– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?
In: 439
Without any knowledge about the process, I want to add something, what I am about to say applies in general.
To produce a synthetic fuel you first need to put more energy into it that you will get out.
Let’s say the process is 90% efficient, meaning that for every 1 kWh you put in you get 0.9 kWh out.
Now you put that 0.9 kWh into an engine which is about 30-40% efficient (let’s assume 33.3%). From your original 1 kWh you only have 0.3 kWh left as mechanical energy as output of the motor.
What we didn’t consider yet is the transportation of that fuel from the factory to the tank, or the loss in the transmission or any other losses.
So while others here are telling us we ‘could’ do that, the question is what we ‘should’ do with that synthetic fuel.
IMO we ‘should’ only do that if any more efficient option is not available/useful (long distance aviation, transport to/from remote locations, emergency situations like natural catasrophies)
You can, but it’s utterly expensive and ineffective. Gasoline is nothing more than a storage for energy. When you burn it, this energy gets released.
However, to put that energy back into gasoline is not that simple: it’s like playing Jenga. Toppling the tower (and releasing the energy) is easy. Building the tower is hard, especially if you do it without the mold.
You can produce eFuels with wind or solar energy, but you would need 12-20 times more energy to produce eFuels compared to simply store it in any kind of rechargeable battery. Even recycling batteries after first use(*) (which can be done up to 98%, if it weren’t cheaper to simply mine for new minerals) is more energy efficient than producing eFuels.
(*) Almost all large rechargeable batteries have second use applications
The question is then why not use batteries all the way? Because oil is cheap. It’s incredibly cheap. You see the prices at the gas station and think oil is expensive – it isn’t. Oil companies make a fortune every second. Fossil fuels are exempted from taxes in most production processes (only you, the customer, has to pay taxes and you have to come up with almost all of them as you’re the only payer), so for production it’s even cheaper than most people expect. Hence the industry will never move away from it.
The energy stored in fossil fuels has been stored over millions of years. That’s way longer than humans have existed. We released all of that in a matter of two centuries. It’s not a good situation. We couldn’t exist in the conditions before..
Without any knowledge about the process, I want to add something, what I am about to say applies in general.
To produce a synthetic fuel you first need to put more energy into it that you will get out.
Let’s say the process is 90% efficient, meaning that for every 1 kWh you put in you get 0.9 kWh out.
Now you put that 0.9 kWh into an engine which is about 30-40% efficient (let’s assume 33.3%). From your original 1 kWh you only have 0.3 kWh left as mechanical energy as output of the motor.
What we didn’t consider yet is the transportation of that fuel from the factory to the tank, or the loss in the transmission or any other losses.
So while others here are telling us we ‘could’ do that, the question is what we ‘should’ do with that synthetic fuel.
IMO we ‘should’ only do that if any more efficient option is not available/useful (long distance aviation, transport to/from remote locations, emergency situations like natural catasrophies)
Yes we can but it currently is not economically viable. Last I saw it was 10x the cost of oil derived petrol.
Formula 1 is heavily invested in producing viable, affordable synthetic fuel for racing for the 2026 season, which will eventually filter down to road cars. The main benefit as others have said is that you’re capturing carbon from the atmosphere and re-releasing it, instead of releasing carbon that has been stored away for millions of years.
Edit: spelling
You can and companies are. Companies are moving toward utilizing bio-resources to create synthetic fuel like SAF for airplanes. This is a win-win since the carbon emissions are lower and the fuel is “sustainable” since you can produce more by growing more algae or converting waste into fuel.
Yes we can but it currently is not economically viable. Last I saw it was 10x the cost of oil derived petrol.
Formula 1 is heavily invested in producing viable, affordable synthetic fuel for racing for the 2026 season, which will eventually filter down to road cars. The main benefit as others have said is that you’re capturing carbon from the atmosphere and re-releasing it, instead of releasing carbon that has been stored away for millions of years.
Edit: spelling
We can, but there is one problem: producing gasoline takes a lot of energy which is then stored inside it until you burn it. Now think about how we use the gasoline that we just dig up and purify to use its energy to power cars and all sorts of other things and how we struggle to replace that energy with other sources.
You can and companies are. Companies are moving toward utilizing bio-resources to create synthetic fuel like SAF for airplanes. This is a win-win since the carbon emissions are lower and the fuel is “sustainable” since you can produce more by growing more algae or converting waste into fuel.
South Africa actually synthesises a lot of their gasoline from coal, but it is extremely energy intensive and is only profitable in an environment where global oil prices are high and you have an ample supply of low cost coal or natural gas.
We can, but there is one problem: producing gasoline takes a lot of energy which is then stored inside it until you burn it. Now think about how we use the gasoline that we just dig up and purify to use its energy to power cars and all sorts of other things and how we struggle to replace that energy with other sources.
Latest Answers