads/press/Filling%20up%20with...](http://www.cellaenergy.com/uploads/press/Filling%20up%20with%20hydrogen%20now%20a%20real%20possibility.pdf)

~~~
VBprogrammer
Nor, worryingly, does the claim that it can be used in existing engines.

~~~
Someone
Well, gasoline is gasoline…

Oops, they aren't claiming it is gasoline, either. This is a nice example of
how popular journalism works, though. 'it is sort-of liquid and it burns
fairly cleanly' is sufficient to gets a press that forgets to discuss:

\- where to get the energy from to make the stuff.

\- what we will do with whatever is left over after burning the hydrogen in
these hydrides (If I google 'hydride' I get the strong impression they aren't
made from pure hydrogen atoms.)

\- whether that other stuff is rare or abundant, cheap or expensive.

------
BoppreH
Three important questions remain unanswered:

1) How expensive is the equipment to produce this synthetic gasoline?

2) How pollutant is the process?

3) What is the energy yield compared to the oil-based gasoline?

~~~
noonespecial
I definitely got the feeling its another of those pie-in-the-sky research
projects we hear about and wonder a decade later what ever became of them.

Sure the gas _could_ cost a dollar-fifty but its $500/oz right now and it
assumes limitless free hydrogen to encapsulate in our nano-thingees. But hey
it could happen right?

Forgive me my cynical skepticism, but call me when its at the gas pump.

~~~
Swannie
Hmm, I'm not so cynical. The research has been done by Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory. These guys are just down the road from Oxford University. The
facility it one of the top research facilities in the UK. That gives these
claims some weight.

Whilst the price is probably "back of envelope", I'm pretty sure the science
is sound.

~~~
quanticle
The principle might be sound, but I'm skeptical about the yield. Lots of
chemical processes work at small scales but fail when they're implemented at
full refinery/chemical plant scale. This is doubly true for nanotechnology.

They've demonstrated that the process works at small scales. Whether it'll
scale sufficiently to work in a refinery is anyone's guess.

------
SmokenJoe
Creating hydrogen has always been an energy intensive task. It is impractical
to make it from electrolysis and is now usually made from natural gas. Burning
it may not create carbon but making it usually does. Pure hydrogen will
infiltrate most metal making it brittle and cause premature engine failure it
is in contact. Hydrogen is not safe long term for engines that have not been
redesigned for it. The price is without a reference I doubt any ligitamate
company would claim it as it would be trivial to shoot down.

------
cubicle67
Hey, have you guys seen the Jaguar C-X75? It's only a concept car, but it's a
(apparently) fully functional one. <http://www.caradvice.com.au/96384/jaguar-
c-x75-preview/>

It's all electric (581kW (780hp) and 1600Nm) but can charge via twin turbines
- yes, of the jet engine variety! Ove advantage of them is that (again,
apparently) they can run on just about any fuel out there; it it burns they'll
run on it.

Normally Jaguar isn't really my thing, but this, well, this is different :)

~~~
icegreentea
Whoa that's super cool. Coupling a turbine to electric seems to get around one
of the problems of turbines in land vehicles. Basically, fuel efficiency at
low speed is atrociousness . It was one of the arguments against the Abrams
tank when it first came out, and it's only really through your ridiculously
super developed logistics system (really, it's one of the shining examples of
what the US Military can do super well) that you can keep your tanks running
at will.

~~~
jacques_chester
The very reason the Abrams uses a turbine is for logistical flexibility. It
can burn petrol, diesel, jet fuel or (at a pinch) methanol.

------
twidlit
This is too good to not think that it has drawbacks or serious concessions
required. But the fact that its applicable to existing internal combustion
engine makes it more feasible than electric powered vehicles.

------
terhechte
Also, that article is full of redundancies. The phrase "The technology has
been developed over a four-year top secret programme" appears twice. Alas I
concur in that it sounds too good to be true.

~~~
ratsbane
Yes. The phrase "at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near
Oxford" also appears twice in this 256-word article. The large gap between two
concepts - "high energy materials and encapsulating them using a
nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying" and "$1.50/gallon
gasoline" with no attempt to explain how you might get from one to the other -
increases my skepticism.

------
ck2
Yet another "5 year plan" <http://xkcd.com/678/>

------
ax0n
Most ICE's will run on pretty much anything as long as you nail stoichiometry
and it burns at approximately the same speed as the hydrocarbon chains found
in gasoline. It's actually pretty trivial to retrofit a normal car to run on
liquid propane or natural gas. You can even run them directly on hydrogen gas,
but pure hydrogen's far too volatile to be dragging around in a passenger
vehicle. Interested to see where it's going.

~~~
jacquesm
Here is a car running on wood with a woodgas convertor:

<http://www.langsdemaas.nl/hetvervoer/geefgas1.jpg>

During the war years and the recovery period immediately afterwards gasoline
was so scarce in Europe that this was a fairly common occurrence.

------
iwwr
Where does the energy come from? Is it just a more efficient fuel package (or
additive)?

~~~
gvb
It looks to me like it is a more efficient/convenient fuel tank.

The article says "our technology is based on materials called complex
_hydrides_ that _contain_ hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique
patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline." It also
says "micro-beads".

That implies they have a new metal hydride material/manufacturing processes
that stores hydrogen. IC engines can burn hydrogen "without modification"
(replace the fuel injector-based system with a gaseous carburetor system).

Being able to store hydrogen compactly, safely, and efficiently would be a big
breakthrough. Having said that, hydrogen is an energy storage method more than
an energy source - you have to create hydrogen using some other energy source,
e.g. solar, wind, or (currently most commonly) from natural gas (not quite as
"green").

Ref:

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydride>

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production>

~~~
Cushman
Gasoline is an energy storage method.

~~~
iwwr
Gasoline is already stored energy.

------
DennisP
More information and a link to the research paper here:
[http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/cella-energy-hydrogen-
fuel-...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/01/cella-energy-hydrogen-fuel-storage-
in.html)

------
Swannie
A more technical look at the subject:

[http://www.ongreen.com/news/stfc-rutherford-appleton-lab-
spi...](http://www.ongreen.com/news/stfc-rutherford-appleton-lab-spin-seeking-
develop-and-commercialize-novel-solid-state-hydrogen-)

If you have access to academic journals (university accounts etc.) then the
paper can be found here:

<http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp107871v>

------
schwit
Ranks right up there with zero-point-energy on the believability scale.

