If it's a turnkey fuel production device, I'm sure there's a market for hook up electricity in remote location and get a tank of fuel over time.
Fences made of double-sided solar panels mounted a bit more than tractor-width apart, running N-S, coexist nicely with row crops, and cut water loss, improve conversion efficiency (via evaporative cooling), and often increase yield besides (via reduced heat stress). Producing fuel locally is better than selling the power and buying fuel.
HH XX HH
HH=XX=HH <--tractor
HH XX HH
crop XX
| XX | <-panel/fence
v HH |
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|x
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|x
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|x
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|x
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|x
x|x x x x|x x x x|x x x x|xRetrofitting with ammonia tankage and plumbing (making them cheaper to run) is an expense they might prefer to avoid until they have a reliable secondary supply of ammonia.
It depends on how efficient it is to use existing ICE tractors vs creating new electric tractors. If tractors are like other ICE vehicles then something like half the energy they take over their lifetime is used in their production so if you want to get to Net-0 sooner generating carbon neutral fuel might be the way to go.
While the question I was responding to was explicitly about efficiency, you might be right about cost. However, ICE tractors that are already owned along with the capital required for their use and maintenance are potentially a lot more attractive to keep vs new electric tractors. Sunshine might be free but it’s not available in sufficient quantities everywhere with current technology, and all technologies will require ongoing maintenance. With China becoming an untrustworthy trade partner the cost of solar panels will likely rise. If they do I hope they can make affordable efuel so that we make progress either way.
There is plenty of sunshine most places if you can bank fuel during off-season. Finns will probably still need to import from the south or via transmission line if the wind is off -- as they have done for many decades on a more regular schedule.
Energy storage is woefully insufficient yet to cover days let alone seasons so that is a very big "if."
If you mean we have not yet built out as much storage as we will ultimately need, because we anyway haven't enough renewable generating capacity built out yet to charge it from, then yes we know. The solution to that is obviously to continue building out renewable generating capacity, and then storage for the excess.
I just misread what you wrote. I didn't see "fuel" and thought you were referring to other means of renewable storage. Fuel as an efficient and much less geographically limited means of storage makes a lot of sense.
https://twitter.com/vivekgani/status/1426017955398176770?t=0...
It also omits liquified hydrogen, which is inconvenient to handle, but not much moreso than liquified methane.
Given how much cutting edge process chemistry is involved in this fuel manufacture, it will be a long time before it's available in small units, which will of course be more capital-intensive and less efficient than large units because that's how scaling works.
It's far more likely this fuel will end up simply co-mingled with the global market and shipped all over the world from a few sites which are good for generation but not for direct consumption.
> Our Fuel Forges are similar in many ways to hydrogen electrolyzers, in that they consist of many layers of cells, each consisting of a cathode, an anode, and a separator. In an H2 Electrolyzer, the anode is where electrons are stripped from water, producing oxygen, and the cathode is where electrons are added to protons, producing hydrogen gas. In our system, the anode works the same way, but our cathode, in addition to making H2, also makes liquid fuels. Both systems have capital costs dominated by the costs of the electrochemical stacks.
> This brings us to the issue of economies of scale. For high temperature / high pressure systems like Fischer Tropsch or e-methanol to gasoline (MTG), economies of scale mean large refinery installations that cost billions of dollars and years to build (and still don’t get to cost-competitive fuels). For modular, mobile systems like our Titan Fuel Forges, however, economies of scale mean mass manufacturing.
What would make a difference are whether it is expected to start and stop operation, how much supervision it needs, and how much customization is desirable. The quoted text above cites ability to manufacture mass numbers of units, and by implication to distribute, install, and operate them with minimal attention to details.
Er, tractors often tow implements that are significantly wider than the tractor itself.
Due to Russian oil drying up volatile high prices globally will be the norm until technology like this comes into play and at least puts a ceiling on the price. So, the real question is how quickly and how cheaply can they reach 4 million barrels per day of production?
Russia cannot keep up production without the involvement of the likes of BP etc, so while China and India haven't boycotted Russia it won't matter before very long.
Accidental Superpower is his first, from 2014, and is the best overall introduction. It doesn't just look at current events; he applies his approach to pretty much all the great civilizations of world history, starting with ancient Egypt. Well worth reading for that alone, it's amazing. Also covers modern day, and while it's a bit out of date now, the broad strokes haven't changed. This book includes a prediction that Russia would invade the rest of Ukraine right about now. If you read just one, make it this one.
The next two books are entirely focused on present day.
Absent Superpower from 2016 has two parts. The first is probably more information than you want about the shale revolution in the US, but he keeps it interesting. Then he writes about individual countries, with more of an energy focus. This one's obviously most relevant to the tech we're discussing here, which could change everything if it scales up soon enough.
Now I'm partway through Disunited Nations, from 2020. This also goes country by country, and of course is the most up-to-date so far. He starts out with several chapters on China, and goes into more detail than the previous book on their situation, which is incredibly grim. Now I'm starting the next chapter, on Japan.
His next book comes out in June. I think he mentioned in a video that he focuses more on the outlook for various industries.
His latest book is "The end of the world is only the beginning".
I follow him through the YT channnel "GEOPOP".
If you hit that you're sorted in Europe.
https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices
European prices seem to average about ~ EU 1.8 / litre or ~7.2 EU / Gallon or $US 7.6 / gallon.
For C02 neutral fuel it would just work at that price.
The EU is determined to reduce C02 emissions rapidly. If they want to do that they could cut their fuel taxes and use C02 neutral fuel and meet their targets much more easily. Not to mention cutting dependence on authoritarian states.
ADM consumes a third of the US corn crop and billions of dollars of tax money, year in and year out.
A lot of EU countries also mandate E10 gasoline in a misguided effort to reduce GHG emissions. I'm not sure where they get all that ethanol from, but I'm sure it's a similar agribusiness scam as US corn ethanol.
> The thing is one cell doesn’t make that much fuel. What it does do is make enough to tell us what to do to iterate to the next cell design, which is exactly what we need to be doing to improve our performance and costs as quickly and inexpensively as possible. If we stopped this process to replicate one of the iterations of the cell to many cells, we could make more fuel, but we wouldn’t learn any more, we’d use up a lot of time and materials, and it wouldn’t prove that we can compete with fossil fuels on cost - the thing that matters.
Then, there doesn't need to be any marketing and limiting of availability by only having one source of product.
Product manufacturers would probably be ecstatic to generate products that have great use and public appeal, where all you need to do is be the first to be able to manufacture it.
There are two challenges to tackle here: First is to make it work at all, and second is to do it cheaper than what the competition can muster.
The goal of $3/gallon is pushing Prometheus down the rabbit hole. Waiting for the perfect factory, with the manufacturing methods, to produce the perfect machine that will immediately go into large scale production, and operate on an automated basis. I expect the company aiming at 10-7-5-3 will reach 3 there faster than the company aiming at 3 to start out with.