This may be a bit off topic but I don’t think too far.
The Telegraph is reporting today about a British Company, Air Fuel Synthesis, that is creating synthetic gasoline (petrol) in the following way.
The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before electrolysing” the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.
Hydrogen is then produced by electrolysing water vapour captured with a dehumidifier.
The company, Air Fuel Synthesis, then uses the carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methanol which in turn is passed through a gasoline fuel reactor, creating petrol.
I’m not predicting that this one company is ready to solve the world’s energy crisis — they are a small organization and have created only five litres of gasoline in three months — however, I think this kind of innovation is what we might be able to expect if we can generate lots of cheap energy.
The process mentioned above involved electrolysis, which of course will require electricity, and lots of it if production of fuel using a process like this is carried out on a large scale. This is but one example of a useful technology that might become viable if E-Cat/LENR rectors can make possible cheap and abundant electricity generation (Rossi’s ‘Tesla’ dream).
As far as synthetic gasoline goes, even if cold fusion hits the mainstream, we have billions of vehicles throughout the world that will still require gasoline to run — and it’s likely that it would take decades to transition to automobiles running on new forms of energy, so solutions like this that use new technologies to create synthetic fuels could be very important.
