another article written in plain english that explains the difficulties in producing synthetic fuels. i didn't tag this onto the battery thread since it's a completely different subject.

i'm just trying to be factual here. no political or pro/anti-science agenda.

[arstechnica.com]

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

we're told we're denying party line science & we're just being political.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

The math certainly works, because it's been proven since the 40s.
Germany fueled all of its armament during WWII with synthetic fuel made from Coal (which they had plenty of).
Porsche's eFuel technology came from that refined process of coal-to-gasoline that was used by South Africa since the war.
The eFuel is real, and it works.
What doesn't work is the infrastructure (power grid) that the world relies on.
That's the first step in a renovation, it there will ever be one.
Hopefully the bigwigs realize this before we have a catastrophic power grid failure worldwide.
Happy Porsche'ing,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

synthetic fuel is certainly more than we're even paying now w/the intentional raising of our fossil fuel prices. Though if they're eventually to ban fossil fuels for autos, which seems to be their determined desire, I'll gladly pay $7.00/gal, if that's all I can get.

Noticed in the article the author mentioned the existing electric infrastructure won't allow for mass E-fuel production. That same limitation applies to a future of electric vehicles. Since our government is balls to the wall on electric as "the solution", submit production of E-fuels will never be allowed if it begins to threaten the claimed electric vehicle revolution.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2023 11:18AM by John Brown of SE SoDak. (view changes)

If they were going to do that, they would have had to begin big time by now. No, the end game is actually about much fewer people owning & driving personal vehicles of any kind.

They'll let us know which of us are sufficiently special to have one.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2023 11:38AM by John Brown of SE SoDak. (view changes)

Is there an agenda? Sure.

Will that agenda fail once the facts come in? We will see.

But Americans are not giving up individual transport unless something substantially better comes along.

the germans may have proven the technological possibilities but there is no doubt that the math was even worse back then. laws of physics are laws, not suggestions. as i've mentioned before, the law of conservation of energy states that you cannot create or destroy energy. you can only change it from one form to another and those transformations are inherently inefficient.

the point of the "math" part is simply that the amount of energy required to transform hydrogen and carbon into a hydrocarbon is much greater than the resulting hydrocarbon (syn-fuel.)

so why not just use the energy to charge batteries in the first place?

of course, geography matters. if your source of energy is thousands of miles from where you need to use it, electricity doesn't work well. if you need energy at night then solar can't provide it. no wind? no juice from the wind farm. so yeah, if the synfuel is produced from renewable energy far from where it will be used, it can be stored and transported.

there's no question that synfuel "works" from a technical perspective. that is fairly straightforward physics and chemistry. now if we had an unlimited supply of energy then it would be a no brainer but we don't so the question becomes how do we use the finite energy that we have (or can produce)?

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

The reason I say the math works is for existing ICE cars that want to keep using their vehicles with extremely low carbon footprints.
It isn't implied that eFuel will compete with electric or hydrogen powered cars. It's a stop-gap.
when netted out, eFuel is actually a very good alternative. Not only do the emissions drop dramatically, but also in its production CO2 is scrubbed from the atmosphere.
Finally Porsche hasn't intended to make eFuel grid-dependent. They have stated that they intend to produce it with renewable (mostly wind) sources.
Things may change, but that's how it's been till now.
Happy eFueling,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

We just don't (yet) have the technology or the scale to make it happen.

The idea is simple: if you create fuel from carbon you capture from the atmosphere AND you use renewable energy to turn that into combustible fuel THEN you have carbon-neutral fuel.

In many developed countries, the price of renewable energy is already lower than the price of non-renewable energy.

We can do this. The technology is still progressing. We're not there yet but we will get there.

As an aside, the statement "most battery-electric vehicles run at over 85 percent efficiency" is very misleading. It doesn't take into account most of the energy losses associated with manufacturing the car, generating and transporting the energy, charging the battery, and recycling electric cars.