this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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CO2 to syngas to hydrocarbon fuels is probably a better carbon zero process, considering we will need to do a ton of cdr anyway....although doubt energetics and economics would be great. Hydrogen, just like biofuels today are anything but carbon neutral, and efficient electrolysis might never happen. Hydrogen production will also face water shortage issues and in general electrolysis requires pretty low tds water which is not trivial to source...not sure what's best way to get carbon zero airplanes honestly...
i think the important thing to consider is that not EVERYTHING has to emit no carbon… it’s perfectly acceptable (IMO) to make air travel carbon neutral by eg carbon capture, etc… sometimes it’s just not efficient to either carry around carbon neutral but not dense fuel, or capture and carry your waste with you
it’s shit that carbon offset programs have been hijacked :(
This seems to be a key point ppl miss. There is still quiet a big question if cdr and storage can be net negative...for example one place we want to store co2 is in saline basins, but this will require disposal and treatment of the brines removed from the basin...which might emit might end up emmiting as much co2 as ends up being stored in the saline basin. There is a paper on this issue....
If we're able to make hydrocarbon-synthesis from CO2 efficient.... we're still going to need to source the hydrogen somewhere.
But if we do that using electrolysis (with renewables), and are able to create more energy efficient CO2 capturing processes, I could see synthetic hydrocarbons as a viable fuel option in the future. The thing is: They're stupidly good at being stable, energy dense, energy carriers. We also have a lot of infrastructure in place to handle hydrocarbons already.
In principle, synthetic hydrocarbons could be part of a zero-emission cycle, where we capture CO2 and electrolyse hydrogen with renewable energy, and use the hydrocarbons as an energy carrier. But if we go that way, we're definitely going to have to research efficient hydrogen production, and probably storage as well.