[lambdatronics]

>"skate to where the puck is going"

Exactly. They're doing what PARC was: looking a decade ahead and building the technology that makes sense in that future.

I'm quite optimistic about them. Even if they can't immediately compete head-to-head with fossil fuels, there are probably some ways to get early revenue, by making other industrial chemicals, or marketing higher-priced fuel to eco-conscious consumers, or the alcoholic beverages idea they mention on their webpage.

The idea of directly electrolysing the low-concentration CO2 in the air-capture fluid and then extracting the low-concentration product is brilliant. Most of the energy cost for standard air capture is heat used to 'boil' the CO2 out of the fluid. If their osmotic membrane can separate the fuel with better energy efficiency, it's a win. It's hard to produce high concentrations of fuel products electrolytically anyway, so there was always going to be a need to concentrate the fuel somehow. The big questions in my mind are:

1. How efficient can the osmosis be? 2. Does the low concentrations of CO2 imply the need for very large electrolyzers? These tend to be the biggest capital-cost item.