N2NH
10-22-2012, 08:30 AM
This ought to die quickly. It would mean competition for the fossil fuel industries.
Engineers in London said this week that they’ve developed a new type of synthetic vehicle fuel that’s created out of water and thin air, literally by pulling carbon molecules out of the atmosphere and recycling them.
Speaking to a conference (http://events.imeche.org/EventView.aspx?EventID=1586) this week put on by the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers (http://www.imeche.org), researchers with Air Fuel Synthesis, Ltd. (http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/) said they’ve successfully married a synthetic fuel production technique that dates back to World War II (http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm) with modern atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration (http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/scrubbing-the-atmosphere/) methods.
The resulting product, they said, works in all current vehicles, can be blended with conventional fuels, and just might be a game changer for human energy and the fight against climate change if it’s ever produced on a large enough scale.
“We haven’t broken the Second Law of Thermodynamics or anything,” Air Fuel Synthesis spokesperson Graham Truscott told Raw Story. “We take carbon, we combine it with hydrogen, put it in a reactor to make methanol, then we take the methanol and put that in another reactor to make petrol. The processes of making synthetic petrol from carbon are well known and have been around for many, many years. The Germans were doing it during the Second World War. The South Africans were doing it during the apartheid years. But they were taking their carbon source from coal. We’re taking our carbon source from the atmosphere.”
http://1.rp-api.com/3090359/via.pngRaw Story (http://s.tt/1qvgA) (http://s.tt/1qvgA)
So, how long before this is forgotten?
Engineers in London said this week that they’ve developed a new type of synthetic vehicle fuel that’s created out of water and thin air, literally by pulling carbon molecules out of the atmosphere and recycling them.
Speaking to a conference (http://events.imeche.org/EventView.aspx?EventID=1586) this week put on by the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers (http://www.imeche.org), researchers with Air Fuel Synthesis, Ltd. (http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/) said they’ve successfully married a synthetic fuel production technique that dates back to World War II (http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm) with modern atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration (http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/scrubbing-the-atmosphere/) methods.
The resulting product, they said, works in all current vehicles, can be blended with conventional fuels, and just might be a game changer for human energy and the fight against climate change if it’s ever produced on a large enough scale.
“We haven’t broken the Second Law of Thermodynamics or anything,” Air Fuel Synthesis spokesperson Graham Truscott told Raw Story. “We take carbon, we combine it with hydrogen, put it in a reactor to make methanol, then we take the methanol and put that in another reactor to make petrol. The processes of making synthetic petrol from carbon are well known and have been around for many, many years. The Germans were doing it during the Second World War. The South Africans were doing it during the apartheid years. But they were taking their carbon source from coal. We’re taking our carbon source from the atmosphere.”
http://1.rp-api.com/3090359/via.pngRaw Story (http://s.tt/1qvgA) (http://s.tt/1qvgA)
So, how long before this is forgotten?