'Petrol From Air' Created By British Engineers - The Breakthrough You've Been Waiting For?
There are certain scientific breakthroughs that change the course of human lives. This could be one such. For a society that has a major part dependent on the scarce resource of fuel, conjuring it from thin air - as we would like to call it, is huge. A British Firm's engineers have made that common man's dream come true by creating petrol from air and water. Names 'Air Fuel Synthesis', this company from Northern England has materialized the concept of taking CO2 from air, combining it with hydrogen split from water vapour and turning it into a fuel. Recalling those lessons from photosynthesis, are you? Just like plants needs sunlight for their fuel, this process needs (oh no!) electric energy to work out.
Some of you might not find the newness in this concept of putting CO2 back into an energy-packed molecule. For instance, a company called Liquid Light works on making fuel additive methanol from CO2 (based on the work by Princeton University in the US and #-Link-Snipped-#). So, we can say taking that a step forward, Air Fuel Synthesis is converting that methanol into something close to Petrol.
[caption id="attachment_43265" align="aligncenter" width="620"]#-Link-Snipped-# An Air Fuel Synthesis technical team member with a flask of AFS fuel[/caption]
So, are we looking at THE sustainable fuel source yet? Well, the degree to which we can call it that depends so much on the energy it requires and the energy it stores. The company has been successful in creating five litres of the fuel over a two year demo experiment. Therefore, you can tell that the company is focusing on building the proof of principle and not efficiency. The company has plans to optimize their design a one-tonne-a-day unit and expects to be in production by 2015. Taking a wise move, the engineers over at Air Fuel Synthesis, will first hit their fuel on racing team cars and work ahead by first "greening the motorsport industry", because right now this green fuel is far from meeting the global fuels demand.
Via: Petrol from air: Will it make a difference? - BBC News | #-Link-Snipped-#Â Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
Some of you might not find the newness in this concept of putting CO2 back into an energy-packed molecule. For instance, a company called Liquid Light works on making fuel additive methanol from CO2 (based on the work by Princeton University in the US and #-Link-Snipped-#). So, we can say taking that a step forward, Air Fuel Synthesis is converting that methanol into something close to Petrol.
[caption id="attachment_43265" align="aligncenter" width="620"]#-Link-Snipped-# An Air Fuel Synthesis technical team member with a flask of AFS fuel[/caption]
So, are we looking at THE sustainable fuel source yet? Well, the degree to which we can call it that depends so much on the energy it requires and the energy it stores. The company has been successful in creating five litres of the fuel over a two year demo experiment. Therefore, you can tell that the company is focusing on building the proof of principle and not efficiency. The company has plans to optimize their design a one-tonne-a-day unit and expects to be in production by 2015. Taking a wise move, the engineers over at Air Fuel Synthesis, will first hit their fuel on racing team cars and work ahead by first "greening the motorsport industry", because right now this green fuel is far from meeting the global fuels demand.
Via: Petrol from air: Will it make a difference? - BBC News | #-Link-Snipped-#Â Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
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