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Uncategorized Sunday, October 21st 2012 at 12:00 pm

Scientists Can Make Gas From Air, Water, and… That’s it!?

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Finding an alternative to burning fossil fuels has to be one of the single largest issues facing our world’s scientists today. Cleaner, cheaper fuel may not be able to bring world peace, but it would be a major step towards staving off an environmental and/or political apocalypse. It’s surprising, then, that we haven’t heard more about the research at Air Fuel Synthesis, a British engineering company that claims to have discovered a way to refine cleaner-burning fuel using only water and air.

According to the team at Air Fuel Synthesis, their process synthesizes carbon dioxide and hydrogen in a reactor, then uses a catalyst to turn the fusion into methanol. Methanol can then be converted into gas. The process is product of a two-year, one million pound (about $1.6 million) study.

In addition to being made from more abundant resources, AFS believes that synthetic fuel will have a much smaller impact on the environment. Since synthetic fuel is made using only the exact elements required to create methanol, it doesn’t contain impurities that lead to the negative byproducts of burning fossil fuels. By using renewable energy sources in the refining process, AFS claims to have found a way to make large quantities of “carbon-neutral” fuel.

According to AFS, engineers have created five liters of synthetic gasoline in the last three months. That may not seem like a lot, but according to Air Fuel Synthesis CEO Peter Harrison, it wouldn’t be difficult to massively expand the scale of production. Apparently, the individual steps of the refining process are already used in the mass production of other products.

Unfortunately, there’s currently no plan to ramp up production to compete with traditional fuel suppliers. For now, AFS will build a refinery that will produce fuel for race cars and other vehicles that require specialized fuel.

(via Reuters, image credit; Bob n’ Renee)

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  • Jack Bond

    The actually IMPORTANT question here is will it be less expensive and more efficient than gasoline? Because if not, I’m not biting.

  • seokso

    No, that’s not it. They also need energy, which is only as clean as its source. In the US and most other countries, that still means using fossil or nuclear fuels. Kinda defeats the purpose.

  • Alex

    Give them a break this is amazing. It’s in its infant stages of research. Yes at this point it would most likely cost the amount of fossil fuel energy that you would be saving and would cost an absolute bomb at the consumer end. But the point is as we get better at creating renewable energy this will become a more viable option, and as the technology advances it will progressively become cheaper. Don’t be so negative and recognise something amazing when you see it.

  • Idlethoughts

    Unless they can get more energy out of it than is put in it is effectively useless. And I’m not holding my breath for that happening.

  • http://twitter.com/Cult_of_greg Greg

    ISS uses something very similar to this to help complete the water loop on the station Water is very heavy and thus expensive to send to space. It uses the waste hydrogen from the Oxygen Generation loop, which creates oxygen through electrolysis of water with the by products being oxygen and hydrogen. The carbon dioxide if collected from the air, a waste product of the crew. Just like the system above they are combined using a catalyst. Methane and water are produced. The water is put back into the system and the methane is sent into space. The system is called the Sabatier after the process it uses. CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O

  • Anonymous

    No it doesn’t need fossil fuels. Yes it consumes more energy than is outputted but so what? The problem with renewables, like hydro & wind is that power is available when it isn’t demanded. Off peak electricity is used to pump water up hill for hydro power on demand now. Likewise his process would use off peak power, eg when the wind blows, and store a fraction of that energy in a readily utilised form, with an long established distribution system. And Nuclear does not produce CO2, producing way less radiation than burning coal, so should be part of the mix – in fact the idea of producing gasoline from a nuclear power seems a very sensible strategic policy.

  • Anonymous

    No x1000 it’s not about that. It’s about taking energy from one form that can’t be stored eg electricity generated by wind turbines, and turning it into another chemical form that can.

  • Anonymous

    Less expensive is relative in terms of energy security.

  • http://www.facebook.com/paul.pardee Paul Pardee

    I see this as being fairly useless on a large scale. I just can’t see it being profitable based on the amount of time it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline. It might be more useful on a smaller scale. People could produce their own gasoline at night while charging a plug-in electric hybrid, or gas stations can cover their roofs with solar panels and refill their tanks for free (minus the cost of the water). It won’t supply everything they need, but if it even covers 10%, then that’s 10% extra profit.

  • Idlethoughts

    Energy-cells and batteries, electricity is quite storable.

  • Anonymous

    It isn’t, not on an industrial scale. That’s why renewables don’t work, for every wind turbine you need the same capacity conventional be it coal, gas, nuclear to back it up, & of course you can’t flick a switch & turn on a power plant for instant energy ( although hydro can work like that, hence the use of off peak spare capacity to pump water up hill to store that energy ) Plus existing battery tech is reliant on very expensive rare metals, sourced mainly IIRC from China at huge environmental cost – hence storing a fraction of the electrical energy as chemical gasoline is a huge breakthrough

  • http://www.facebook.com/janelleblu.papergirlturner Janelle Blu Papergirl Turner

    Oil companies will kill them before they even launch it, they don’t want that. There was a guy who came up with something similar, and he went missing.