[cpprototypes]

Oil is great for energy storage and we have over a hundred years of infrastructure built for it. And that oil technology is still being refined and advanced.

The big issues with oil are due to the source, not the technology itself. Right now the source is underground carbon sinks (fossil fuels). But what if we produced synthetic oil using excess solar energy during daytime? It would pull carbon from the air. And would burn cleaner than any fossil fuel source.

It seems many dream of a battery future. But is it really better to produce millions of batteries instead of just finding better ways to make oil?

It kind of reminds me of the classic desktop app vs web app debate. One big advantage of web app is that upgrages are single source, just update the server. But desktop apps, there may be many multiple old versions out there because users don't always update. In a similar way, why are we focusing on the very difficult and slow task of upgrading all cars to EV? Why not improve the source of oil itself?

[dredmorbius]

I've been looking into synfuels, especially petroleum analogs, of which there's been over 50 years of research.

I do find it genuinely exciting. The same benefits of petroleum (safety, stability, portability, storage, and very, very flexible use) apply to any synthetic analogs.

The "problem" is that you pay full cost. Most synthesis methods lose about 50% of the input energy (mostly in hydrogen electrolysis). Where petroleum has historically offered 100:1 energy benefits, and is now typically delivers 20-30x the input energy, synfuels would cost you energy: 1:2 or worse. The equivalent energy cost increase is 40-60x that of present sources. That's not objectively a bad thing, but it's a tremendous shock to a system based on cheap energy.

The research as I said is impressive: Brookhaven National Laboratory (US), M.I.T., and the US Naval Research Lab, going back to Meyer Stienberg at BNL in 1964 (the suggestion itself came from M. King Hubbert, who'd first projected peak oil, in a 1963 paper). Progress, however, has been fairly scant, with only very small-scale tests.

The advantage would be a fuel that's infinitely miscable and substitutable for existing petroleum-based petrol, diesel, kerosene (a/k/a jet fuel), etc. And it can be carbon-neutral (via seawater or atmospheric-based carbon stocks). The disadvantages are cost and complexity as well as input energy. That said, I think it's well-worth pursuing.

[cpprototypes]

The energy efficiency of the process is bad, but the future economic conditions could change dramatically:

1) Fossil fuels costs will eventually start rising and never come down again. How much investment and attention will synthetic production receive when oil is $100/barrel? Or at $200/barrel, or $300/barrel? More investment could lead to significant process improvements.

2) Solar energy has improved tremendously and continues to improve more. But the great weakness of solar is that it's only effective at daytime. Anything produced in excess of daytime demand is basically waste energy. Since it's waste energy, the inefficiency of the oil synthesis process doesn't matter. The only competitor here is other energy storage methods such as batteries. The key question here will be, is it better to store this excess waste energy in batteries or use the synthetic process to make oil? From a pure efficiency standpoint, battery is better. But when considering the existing oil infrastructure, the answer is not as clear.

[dredmorbius]

The breakthrough cost is key.

One of my recent thoughts is that it's not so much that renewables are expensive as that fossil fuels are insanely under-priced, though that gets into a pretty deep economic question of just what price and cost are supposed to be.

For electrical generation, the problem with a fuel-based intermediary storage is that the net efficiency is quite low: 50% loss at fuel formation, at best 45% efficiency from thermal generation (Carnot's Law is a bitch). Fuel cell tech might offer an out, but the catalysts are rare and expensive (though if we can find an all-platinum asteroid out there, solar + synfuel + space-mined catalyst might offer advantages).

Solar costs have fallen, but the efficiency is capped. Moreover, as panel costs fall they're dominated by less-fungible elements, mostly installation and maintenance. There's the 20-year life (multiple systemic decay pathways) which means you need to replace 5% of your total stock every year.

I'm not arguing against solar, but rather, against an abudant-energy future. Even with energy issues addressed, many other factors, including literally dirt (well, topsoil), challenge humans.

Leibig's Law of the Minimum is another bitch.

[bubbleRefuge]

EV's have other benefits. Ultimately, when economy of scale is fully realized, perhaps electric motors are cheaper, cleaner, and easier to maintain than ICE's. Perhaps automobile supply chains will become similar to laptop/Iphone supply chains ( ie extremely efficient) . Perhaps EVs are easier to re-cycle. Perhaps they perform better on the road. For ex, accelerate and stop faster . Perhaps there will be a 5x 10x 20x breakthrough in battery technology?

[cpprototypes]

When comparing just technology, EV cars are superior. Far greater engine efficiency, less complexity and moving parts, efficient transmission of energy from power plants to vehicle, etc.

But we live in an oil world. There are billions of cars out there. Cars are big investments that are handed down generation to generation like houses, especially in developing countries. EV car sales are still a drop in the bucket compared to ICE car sales.

If we want fast and rapid action on climate change, the quickest path is not pushing EV. It would be massive investment in reducing the cost to make synthetic oil. This may seem impossible, but that's what many said about solar competing with fossil fuels. EV car enthusiasts often talk about how EV cars get immediate environmental benefits from power plant upgrades such as burning coal to solar. But how much more orders of magnitude environment improvement would we get from carbon neutral oil creation? If a cost effective way was found that could compete with fossil fuels, billions of cars would immediately benefit environmentally.

Again, another computer analogy. Imagine someone invented a beautiful new elegant programming language that reduces CPU energy use by 50%. At the same time, someone found a way to reduce JVM CPU energy use by 20%. If we wanted the shortest path to worldwide energy reduction in CPU, what would be faster, just update the JVM for millions of servers or rewrite everything in the new programming language?

[seanp2k2]

Don't we already kinda do this with Ethanol, and aside from how growing so much corn is also bad for the environment, how it's a less efficient fuel, and other concerns (indirect land use change etc), it already works to des crease our dependence on the stuff in the ground?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_S...

[cpprototypes]

Ethanol is terrible, especially corn produced ethanol. The type of process I'm referring to is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel

The inputs to this are just energy + water + CO2 = oil. No corn or other plants required. Currently this type of technology is far from cost competitive. But that could potentially change if more was invested into this area.

[imh]

I was under the impression that oil combustion, not oil production, was the part that hurt the environment. Is that not correct?

[dredmorbius]

The concerns I've got over EVs:

1. They're fundamentally a materials properties based technology. That is, you're dependent on storage substrates (especially lithium), conductors (especially copper), lightweight body materials (especially aluminium), and various specialty components within parts for the specific set of features of an EV. It turns out that lithium, copper, and aluminium are all at least somewhat constrained in overall availablity, some highly.

A conventional oil-fueled car works pretty well with iron (exceptionally abundant), with carbon added for steel (actually something of a concern: 15% of global coal consumption is for coking fuel), and a few stray odd bits. Overall, an oil-fired ICE auto is far less dependent on specific material properties of scarce material resources than an EV.

2. Batteries simply don't have the energy densities of liquid fuels. Tesla's success has, frankly, stunned and amazed me, though much of it seems to come from exceptionally good energy management. There are uses to which that's all but certainly not sufficient. Heavy overland freight trucking, marine transport, and air travel -- a future with these in abundance will not run on batteries.

There are some other options. Trucking using catenary cables or (literally) road trains, with battery capacity for a few kilometers of off-grid distribution, could work. Trains can be electrified, though doing so for the US rail network poses high challenges. Ships were once powered by the wind, and may well be in future. High-capacity, high-speed air travel is pretty much impossible without liquid fuels though. The alternatives are either a) hugely expensive or b) much smaller and/or slower.

One option for air might be higher-speed zeppelins, possibly utilising solar power.

The 1930s German zeppelins had peak speeds of about 80 mph, cruising of around 70 mph. That made for about a 30 hour Atlantic ocean crossing. Designs in the works suggest about a 140 mph top speed might be possible. An ultra-light, high-efficiency solar cell over the upper fabric of such an airship might supply much the needed motive power, and lift would be obviated through a lighter-than-air gas (probably helium).

Airships have other problems -- they're fragile, have a limited service ceiling (the Graf Zeppelin cleared a mountain range in the USSR by only 150 feet, close to its 6,000 foot ceiling), and would be dangerous near storms or other disturbances. Landing in high winds is difficult. But they're at least an option.

[antisthenes]

> The 1930s German zeppelins had peak speeds of about 80 mph, cruising of around 70 mph. That made for about a 30 hour Atlantic ocean crossing.

The distance between NY and London is ~3500 miles, which would make that trip 50 hours at the very minimum, not 30 hours like you suggested.

Travel to other countries would take even longer, unless your plan is to just ferry people over the Atlantic and distribute them via train after.

[dredmorbius]

You're right. I'd underestimated crossing times, though prevailing winds also cut time to as little as 43 hours eastward. From Wikipedia's page on the Hindenberg (unattributed):

"The ten westward trips that season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours."

Given that high-speed land-based rail would be an option, the ferry-to-rail option seems a strong contender, actually.

Remember: the whole concept of moving any significant distance at a rate of more than a few miles an hour is quite modern.

[ZenoArrow]

> "In a similar way, why are we focusing on the very difficult and slow task of upgrading all cars to EV? Why not improve the source of oil itself?"

Some people are pursuing this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

Personally I think it's a mistake to rely on any single energy source as heavily as we have with oil, so I hope the EV car market continues to grow, but biodiesel may be better suited for some applications.