Scientists make rocket fuel from sunlight

Gilligan

Gilligan

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The gas is then compressed and sent to Shell, where it is converted into a hydrocarbon fuel similar to conventional kerosene.
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I'd love to see the energy balance for the whole process.
 
b23hqb

b23hqb

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Cool technology. Just the threat of that development becoming commercial should send chills down the backs of Russia and the oil nations of the mid-east and Venezuela. Should bode well for the west, though. We can have the best of both worlds.
 
Gilligan

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b23hqb said:
Just the threat of that development becoming commercial should send chills down the backs of Russia and the oil nations of the mid-east and Venezuela. Should bode well for the west, though. We can have the best of both worlds.
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I can't see that happening. At first glance, the energy balance for this process appears to be at least as unfavorable as that for hydrogen, where we can only recover about 25% of the energy from using the hydrogen that we spent to create it in the first place. Scientifically interesting....but of very limited practical use and certainly far, far from being an "alternative energy" source.
 
GURPS

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Gilligan said:
where we can only recover about 25% of the energy from using the hydrogen that we spent to create it in the first place.
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besides paying for the solar infrastructure ..... sun light is free :shrug:

but yeah, it is like Ethanol a negative result
 
Gilligan

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GURPS said:
besides paying for the solar infrastructure ..... sun light is free :shrug:
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Back when I was designing a hybrid power system for an offshore island, I ran across a tech article about a university project where they used solar energy as their primary power source for some kind of greenhouse facility. They designed excess solar capacity in to it, so that on many days, the extra power was available and used to crack water and make hydrogen, which was stored in tanks. Then, at night, the hydrogen was used to power fuel cells and create electricity.

Very cool; practically 100% renewable energy and self-sufficient. And very low power output..and very expensive...and very extensive..and... Some of those systems make for great "science projects". Practical?...not for a very long time yet.
 
SamSpade

SamSpade

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Larry Gude said:
Why is this news? The sun has been making oil and gas for, oh, a few billion years...
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Timeframe. The Earth has been making oil out of algae for years too, but we're really not interested in the process if it takes a couple hundred million years.
 
Larry Gude

Larry Gude

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SamSpade said:
Timeframe. The Earth has been making oil out of algae for years too, but we're really not interested in the process if it takes a couple hundred million years.
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I have never gotten a good answer to this:

How much oil does the earth make per, say, year? Is it a relatively consistent number?

I have read where old, abandoned wells have oil in them again. I've also read that most of the oil we recovered before fracking was, essentially, 5% of what was in a given well.

I've had one person pass it off as "yeah, the earth makes new oil all the time but, nowhere near keeping up with what we use". No specifics, just a dismissive "I see where you're trying to go with this" answer.

I've never bought this peak oil crap.
 
GWguy

GWguy

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Larry Gude said:
I have never gotten a good answer to this:

How much oil does the earth make per, say, year? Is it a relatively consistent number?

I have read where old, abandoned wells have oil in them again. I've also read that most of the oil we recovered before fracking was, essentially, 5% of what was in a given well.

I've had one person pass it off as "yeah, the earth makes new oil all the time but, nowhere near keeping up with what we use". No specifics, just a dismissive "I see where you're trying to go with this" answer.

I've never bought this peak oil crap.
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I thought the oil that is here now was formed long ago and we are only now using it. No new oil is being made, which is why there is a finite amount and we run out. Old dry wells probably get seepage from surrounding soil leaching back towards the wells.

But I'm not a geologist.
 
Gilligan

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Larry Gude said:
I have read where old, abandoned wells have oil in them again. I've also read that most of the oil we recovered before fracking was, essentially, 5% of what was in a given well.
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Actually..it's a batch of newer drilling technologies that are making it profitable/feasible to return to old wells and fields to extract additional oil. Fracking is only one of them. The field in Texas that I own a part of is being re-opened simply because of the potential from the new drilling techniques, especially laterals. Funny thing is (funny to me anyway), the oil they are going after this time around is much shallower down than the first wells put in the same property around 1900.
 
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