The Haru Oni plant will scale up from 34,000 gallons to 14.5 million gallons by 2024:
This week, a Chilean startup called Highly Innovative Fuels officially opened its first synthetic gasoline production facility. HIF was created to run the new plant, which is the result of a collaboration between the automaker Porsche, Siemens Energy, Exxon Mobil, Enel Green Power, the Chilean state energy company ENAP, and Empresas Gasco. Initially, the site will produce around 34,000 gallons (130,000 L) a year, scaling up to 14.5 million gallons (55 million L) a year by 2024, with plans to increase that tenfold to 145 million gallons (550 million L) a year by 2026. The first gasoline produced by the plant was used to ceremonially fill a Porsche 911, a task performed by Chile's energy minister, Diego Pardow.
[...] The site, located in Punta Arenas in Southern Chile, will use wind to power the process—the area sees high winds roughly 270 days a year, and a wind turbine can expect to produce up to four times as much energy as one in Europe, according to Frenkel.
[...] As Steiner explained, the efuel plant will use wind power to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then combined with carbon captured from the air or industrial sources to synthesize methanol, which in turn can then be converted into longer hydrocarbons to be used as fuel. The synthetic efuel is a direct drop-in for pump gasoline, and initially Porsche will take all the site's production and use it to run its one-make Porsche Supercup race series as well as using it to fuel vehicles at its Porsche Experience Centers around the world. (These are locations where one can go and test a number of different Porsches.)
HIF has long-term plans to build out 12 synthetic fuel plants around the world, including locations in the US and Australia, with a goal of each site capturing 2 million metric tons of CO2 per year. "Without any doubt, there are a lot of regions all around the world where you have potential of really high-efficient windmills or photovoltaic or even hydropower to get green energy," Steiner said.
[...] The synthetic efuel won't be exactly cheap—Steiner thinks at current prices it works out to around $8 per gallon ($2/L), although that obviously doesn't include any taxes or duties, which make up most of the price of fuel in most regions around the world. But it's an important project, given that there are more than 1.3 billion combustion engine vehicles operating on roads globally today, and with the best will in the world, those aren't all going to be replaced by electric vehicles any time soon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Thursday December 22, @11:20AM (11 children)
I think improving this technology is a *far* more viable solution than electrifying everything. This would be much cleaner and more sustainable than trying to replace everything with resource intensive, toxic, and volumetrically inefficient batteries.
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(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday December 22, @12:27PM (10 children)
Efficiency. ~20% at the internal combustion engine and ~30% from wind to methanol for a total ~6%. I am absolutely at loss what's wrong with using methanol as a fuel instead of converting it once more (no less than 30% loss).;
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 22, @02:25PM (6 children)
They wanted a "drop in gasoline replacement". That's not methanol.
OTOH, 6% efficiency for the fuel is pretty bad. If that can't improve that substantially, this technology won't go anywhere.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by vux984 on Thursday December 22, @08:28PM
It won't go anywhere for your daily commuter car for the foreseeable future.
It might still have a future in other areas where efficiency isn't really a consideration.
A 6% efficiency is only bad if energy isn't abundunt and plentiful; if we reach a point where electricity is abundant, clean, and cheap; then efficiency isn't necessarily very important. Obviously you still want more efficiency, but it may not be the most important factor. Especially to the enthusiasts buying a Porsche.
It might even exceed the cleanliness of battery electric vehicles; given that the manufacture & disposal and recycling of batteries is currently very dirty. Honestly, it would be pretty funny if that were the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22, @09:01PM
> They wanted a "drop in gasoline replacement". That's not methanol.
It could be...if Porsche made flex-fuel vehicles. I don't think Porsche (VW) do, but there are millions of them out there now-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible-fuel_vehicle [wikipedia.org]
Most are currently gasoline/ethanol, but the wiki article mentions gasoline/methanol as well.
Given the low vapor pressure of methanol, it might be easier to start engines that still used some fraction gasoline, blended with the methanol.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 22, @09:54PM (3 children)
It's for Porsche, 30% of their customers (the BEST 30%) really won't care if their fuel is $50 per gallon. Isn't euro-gasoline pushing 12 euros per liter already?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Friday December 23, @08:31AM (2 children)
> Isn't euro-gasoline pushing 12 euros per liter already?
Hey, I live in EU. It is 2 euro at worst.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 23, @02:14PM
That's impressive inflation control, it was over $1 per liter when I was there 22-23 years ago...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 23, @02:18PM
Correction: over $1 per liter 32-33 years ago... Time flies.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22, @07:17PM
What's the efficiency of drilling, refining, transporting crude oil into gasoline?
"Efficiency" should be measured by human effort required to accomplish a task.. For example, harvesting rainwater should be more efficient than desalination. Let nature do the work
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday December 22, @09:39PM
IIRCC the issue with using methanol directly was it burned cooler than petrol so an engine designed for petrol would be even less efficient. Also the air:fuel ratio was markedly different and require resetting the carburator/injection system so it couldn't be used as a direct drop in. And the alcohol would dry out rubber fuel lines so those needed to be replaced at every step from production to the engine. Lots of hidden costs.
The synthfuel this method generates is a direct drop in for petrol so effectively zero refitting costs on the existing infrastructure. And since it is made with renewable energy sources, "free energy", the energy lost due to conversion inefficiencies is easy to ignore. Would using the windmills to charge batteries be more efficient, yes, but right now a carbon neutral fuel to stop fossil Carbon from being added to the air is a good way to go. We can always redirect the electricity into the grid later for EVs, for now it makes normal ICE cars carbon neutral at zero additional cost to the consumers
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 23, @04:12AM
It'll be less than 30%. Converting fuels into other fuels is better efficiency than breaking a strongly bound stable molecule like water into its reactive components (which is something in the 30% loss ballpark).
As to the overall energy efficiency, it just needs to be good enough to deliver car-ready fuel at a similar price to delivering fossil fuel. Not great in say Texas, but could work well, if the region is remote from refineries (like just outside Yellowstone National Park where a premium of $1 to $1.50 per gallon are common.
If wind power gets real cheap, this could be competitive in a lot of windy places.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday December 22, @12:30PM (5 children)
The factory produces 14.5 millions gallons * 6 equals about 87 millions pounds of gasoline, but world consumption is
673.73 millions tons * 2204.623 equals 1485320.653 millions of pound of gasoline.
This plant will produce 0.00005857 of total world gasoline consumption.
Now the real question: How many such plants do you need for sustaining current level of gasoline consumption?
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday December 22, @01:08PM (2 children)
According to your calculation: 17073 plants.
Which I think is a surprisingly low number. Are the initial assumptions correct? The other surprisingly low number was that a liter of output supposedly costs around $2. This would be a completely feasible cost vs. dino juice, especially if externalities are priced in. But, one thing they did a little too much handwaving about was how they get the CO2 in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday December 22, @04:41PM (1 child)
Another advantage is that countries without their own oil supply don't have to be dependent on third parties for liquid fuels.
If my understanding is correct, all you need is electricity and CO2 to produce this renewable fuel, so the plant only need to be near to a source of energy (if you capture CO2 from the air as it can). It can be renewable energy, or it can be the waste energy and CO2 from other industrial processes. In effect you could place this plant in any light to heavy industrial area really.
In fact during WWII, Germany had no oil of its own, so it did a huge amount of R&D into synthetic fuel production, and had a lot of "at scale" plants that produced fuels for its military. However it was much more expensive than naturally produced oil, so it was all shut down after hostilities ended (plus a lot of the plants were targeted for bombing, in order to cripple the military).
So in some ways this is just a return to form for Germany, except that rather it being war as the main driver, it is the drive towards renewable fuels instead.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 22, @06:38PM
Also water - that tends to often be a limiting factor in many technologies - though if that recent Chinese announcement of a way to electrolyze seawater with no efficiency loss compared to pure water pans out that could be a game changer - brackish water tends to be far more widely available.
Renewable energy is actually a perfect candidate for synfuel generation, since production and consumption happen at different times anyway - essentially the fuel *is* the battery. Also a great use for consuming off-peak nuclear power - no sense throttling down the reactor if there's still a good use for the power. The fuel is cheap compared to the reactor, and constantly running it at full capacity pays down the capital costs that much faster.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday December 22, @06:31PM
It's a pilot plant with a new process. There's nothing to say that in another decade they couldn't produce 1000 times that per plant.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 22, @09:56PM
Porsches drive less than 0.00005857 of total road passenger miles and haul barely any cargo at all....
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Thursday December 22, @03:43PM (1 child)
It's great that we finally have a pilot plant to test the economics and viability of something I've been recommending [soylentnews.org] for a while [soylentnews.org] now.
Now for those who kvetch that there will need to be tens of thousands of such facilities, I would point out that there are around 140 oil refineries in USA alone, and that there are more than 100 countries in the world, so if the technology succeeds, the scaling is not impossible.
In related news, I'm still waiting for Elon to award me my XPRIZE [soylentnews.org].
--
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23, @12:00AM
Maybe you'll get a free year of Twitter Blue instead.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Thursday December 22, @03:55PM
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche