Air Fuel Synthesis, from renewable energy...
 

Here's an article that I just came across. Maybe this should go straight to the unicorn corral..:confused:

By filtering CO2 out of the air, and mixing with with H2 from broken down water, powered by wind energy to produce liquid fuels.

Technology

I would love to see more details, something a little more concrete than the cartoon flowchart. The idea is interesting, the energy input, especially for the electrolysis of water versus energy produced would be a critical factor here. I would love to see more of it, but I have doubts about it.

What do you think?

I think this is the "Technologically Redundant Economic Energy System" :-)

The idea is sound, and there are quite a few ways to turn CO2 and H2 into some form of hydrocarbon fuel... but the problem has always been energy, energy, energy.

The product is probably going to be some form of synthetic gas or simple hydrocarbon. Sucks that they don't state what it is on the page (or is it a telling sign that they don't?), so we can't figure out HOW energy intensive the process will be.

The advantage of this over simply storing energy in batteries or simply storing the hydrogen is the portability of the resulting fuel. The trade-off is the energy spent in making the fuel.

Would probably make sense for refilling stations out in the middle of nowhere that would need to hold on to stocks for a long time.

Google Sabatier Reactor to learn about the process. I'd be very surprised if the process could deliver fuel at a competitive price.

That's a guarantee that it can't compete with non-renewables. But if we could somehow prioritize renewable fuel, it would make a lot of sense.

It's a way to convert excess wind energy into storable fuel.

Wind turbines are often stopped when there is little demand - say at night - and the wind energy blows by idly, while the turbines themselves aren't used to their full time capacity .

But this way, they can be made to run the fuel plant on the "excess" wind.

Audi is using wind turbines to make CNG.

There are also ways to disassociate hydrogen with waste heat from certain designs of nuke-u-lar plants. The theory is sound, and it really is possible to create hydrocarbon fuels from ocean water and/or air. Done this way, it could be produced on a cost competitive basis.

Other ways (such as solar PV) might only be long term competitive when gasoline hits $8 per gallon.