– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?
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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. After the 1970s energy crisis New Zealand built a synthetic gasoline plant to improve its fuel security, supplied by a very large and recently developed offshore gas field.
But the process is quite inefficient (it’s very nergy intensive), so the end product was not competitive with conventional fuel (or just using the methane feedstock in non-automotive applications) . The plant was eventually converted to make industrial methanol.
If you really want to use methane to fuel cars today, it’s much more efficient (ie cheaper) to generate power with it, and use that to charge electric vehicles.
You can also do the same with CO2 and water, but that’s even more energy intensive, so mostly a curiosity at present unless you have something with a lot of non-carbon energy (most likely solar or nuclear), far away from normal supply routes, and a very pressing need for lots of fuel – so the most immediate applications are things like expeditionary tank battalions and carrier air wings (no surprise then the US military is strongly supporting this research ).
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.
You can. After the 1970s energy crisis New Zealand built a synthetic gasoline plant to improve its fuel security, supplied by a very large and recently developed offshore gas field.
But the process is quite inefficient (it’s very nergy intensive), so the end product was not competitive with conventional fuel (or just using the methane feedstock in non-automotive applications) . The plant was eventually converted to make industrial methanol.
If you really want to use methane to fuel cars today, it’s much more efficient (ie cheaper) to generate power with it, and use that to charge electric vehicles.
You can also do the same with CO2 and water, but that’s even more energy intensive, so mostly a curiosity at present unless you have something with a lot of non-carbon energy (most likely solar or nuclear), far away from normal supply routes, and a very pressing need for lots of fuel – so the most immediate applications are things like expeditionary tank battalions and carrier air wings (no surprise then the US military is strongly supporting this research ).
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.
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.
You can. After the 1970s energy crisis New Zealand built a synthetic gasoline plant to improve its fuel security, supplied by a very large and recently developed offshore gas field.
But the process is quite inefficient (it’s very nergy intensive), so the end product was not competitive with conventional fuel (or just using the methane feedstock in non-automotive applications) . The plant was eventually converted to make industrial methanol.
If you really want to use methane to fuel cars today, it’s much more efficient (ie cheaper) to generate power with it, and use that to charge electric vehicles.
You can also do the same with CO2 and water, but that’s even more energy intensive, so mostly a curiosity at present unless you have something with a lot of non-carbon energy (most likely solar or nuclear), far away from normal supply routes, and a very pressing need for lots of fuel – so the most immediate applications are things like expeditionary tank battalions and carrier air wings (no surprise then the US military is strongly supporting this research ).
We can, gasoline is just a mixture of hydrocarbons that have specific chemical attributes (octane and Vapor pressure).Through polymerization and hydrogenation of biofuels, you could make an almost identical product.
Your competition is heating up a liquid that readily available (eg refining crude oil). So there isn’t a big cost advantage to this.
We are. Porsche opened a facility in Chile where they take CO2 from the atmosphere and hydrogen via water through electrolysis and synthesize the hydrocarbon compound that composes gasoline.
The facility is small and it costs are high, but costs are hoping to go down if they expand their facilities as well as if demand declines via electrification.
It’s going to be impossible to go 100% EV. I’m all-for electrification, but that’s just a fact. Commercial vehicles at the very least still need hydrocarbon fuel to operate.
We can, gasoline is just a mixture of hydrocarbons that have specific chemical attributes (octane and Vapor pressure).Through polymerization and hydrogenation of biofuels, you could make an almost identical product.
Your competition is heating up a liquid that readily available (eg refining crude oil). So there isn’t a big cost advantage to this.
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