If this is to be believed

[sunrisetrucker]

If this is to be believed then I wonder about the future of electric vehicles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HKyAedDyvQ

[escape artist]

Hi: sunrisetrucker... Hay...We recycle horse power don't we? Alf
escape artist N.S. of Lake Erie

[JeffreyG]

What they are talking about are typically called eFuels. The idea is to use renewable energy from solar or wind to 'unburn' carbon and hydrogen.


You can make all kinds of fuels. H2, CH3, Dimethyl ether. Typically the longer the molecule, the harder it is to make but the better of a fuel it is (easier to store and transport).

Straight hydrogen (H2) for example is easy to make by electrolysis of water, but it really sucks as a fuel.

I've tangentially worked on these concepts, and at the state of the art there are some problems:
1) So far, it takes something like 8-12 times as much energy to create these fuels as they contain.
2) Costs are just miles and miles from competitive.

My personal take is that BEV technology is progressing to the point where all these other concepts (H2, eFuels) are looking really unlikely. The place I guess they could still make sense is aircraft, as thus far BEV airliners look to be completely impractical.

[wackyburggeezer]

As always, the First Law of Thermodynamics is in force. Aside from the inefficiency of capturing sunlight or wind to convert to electricity, there will be significant losses in breaking the bonds in the molecule of carbon dioxide. Storing the carbon is easy. Storing the oxygen provides an additions set of problems. In application, a significant thermal ignition is required to initiate recombining the two. I'd just as soon not be in the vicinity, when trying to meter the two elements for controlled recombination.

[Mike G]

Wind and solar generation equipment require mining for minerals and production/refining of petroleum products, to get the raw materials out of which the equipment is built. Building these reclamation plants would incur a huge carbon debt that could take years (decades?) to offset. Then there are the plant maintenance requirements.....

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by sunrisetrucker

If this is to be believed then I wonder about the future of electric vehicles.

Sure, but almost none of it is true. They talk about "recycling energy", but all they're recycling is carbon. They talk about how superior the fuel is, but that's nonsense: poorly operated diesels don't smoke because the fuel is dirty, they smoke because they are injecting too much fuel and the carbon in the fuel is coming out as soot... the same carbon that's in this or any other hydrocarbon fuel.

Originally Posted by JeffreyG

What they are talking about are typically called eFuels. The idea is to use renewable energy from solar or wind to 'unburn' carbon and hydrogen.


You can make all kinds of fuels. H2, CH3, Dimethyl ether. Typically the longer the molecule, the harder it is to make but the better of a fuel it is (easier to store and transport).

Straight hydrogen (H2) for example is easy to make by electrolysis of water, but it really sucks as a fuel.

I've tangentially worked on these concepts, and at the state of the art there are some problems:
1) So far, it takes something like 8-12 times as much energy to create these fuels as they contain.
2) Costs are just miles and miles from competitive.

My personal take is that BEV technology is progressing to the point where all these other concepts (H2, eFuels) are looking really unlikely. The place I guess they could still make sense is aircraft, as thus far BEV airliners look to be completely impractical.

Excellent summary!

The only place for "efuels" is as an energy time-shift mechanism: not storing electricity when it is available from solar panels and wind turbines to be used as electricity later, but making fuel from electricity when it is available and using it to fuel engines when it is needed. There is certainly merit in that, but the efficiency of fuel production must be much higher to make sense.

The more obvious method of taking carbon from the atmosphere and building fuel ("biofuel") from it is by growing plants and making fuels (such as alcohol from cellulose or diesel fuel from oils) from the plant material. Of course this is what petroleum fossil fuels are, but rather than burning millions of years of accumulation of material in a couple of centuries, the idea is to produce and use the fuel at a sustainable rate. Unfortunately, biofuel production has terrible problems, occupying huge land area and consuming massive resources (many petroleum-based, including fertilizers and fuel for processes and mobile equipment).

As usual, there are no easy answers, but lots of fantastic claims.

[sunrisetrucker]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

Sure, but almost none of it is true.

As usual, there are no easy answers, but lots of fantastic claims.

Those were my first thoughts as well. You know what they say "If it sounds to good to be true", well you know the rest.


But I have enjoyed reading the well informed responses.

[marsman]

A lot of really good points in this thread, one thing is for sure, the future of transportation fuels is in the midst of an incredible revolution, similar to watching the birth and development of the personal computer and the internet; I'm sure most of us have witnessed this all first-hand - WOW!

I think what Jeffrey stated is certainly true regarding airplane fuel in the near term at least; I'd like to add that in the near term I would think that commercial transport in general (ships, buses, transports, etc.) could benefit from hydrogen technology development? Closer to home for those of us who enjoy towing around things like trailers and fifth wheels, is the question of how reasonably we'll be able to do that with BEV technology in the near future.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube which demonstrate what happens when you use even a long range Tesla to tow a reasonably weighted travel trailer; their range gets drastically reduced from 100's of miles to less than 100 miles. I would expect that even if you used a tri-motor long range Cybertruck to tow the Escape 5th wheel, your range would drop from 500 miles to perhaps less than 1/2 that. I don't know about most of us folks but I have often driven way more than 200-250 miles in a day, especially when booting it home in the spring back to Canada; not uncommon for us to do 400 miles in a day. I guess we could always alter our habits as well?

I am really looking forward to owning my first electric car as my second 'go around town' or 'quick trips' car but I'm dubious about whether my next tow vehicle will be electric; maybe a hybrid like the new Ford F150 sounds nice!