– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?
In: 439
We do.
You don’t think there are gasoline springs where they just pump it up into a tank do you?
Gasoline found at the pump is a complex blend of various hydrocarbon chains within a certain range of densities, with various additives to work better in modern vehicles.
Oil refineries separate out those weights from the raw crude oil, heavier hydrocarbons get sorted to sets of tanks, lighter to other storage. Depending on market conditions then the heavier chains are chemically reacted to split them into shorter chains and the shorter/lighter chains are catalytically combined into longer chains to make whatever the market is looking for. Fuels, oils, liquified natural gas, whatwever.
That’s a VAST oversimplification but you get the general idea.
It’s not economically viable these days but in WW2 when all Germany had available was natural gas they converted it into diesel fuel.
You can convert coal to natural gas if you prefer, same problem, costs more than plain old regular natural gas from a well so we generally don’t bother.
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