Quote:
Originally Posted by kmav23
was talking about a 100% synthetic fuel as a mainstream replacement for fuel in cars.
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To be fair, I think there is merit in urban areas running on electric, so long as the power that provides the movement is renewable and the cost of infrastructure to support the energy change does not bankrupt the nation. For the vast distances of this country, diesel is still important. Hence the post showing Fischer Tropsch, which the Germans and South Africans were successful with. Brazil has cane for ethanol (we have a little here & honestly it's better to burn sugar in an engine mmmm chocolate) and the US uses corn. We have a metric asston of CNG and this would make sense powering our vehicle fleet. But we sold it for 3c a litre?
It's going to take multiple avenues to solve replacing oil, if indeed peak production is occuring.
Peak
easily accessible oil with a high EROEI is probably more the topic. Fully synthetic crude has been done, made from algae on more than one occasion. But it's expensive...
This link is very interesting too, the USN turning seawater into jet fuel:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/en...els-_n_5113822
I know for our household, the first commuter EV hatch in that 20K to 25K range and I'll be switching over to that. Purely economic reasons. I have the solar, waiting for the batteries to get to a 4 year payoff time, and then same with car, if fuel costs 5K a year the car will pay off in 4 if 20K.
If everyone like me did this however (prob going to happen) - what happens to the lithium deposits? They will get into 'peak' before too long so it is not a long term replacement. It takes aeons to accumulate the stuff in brine in special geological situations (sound familiar?). We better hope graphene comes along quickly.
How do EVs go in solar flares?
Edit: adds two better links on the jet fuel from seawater:
http://www.altenergy.org/new_energy/...-jet-fuel.html
https://www.treehugger.com/renewable...-seawater.html