Porsche E-Fuel?
Discussion
"No pollution"? er no.
Yes, Synthetic fuels could provide some solution to applications that MUST have an energy storage system with a high specific density (ie aeroplanes for example) and if that fuel is synthesised from a low carbon source (carbon capture for example, or bio-produce) then that fuel does have a lower impact that using a fossil fuel. But it is NOT zero pollution and it remains significantly higher overall polluter because of the intrinsically low thermal/mechanical efficiency and mono-directionality of the energy to power conversion process (Reciprocating piston engine or jet engine for example), which no matter how you run it, is incapable of "filling the tank back up" as you slow down!
This is much less of an issue for aircraft, which already recover 100% of their potential energy by dint of simply gliding (exchanging potential energy for kinetic) and tend to fly at a reasonably constant speed so the only kinetic energy they loose is mostly that converted to heat in the brakes on landing (The vast majority of the energy is used to simply overcome drag). And a modern jet engine is pretty efficient for a heat engine.
This is why i think we will see a demand for sythetic fuels for aviation, that means they are simply not available for the bulk of passenger car useage. Yes, you will almost certainly in 2121 be able to keep that classic, 100 year old porsche 992 series 911 on the road with some costly specially purchased sythetic petrol, but that will be as much an exception as those people putting coal into their Steam Traction Engine is today!
Yes, Synthetic fuels could provide some solution to applications that MUST have an energy storage system with a high specific density (ie aeroplanes for example) and if that fuel is synthesised from a low carbon source (carbon capture for example, or bio-produce) then that fuel does have a lower impact that using a fossil fuel. But it is NOT zero pollution and it remains significantly higher overall polluter because of the intrinsically low thermal/mechanical efficiency and mono-directionality of the energy to power conversion process (Reciprocating piston engine or jet engine for example), which no matter how you run it, is incapable of "filling the tank back up" as you slow down!
This is much less of an issue for aircraft, which already recover 100% of their potential energy by dint of simply gliding (exchanging potential energy for kinetic) and tend to fly at a reasonably constant speed so the only kinetic energy they loose is mostly that converted to heat in the brakes on landing (The vast majority of the energy is used to simply overcome drag). And a modern jet engine is pretty efficient for a heat engine.
This is why i think we will see a demand for sythetic fuels for aviation, that means they are simply not available for the bulk of passenger car useage. Yes, you will almost certainly in 2121 be able to keep that classic, 100 year old porsche 992 series 911 on the road with some costly specially purchased sythetic petrol, but that will be as much an exception as those people putting coal into their Steam Traction Engine is today!
GT6k said:
There appear to be a number of potential e fuels being talked about all of them seem to have a common bade similar composition being mainly snake oil.
Snake oil? Bosch is snake oil, is it?What's your agenda? Got some Tesla shares, have we?
SHCF is likely to be part of the fuel mix in the future - the problem is relative amount of energy required to produce it compared to simply running vehicles using electricity directly, which is why it's likely to find itself being used primarily in aviation or shipping where high-density storage is critical.
The bit that Max conveniently ignores is that SHCF negates the requirement for a hugely carbon-intensive battery to be manufactured. It'll be interesting, for instance, to see how many Lotus Evija get driven far enough to offset their embodied carbon dioxide and, if they do, quite how many years it takes...
I'm not sure why anyone would be against the proliferation of SHCF unless they're some kind of ridiculous EV-stan. As a petrol head, I hope it does mean I get to run a nearly carbon-neutral V8 classic into the future. However, most average-mileage, non-petrol heads need to be shuffled into a generic EV crossover as soon as possible.
Its not an agenda its science. Whilst there is a carbon emission/cycle thing its the act of burning fuel that is going to be the problem. For instance, the most obvious route to go down would be hydrogen as it can be burned in an ICE engine with relatively little modification and as electricity becomes the dominant energy conveyor a fuel that can readily be converted in either direction is going to be advantageous. The problem is that burning any fuel, even hydrogen, in and ICE produces pollutants (NOx). That can be mitigated but there is not going to be the political will to ease NOx restrictions just because it doesn't emit CO2. Its a bit like banning smoking , once you get rid of most of the smokers any amount of tobacco smell sticks out like a sore thumb.
The reason I think this is all snake oil is I don't see petrol and diesel dying out. If nothing else its going to be produced for free as a byproduct of the petrol chemical industry which is not going to go away, whatever the eco lobby thinks. I was involved in a research exercise on novel fuels several years ago which highlighted some really good candidates for certain applications, but there was no way they were going to be of any commercial or technical use in sports cars.
The reason I think this is all snake oil is I don't see petrol and diesel dying out. If nothing else its going to be produced for free as a byproduct of the petrol chemical industry which is not going to go away, whatever the eco lobby thinks. I was involved in a research exercise on novel fuels several years ago which highlighted some really good candidates for certain applications, but there was no way they were going to be of any commercial or technical use in sports cars.
NDNDNDND said:
The bit that Max conveniently ignores is that SHCF negates the requirement for a hugely carbon-intensive battery to be manufactured. It'll be interesting, for instance, to see how many Lotus Evija get driven far enough to offset their embodied carbon dioxide and, if they do, quite how many years it takes...
.
er, i'm not conviently "ignoring" anything..
Facts:
1) Battery manufacture is not fundamentally "high carbon". In fact, being a mainly low temperature process that only requires low powers and process it is fundamentally a LOW carbon solution. Today, current battry manifacture is (eroneously) generally called high carbon simply because the manufacturing processes are not powered by renewables (they can easily be done so, because unlike say an electric arc furnace requied to melt metal, they do not require many MW worth of power) and because the limited geographic locations of the manufacturing sites and limited geographic locations of the raw materal sites are not co-located. As recycling of the battery materials becomes more prevalent, the overheads from battery manifacture fall dramatically (remember a battery does NOT consume the materials from which it is made!, so recycling is very viable (just like it is with the conventional lead acid battery that's been in your car for over 100 years now)
2) The efficiency of the end user, in terms of kWh per mile is critical, because this is what is then leveraged through the "gain" of the system of manufactuer and supply to the OVERALL energy consumption. So even if batteries were higher carbon (and i'm going to suggest that they are not) then using an ICE to burn a sythetic fuel is catastrophically weighted by the fact the end user requires around 3 to 4 times more energy for the same useage, and so ultimately, irrespective of the process by which that energy is managed, the final overhead will be greater. Sythetic fuels are not bi-directional, an engine runing such a fuel cannot fill the tank back up when it slows down, unlike for a electric traction motor and battery. In the real world, this penalty is enormous abnd inescapable.
You mention a niche case like the Lotus Evija, which is irrelavent, as i could simply mention any number of ICE powered super cars all of which have a massively higher footprint (like oh a Ferrari 812 superfast, which has an offical fuel 'economy' of 19 mpg (340 g/km)!!! And of course, if you wanted too, you could simply scrap your brand new Evija and use it's battery in a second life application straight away (or after you bin it into a lamppost) and effectively negate it's overhead that way!
Like Hydrogen, synthetic fuels have their place but it's not in passenger cars........
jjwilde said:
E-Fuel sounds even worse than hydrogen.
It has a significant advantage in that as a reasonably low volitility liquid, an E-FUEL mainly just sits in the bucket you poured it into, rather than trying to escape BETWEEN the molecules of the container its in, or needing to be compressed, chilled, or captured by some clever material in order to simply not float away into space!Max_Torque said:
jjwilde said:
E-Fuel sounds even worse than hydrogen.
It has a significant advantage in that as a reasonably low volitility liquid, an E-FUEL mainly just sits in the bucket you poured it into, rather than trying to escape BETWEEN the molecules of the container its in, or needing to be compressed, chilled, or captured by some clever material in order to simply not float away into space!
Like the sound of this e fuel. An EV-only future would be very depressing.
GT6k said:
There appear to be a number of potential e fuels being talked about all of them seem to have a common bade similar composition being mainly snake oil.
This option is described on the Porsche website. Porsche does not deal in snake oil. In my opinion, which I know few in this particular part of the forum share, electric vehicles, apart from milk floats and some possibly automated city centre Boris Bubble cars are a complete white elephant, which will among other things finally see the end of JLR. The cynical view is Porsche are just green-washing their motorsport endeavours so they can carry on playing with a clear conscience. You did see that they will only have about 120000l by the time they start using it? That's about 3 Tesco tankers worth (road tankers, not ships).
A less cynical view wold be that this sort of fuel does have a place for the immediate future as it is less damaging than simply burning oil that came from the Mesozoic. I would like to see an honest assessment of how much less damaging it is, as I worry it's just pandering to the die-hards.
EV a white elephant? Can't share that view I'm afraid - way too much momentum now. BEV, maybe, or rather, current B tech BEV, but EV is such a compelling solution to the efficiency problems of ICE, and as has been pointed out more than once by people who know more about this than me, that's what ultimately drives it all, as efficiency = money.
A less cynical view wold be that this sort of fuel does have a place for the immediate future as it is less damaging than simply burning oil that came from the Mesozoic. I would like to see an honest assessment of how much less damaging it is, as I worry it's just pandering to the die-hards.
EV a white elephant? Can't share that view I'm afraid - way too much momentum now. BEV, maybe, or rather, current B tech BEV, but EV is such a compelling solution to the efficiency problems of ICE, and as has been pointed out more than once by people who know more about this than me, that's what ultimately drives it all, as efficiency = money.
Max_Torque said:
It has a significant advantage in that as a reasonably low volitility liquid, an E-FUEL mainly just sits in the bucket you poured it into, rather than trying to escape BETWEEN the molecules of the container its in, or needing to be compressed, chilled, or captured by some clever material in order to simply not float away into space!
It sounds as though it would require huge amounts of energy to produce it though, hydrogen does at least have the argument it does not locally pollute, what is the situation with what comes out of the tail pipe of this efuel, I can't find out much about it, it does seem rather snake oil-ish just on that basis.Even the wiki page seems to offer no real data.
'Magic clean petrol' just sounds like green wash.
If this is real I want the same experiment I always ask for, they lie down behind their running Efuel car in a sealed room for a few hours and we see what happens.
Edited by jjwilde on Thursday 25th February 11:23
The point that they don't want to emphasise is that these e-fuels aren't zero emission, they are reduced emission...not because you don't get CO2 etc out the exhaust but because it's a process of growing the hydrocarbon and capturing CO2 from atmosphere in the process, refining it, then burning it. But that isn't going to be a hugely efficient process I don't think.
It's a lot of years since I did any chemistry, but apart from 2H2 + O2 > 2H20 + heat, I can't think of any other internal combustion fuel that doesn't make CO, CO2 etc as an output. Even burning pure H2 in an ICE is going to make NOx because of course they don't run on pure O2.
It all smacks of greenwashing, sleight of hand and downplaying the inconvenient. I don't like that in any area, including battery production. We need to be told the entire story, not just some attention grabbing headline to try and mislead, and that's a damned shame, because there could well be a place for these fuels for quite some time. As long as they are done right that is.
Sadly, we are fighting some very powerful, very entrenched industry players who simply do not want to change, no matter what the consequences. Every single day the oil industry can carry on as they are earns them another $400M (97M barrels a day, 7% net profit, $60 a barrel). Why the hell would they stop that for anything or anyone???
I often wonder why I even give a stuff about this actually. I have nothing invested in the future (no kids), I'm of an age that there will still be plenty of petrol around while I still want it, and yet, I seem to care more about the impact on the environment than many who I would have thought might be more inclined to worry about the world they are leaving for their offspring?
It's a lot of years since I did any chemistry, but apart from 2H2 + O2 > 2H20 + heat, I can't think of any other internal combustion fuel that doesn't make CO, CO2 etc as an output. Even burning pure H2 in an ICE is going to make NOx because of course they don't run on pure O2.
It all smacks of greenwashing, sleight of hand and downplaying the inconvenient. I don't like that in any area, including battery production. We need to be told the entire story, not just some attention grabbing headline to try and mislead, and that's a damned shame, because there could well be a place for these fuels for quite some time. As long as they are done right that is.
Sadly, we are fighting some very powerful, very entrenched industry players who simply do not want to change, no matter what the consequences. Every single day the oil industry can carry on as they are earns them another $400M (97M barrels a day, 7% net profit, $60 a barrel). Why the hell would they stop that for anything or anyone???
I often wonder why I even give a stuff about this actually. I have nothing invested in the future (no kids), I'm of an age that there will still be plenty of petrol around while I still want it, and yet, I seem to care more about the impact on the environment than many who I would have thought might be more inclined to worry about the world they are leaving for their offspring?
Here's a good write-up from Siemens:
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/maga...
It does seem to have a lot going for it.
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/maga...
It does seem to have a lot going for it.
It looks....seductive, which is a bit of a concern to me. In some ways, it really could be a good stepping stone to a better endpoint. My worry is it just maintains the status quo for ICE etc, and it does nothing about emissions at point of use, even if the whole cycle emissions are dramatically reduced over just burning oil out of the ground.
Starting with something that has such a shocking efficiency (H2 production) seems less than ideal too. Each stage in the process is going to cost energy and efficiency - wonder what the whole end-to-end numbers look like?
Still, again, better than just burning the black stuff I suppose.
Starting with something that has such a shocking efficiency (H2 production) seems less than ideal too. Each stage in the process is going to cost energy and efficiency - wonder what the whole end-to-end numbers look like?
Still, again, better than just burning the black stuff I suppose.
Chris-S said:
It looks....seductive, which is a bit of a concern to me. In some ways, it really could be a good stepping stone to a better endpoint. My worry is it just maintains the status quo for ICE etc, and it does nothing about emissions at point of use, even if the whole cycle emissions are dramatically reduced over just burning oil out of the ground.
Starting with something that has such a shocking efficiency (H2 production) seems less than ideal too. Each stage in the process is going to cost energy and efficiency - wonder what the whole end-to-end numbers look like?
Still, again, better than just burning the black stuff I suppose.
The "This is money" website reports Porsche's claim that this fuel is cleaner than conventional petrol (but obviously EVs are the only realistic option for eliminating emissions at point of use). They also say that this cuts CO2 emissions by 85%.Starting with something that has such a shocking efficiency (H2 production) seems less than ideal too. Each stage in the process is going to cost energy and efficiency - wonder what the whole end-to-end numbers look like?
Still, again, better than just burning the black stuff I suppose.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9...
Going back to the Siemens article, the production of e-methanol as the intermediate step brings a lot of advantages compared to just producing hydrogen. It is far easier to store and transport. It can be used directly as a fuel. It serves as feedstock for the production of other fuels and petrochemicals. And, of course, it recycles carbon - the same principle as biofuels.
Their claimed cost of €1.50 per litre for "e-gasoline" is encouraging as it is comparable with conventional fuels (although those are heavily taxed, of course). The processes involved have been around for decades and are well-proven so their costing should be realistic.
Lastly there is the huge potential cost saving of continuing to use the existing infrastructure and avoiding the replacement of millions of vehicles.
It's going to be very interesting to see how this develops.
Mikehig said:
Their claimed cost of €1.50 per litre for "e-gasoline" is encouraging as it is comparable with conventional fuels (although those are heavily taxed, of course).
Cost of production x 4.5 gives 6.75 euros before profits, distribution, fuel tax, and VAT. So could easily be £20 per gallon retail (I am fairly sure I saw someone referring to that sort of cost somewhere)? Probably only a minority thing then.oop north said:
Mikehig said:
Their claimed cost of €1.50 per litre for "e-gasoline" is encouraging as it is comparable with conventional fuels (although those are heavily taxed, of course).
Cost of production x 4.5 gives 6.75 euros before profits, distribution, fuel tax, and VAT. So could easily be £20 per gallon retail (I am fairly sure I saw someone referring to that sort of cost somewhere)? Probably only a minority thing then."Already green methanol can be produced today for around 0.6 euros per liter, green gasoline (derived from this methanol) for less than 1.5 euros per liter. With declining electricity prices and electrolysis costs, plus improved processes and technology, the price would match that of “black” hydrocarbon-based fuels at the gas station – that is, if e-Fuels weren’t also taxed."
Seems pretty clear that they expect to match conventional fuels at the pump - excluding taxes.
That does depend on falling electricity costs which have been promised by the wind industry (seen as the source of power for methanol production). It also depends on decining electrolysis costs as the green hydrogen industry develops. Both expectations may prove optimistic. Also there is no mention of any sort of carbon credit which would enhance the economics.
Time will tell, hopefully before the 2030 ban takes effect.
Unsurprisingly this topic is doing the rounds in all the usual places, so there’s a fair bit of discussion on it.
Just seen a graphic that suggests the overall efficiency of the e-fuel path is about 16% compared to 72% for BEV
Source was here: https://theicct.org/blog/staff/e-fuels-will-not-sa...
TBH, given the complexity of the processes involved I’m kind of surprised it’s as high as 16%!
As always, vested interests will skew things to support their case, so frankly, how the feck can we come to any sort of informed opinion!!
Just seen a graphic that suggests the overall efficiency of the e-fuel path is about 16% compared to 72% for BEV
Source was here: https://theicct.org/blog/staff/e-fuels-will-not-sa...
TBH, given the complexity of the processes involved I’m kind of surprised it’s as high as 16%!
As always, vested interests will skew things to support their case, so frankly, how the feck can we come to any sort of informed opinion!!
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