Friday, 19 October 2012 A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour. The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral. Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work." Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages. "We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive, who revealed the breakthrough at a conference at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London. "There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent. "We don't have any of the additives and nasty bits found in conventional petrol, and yet our fuel can be used in existing engines," he said. "It means that people could go on to a garage forecourt and put our product into their car without having to install batteries or adapt the vehicle for fuel cells or having hydrogen tanks fitted. It means that the existing infrastructure for transport can be used," Mr Harrison said. Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy. Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further. It could transform the environmental and economic landscape of Britain, Mr Harrison explained. "We are converting renewable electricity into a more versatile, useable and storable form of energy, namely liquid transport fuels. We think that by the end of 2014, provided we can get the funding going, we can be producing petrol using renewable energy and doing it on a commercial basis," he said. "We ought to be aiming for a refinery-scale operation within the next 15 years. The issue is making sure the UK is in a good place to be able to set up and establish all the manufacturing processes that this technology requires. You have the potential to change the economics of a country if you can make your own fuel," he said. The initial plan is to produce petrol that can be blended with conventional fuel, which would suit the high-performance fuels needed in motor sports. The technology is also ideal for remote communities that have abundant sources of renewable electricity, such solar energy, wind turbines or wave energy, but little in the way of storing it, Mr Harrison said. "We're talking to a number of island communities around the world and other niche markets to help solve their energy problems.

 

Just had to check the calendar - thought it was an April fools wind up.

I'll be the first to put my neck on the line and say that it sounds like bullshit but IF it does turn out to be true (and it's a huge IF) it will shoot the old saying "if something sounds too good to be true it usually is," right out the water.

 

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20003704

Be aimed at the motorsport sector.

 

Wont be long till the oil companies buy this out and tuck it away out of sight till they need it.

 

interesting

 

this.....

 

Thats pretty impressive.

 

Id say it looks sound but if thats the case there are lot of fucktards with vested intrests that wont be happy to see this go main stream ,be nice to see someone with power an money getting behind this ,would also be cool if F1 had this as there standardized fuel making it a very public concept .

 

depends. a lot of the oil companies could make more profit in distributing something like this than something that they have to get out of the ground and refine etc.

 

too true

 

Can they create paragraphs from the air too ?

 

exctly be just like car companies with electric cars years ago technoligy was there but petrol companies and goverments didnt want it

 

I remember on a James May programme,the americans was working on a similar process too

 

Agree. Who has a ready logistics and storage solution for moving large quantities of fuel? The oil companies of course. Don't forget that they also have large resources to invest in a new technology.

Additionally if this process can harness a renewable energy source, even at a poor efficiency level, then it provides a store-able, transportable energy resource that currently doesn't exist.

I love the idea of retaining the internal combustion engine, even with all of its faults it is what we all visit passionford for....

 

Not my strong point so apologies if wrong, but divided it up so it's not a headache to try and read...


Friday, 19 October 2012 A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour. The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral. Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."

Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages. "We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive, who revealed the breakthrough at a conference at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London. "There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent. "We don't have any of the additives and nasty bits found in conventional petrol, and yet our fuel can be used in existing engines," he said. "It means that people could go on to a garage forecourt and put our product into their car without having to install batteries or adapt the vehicle for fuel cells or having hydrogen tanks fitted. It means that the existing infrastructure for transport can be used," Mr Harrison said.

Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy. Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further. It could transform the environmental and economic landscape of Britain, Mr Harrison explained. "We are converting renewable electricity into a more versatile, useable and storable form of energy, namely liquid transport fuels. We think that by the end of 2014, provided we can get the funding going, we can be producing petrol using renewable energy and doing it on a commercial basis," he said. "We ought to be aiming for a refinery-scale operation within the next 15 years. The issue is making sure the UK is in a good place to be able to set up and establish all the manufacturing processes that this technology requires. You have the potential to change the economics of a country if you can make your own fuel," he said.

The initial plan is to produce petrol that can be blended with conventional fuel, which would suit the high-performance fuels needed in motor sports. The technology is also ideal for remote communities that have abundant sources of renewable electricity, such solar energy, wind turbines or wave energy, but little in the way of storing it, Mr Harrison said. "We're talking to a number of island communities around the world and other niche markets to help solve their energy problems.

 

this is nothing new, i watched a program on renewable energy sources and over in the states they have been at it for years, however even with all their sun in the deserts with their reasonable setups, they have managed to get a cell to make a measly 2 gallons per day. theirs was solar powered so was free for the future, to do it over here would be too costly to make it worthwhile. it can be made to speed up but requires more power into the system.
the details ma be a little confused, but a fuel was produced, may have been an ether possibly, but that is a fuel none the less.
hydrogen cells are the future, just need to get confidence into holding a bomb in your car.

 

its not an efficient enough process to be financially viable yet.

maybe in a few years it will improve with technology or the price of oils will go up enough to make it viable that way.

Its a good idea if it can be made as a truley renewable process. If it needs shit loads of electric from the grid powered by coal and oil fired power stations (now that we a nuclear paranoid despite nuclear being the only sensible medium term stop gap) then its not as green just moving the carbon emissions to a different place.

same with the prius and other electric cars and hybrids. If the electric fuelling them isnt green then its pointless.

 

Can someone sum this up in 10 words as i dont wanna read it all

 

They claim they can extract petrol from the air.

 

If the process works by extracting carbon from the air, maybe the environmentalists will shut up about CO2 emissions now?
After all, if we all go green and stop the CO2, this can't work!

 

I remember this. They were doing it in the desert and had created the same concept, just hadn't fully completed it though.

 

yeah, gonna take a while to fill up that tank mate

 

And do you think that the first people to extract petrol from gooey black stuff in the ground did so at a rate of a million litres a day ?

Even doing what they claim seems too good to be true.

 

why yes, if you look at the films from the olden days the stuff used to fountain up from the earth at a fantastic rate of knots

 

If we all suddenly switched to this kind of fuel the economy itself would collapse.
Alot of currency (including the dollar) is now based on oil rather then gold.
This would cause chaos not only all over the arab states (seeing as oil is their only export) but the US, here and most of the Eu (mainly russia)

It's in the best interest of the energy companies to keep a lid on this sort of thing until they are ready to ween onto it.
It's a messed up system, despite what the govenments say its all about money and being "carbon neutral" is nothing but an excuse to make more of it.

 

so america will collapse and china will be the new world power?

and the arabs will be worthless?

 

Bit late for that....and their oil reserves will run out eventually too.

Although as energy is required for this process, and the Arabs have a lot of sunshine available, they'd still be in a good position if they can efficiently harness that power to make fuel.

Whoever is developing it would need to get bloody good patent's on it though