Sustainable energy is the key to making the Aircela machine practical and cost-effective. Running it on the grid from coal or natural gas power plants defeats the purpose of removing carbon from the air, and the electricity will cost more, too.
The company themselves even state that this is supposed to be driven by solar/wind, otherwise it makes no sense. This is regular PtX but in SFF for modular small scale deployment.
It treats sustainable energy dedicated to this purpose as “free”, ignoring the opportunity cost of using that energy directly.
For example, let’s say I dedicated my solar exclusively to making gasoline. I could get about 14 gallons a month of “free” gasoline… Except my home power bill would go up about 150 dollars a month… opportunity cost would be over 10 dollars a gallon…
Sure, for a homeowner it doesn’t make sense. But what about at grid scale when there isn’t enough demand for that electricity?
What opportunity cost is there to NOT do it when the power would otherwise be wasted or generation capacity reduced? If anything, I’d say the opportunity cost is of not doing this with over generation on the grid/plant
How much do we have an over generation problem in general though? I suppose the argument would be that solar is curtailed because they don’t want to deal with the potential for overgeneration, but we already have a number of approaches for energy storage. Their pricing for generating at most a gallon a day is a price exceeding a battery system of LFP that could do a lot more than a gallon of gas. This is ignoring the rather significant potential of Sodium batteries.
So this doesn’t look to be cheaper than battery systems, it looks to be way less efficient than battery systems. The biggest use case as energy storage in general seems to be if you want it to spend a few months (but not too many months, fuel degrades in the tank after all). The more narrow use case is to cater to scenarios where you absolutely need the energy density of gasoline, so boats and airplanes critically so, maybe some heavy equipment. I’ll grant that, but if particularly sodium batteries will be an acceptable approach, it’ll be better than this solution in that very wide variety of circumstances.
Carbon dioxide needs to be captured were there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. So especially around cities with lots of car traffic, or around fossil fuel power plants…
So… It would be better to stop car traffic and fossil fuel power plants first, before doing carbon capture. And the purpose of that should be, making the air cleaner. And putting that carbon back into a less environmental damaging state.
The company themselves even state that this is supposed to be driven by solar/wind, otherwise it makes no sense. This is regular PtX but in SFF for modular small scale deployment.
Even then, the value prop is questionable.
It treats sustainable energy dedicated to this purpose as “free”, ignoring the opportunity cost of using that energy directly.
For example, let’s say I dedicated my solar exclusively to making gasoline. I could get about 14 gallons a month of “free” gasoline… Except my home power bill would go up about 150 dollars a month… opportunity cost would be over 10 dollars a gallon…
Sure, for a homeowner it doesn’t make sense. But what about at grid scale when there isn’t enough demand for that electricity?
What opportunity cost is there to NOT do it when the power would otherwise be wasted or generation capacity reduced? If anything, I’d say the opportunity cost is of not doing this with over generation on the grid/plant
How much do we have an over generation problem in general though? I suppose the argument would be that solar is curtailed because they don’t want to deal with the potential for overgeneration, but we already have a number of approaches for energy storage. Their pricing for generating at most a gallon a day is a price exceeding a battery system of LFP that could do a lot more than a gallon of gas. This is ignoring the rather significant potential of Sodium batteries.
So this doesn’t look to be cheaper than battery systems, it looks to be way less efficient than battery systems. The biggest use case as energy storage in general seems to be if you want it to spend a few months (but not too many months, fuel degrades in the tank after all). The more narrow use case is to cater to scenarios where you absolutely need the energy density of gasoline, so boats and airplanes critically so, maybe some heavy equipment. I’ll grant that, but if particularly sodium batteries will be an acceptable approach, it’ll be better than this solution in that very wide variety of circumstances.
Yeah, put these in Iceland, Scotland or the Sahara where there’s virtually unlimited zero-carbon power available and they make a world of sense.
Carbon dioxide needs to be captured were there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. So especially around cities with lots of car traffic, or around fossil fuel power plants…
So… It would be better to stop car traffic and fossil fuel power plants first, before doing carbon capture. And the purpose of that should be, making the air cleaner. And putting that carbon back into a less environmental damaging state.