[jsantos511]

Ethanol sans-CO2 is definitely realistic, but the timing is what's up in the air (no pun intended). There are a few different teams that have developed materials that enable ethanol production from CO2 (!!!) and are starting to scale [1, 2 as examples].

We're still working on finalizing our comparisons of our process to current CO2 production processes. From what I can tell currently, our process requires significantly less capex (<$1M) than installing CO2 production facilities onto an ethanol plant (>$100M quoted from a friend at a big gas supplier). Energy is a hard thing to compare apples-to-apples without accounting for all pieces of equipment in each process, but it does less moving parts than many ethanol plants require for CO2.

We are superior when it comes to transportation, however. Since cooling towers are scattered all throughout the country and even in urban areas, we can capture and distribute CO2 within the same city, cutting down transportation distances and associated CO2 emissions.

EDIT: just realized I forgot to include my sources!

[1]: https://scitechdaily.com/breakthrough-electrocatalyst-turns-...

[2]: https://www.energy.gov/articles/scientists-accidentally-turn...

[mattmaroon]

Awesome. Good answers. Thanks and good luck!