{"id":7530,"date":"2017-03-31T15:41:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T14:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7530"},"modified":"2017-03-31T15:41:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T14:41:08","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-solar-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7530","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – solar fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Gates recently visited a lab develop\"DSC_2305\"<\/a>ing solar fuels at Caltech.\u00a0 Readers of this blog will know that I’m not a great fan of the so called hydrogen economy.\u00a0 The problem with hydrogen is that has a very low energy density compared to other fuels.\u00a0 Another drawback is that it will require a whole new infrastructure.\u00a0 Add some carbon atoms to the hydrogen and the energy density increases dramatically.\u00a0 There are long standing ways of doing this one way is to use the Fischer-Tropsch method.\u00a0 In this an alkane carbon chain of any length can be built from carbon and hydrogen by tweaking the reaction conditions.\u00a0 Whilst this method may have some applications in making chemical feedstocks in a post oil world the energy return is very poor since the reaction only occurs at very high temperatures (400-500\u00b0C).<\/p>\n

What if you could make such fuels at low temperatures using light as the energy source to to split water to hydrogen and oxygen and then combine the hydrogen and carbon from carbon dioxide at low temperatures.\u00a0 Sort of like photosynthesis, in fact some groups are trying to use this as a basis for making solar fuels.\u00a0 Algae is one possibility people have been working on.\u00a0 If the problems with this could be cracked then many of the drawbacks of the renewable economy.\u00a0 There would be a source of renewable transport fuel, a way of tying up carbon from the atmosphere and even a means of storing renewable energy inter-seasonally.\u00a0 However as we outlined in our book<\/a> there is one major problem with all this.\u00a0 That is land area.\u00a0 If you considered using every plant as fuel on the planet then its unlikely there would be enough for our energy needs.\u00a0 The land area to make even an appreciable dent in the liquid fuel replacement problem would be huge.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Gates recently visited a lab developing solar fuels at Caltech.\u00a0 Readers of this blog will know that I’m not a great fan of the so called hydrogen economy.\u00a0 The problem with hydrogen is that has a very low energy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,203,17,4,13],"tags":[61,44],"class_list":["post-7530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-energy-storage","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-renewables","category-transport","tag-renewable-energy","tag-the-hydrogen-economy-myth"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - solar fuels - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7530\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7530\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7530\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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