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Not content with using hybrid artificial photosynthesis to turn CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now claim to have produced an enhanced system that uses water and solar energy to generate hydrogen, which is in turn used to produce methane, the main element of natural gas, from carbon dioxide. Generating such gases from a renewable resource may one day help bolster, or even replace, fossil fuel resources extracted from dwindling sub-surface deposits.
Simply put, the process of photosynthesis turns light energy into chemical energy. In plants and certain types of algae, energy from incoming sunlight is used as the power source to synthesize simple carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. In the original Berkeley Lab hybrid system, a membrane arrangement of nanowires created from silicon and titanium oxide harvested solar energy and transported electrons to microbes where they used that energy to transform carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds.
Produces methane...Sorry, cows, you have been rendered superfluous.
Hybrid bioinorganic approach to solar-to-chemical conversion [abstract]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:38AM
In my estimation, the hydrocarbon-from-solar route probably is the most viable way into a sustainable energy economy because of two main benefits of hydrocarbons: 1.) they are easily storable and movable, and 2.) they are compatible with the vast infrastructure. This would also be cheap enough to yield prices that are roughly in the magnitude of what we pay for them now in retail. However, they are not cheap enough to compete with dug up dead dinosaurs, and a free market that does not consider externalities will always choose the cheaper fossils, even if they're just minimally cheaper. Of course, players (countries) might try to bend the numbers a bit, but that will always be at their expense without any benefit other than the feelgood factor. Only if it is done near a breakthrough level, it might accelerate that process, e.g. as the German PV subsidies did with the solar module market. The PV market then took off, because PV simply has become the cheapest option for a growing number of use cases. (Unlike that, however, the whole CO2-certificate trading scheme looks to me like a big money shifting scheme for a few players but nothing effecting actual industry).
As a consideration the same mechanism works against nuclear - and fusion. Take a look at the cost for Sizewell C and Olkiluoto III; and that's even with deferring the disposal issues to future taxpayers. For fusion consider you don't have a simple big kettle that warms up through magic rods like with fission, but a monumental contraption of magnets, or lasers, or whatever is needed to confine and ignite a power-yielding plasma. No way this can ever be competitive against just burning mentioned dug up dinosaurs for heat - or, at least during sunshine, for PV.
We'll always need to estimate what an applied kWh will cost to judge viability. E.g. for liquid hydrocarbons, we have about 8 kWh per liter of petrol, or ~1250 kWh in a barrel. At an oil price, of say, $100 for crude, that would amount to a price that can't be lower than 8 cent per kWh. Now take a solar-to-hydrocarbon plant in the desert and assume they get the juice out at 3 cents. Feed water, assume hydrolyzing losses, and you'll have hydrogen at 4 cents, in the middle of the desert. Assume they also grow reed and hydrate that, more losses, you'll have bio-octane at say 6 cents. So, on a very large scale, with infrastructure cost negligible, that might even be competitive at such a high oil price. But as soon as someone would start such a venture, the sheiks will temporarily drop their oil price to $60, their fuel goes into the market at 5 cents, and our venture goes bust. Someone would need a very long breath to hold up against these dynamics. So with new technical schemes like the described one, there's one and only one requirement: they need to be dirt cheap.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:02PM
Add "in comparison" at the end of your sentence, and I'll agree with you.
Oil is dirt cheap today, but nowhere near as dirt cheap as it was not that long ago. As one would expect, we've already extracted all the high quality and easy-to-reach stuff, meaning all that's left is the low quality hard-to-reach stuff -- and that means what's left is more expensive.
Oil prices will rise...but likely not much above double current prices, because pretty much all these alternative hydrocarbon production processes become cost-competitive at that point.
The real question is whether or not our economy can function with oil prices in that range. We may well reach a point where nobody can afford to pay for what it costs to produce oil (in whatever form), at which time mass chaos ensues.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:39PM
Oil is crazy cheap now, somewhere around $40 a barrel. Of course, if you consider 2009 not that long ago then your point stands (last time we saw prices this low).
On the one hand it certainly delays cost-competitiveness. On the other, it does make it unprofitable to be starting up new wellsites. So, mixed blessings I guess.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:24PM
Add "in comparison" at the end of your sentence, and I'll agree with you.
Of course. But if it's in comparison to fossil oil, it does not need to be dirt-cheap-in-comparison, it just needs to be marginally cheaper. But to be marginally cheaper in comparison, it must be so "dirt" cheap that the sheiks can't sustain prices below the renewable to push them out of the market. Bit of a feedback logic. :)
On the other hand, the threat of renewable hydrocarbons sets an upper limit to the sustainable oil price, which as I elaborated in the OP would be at 8 cents per kWh in my ballpark guesstimate. One conclusion is that the fossils can't become much more expensive than they are now, which isn't good news for the environment, because that keeps the incentive for energy savings down. But, as the reply to your post says, it will suppress investments in hard-to-tap fossil fuel retrieval, which would only be profitable at, say, 100$ per barrel. That, and that's the better news for the environment, would mean when the easy-taps dry up, the renewables take over.
To be considered is that if the PV spread continues in a fashion that they're past break-even even with non-full sunshine, there would be an intermittent oversupply that someone might soak up for free. And when all the E-Cars are fully charged, one might get the idea to start with synthesizing fuels. But now we're drifting off in the realm where uni profs on global economy can spend their lifetimes calculating ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:57PM
...if you don't factor in the externalities.
Fracking (use of precious water in California, poisoning of well water, earthquakes); pipeline ruptures; derailments of petroleum trains; oil well blowouts (dead workers, poisoned cleanup workers, poisoned flora and fauna, workers who depend on the ecosystem now out of work); etc.
the low quality hard-to-reach stuff
...and the moonscapes that are left behind when they're finished raping Mother Nature's tar sands.
...not to mention the giant ponds of poisoned water.
-- gewg_