Skip to main content

Diesel Fuel Made From Carbon Dioxide And Water By Audi

German car manufacturer Audi has reportedly invented a carbon-neutral diesel fuel, made solely from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources. And the crystal clear 'e-diesel' is already being used to power the Audi A8 owned by the country’s Federal Minister of Education and Research, Johanna Wanka.
The creation of the fuel is a huge step forward for sustainable transport, but the fact that it’s being backed by an automotive giant is even more exciting. Audi has now set up a pilot plant in Dresden, Germany, operated by clean tech company Sunfire, which will pump out 160 litres of the synthetic diesel every day in the coming months.
Their base product, which they’re calling 'blue crude' is created using a three-step process. The first step involves harvesting renewable energy from sources such as wind, solar and hydropower. They then use this energy to split water into oxygen and pure hydrogen, using a process known as reversible electrolysis.
This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. The two react at high temperatures and under pressure, resulting in the production of the long-chain hydrocarbon compounds that make up the blue crude.
Once it's been refined, the resulting e-diesel can be mixed in with our current diesel fuel, or used on its own to power cars in a more sustainable way.
Sunfire analyses have shown that the synthetic fuel is not only more environmentally friendly, but also has superior combustion when compared to fossil fuels. The overall energy efficiency of the e-diesel is 70 percent, they report.
"The engine runs quieter and fewer pollutants are being created," said Sunfire Chief Technology Officer Christian von Olshausen in a press release.
Of course, with the initial factory only pumping out around 160 litres each day, the fuel isn’t going to have a huge impact on the market just yet. But Audi and Sunfire now want to build a bigger factory, and anticipate that once production is scaled up, the e-diesel will sell to the public for between 1 and 1.50 Euros per litre, dependent on the cost of renewable electricity.
With traditional diesel currently on the market for upwards of 1.50 Euros per litre in Germany, this would make the fuel extremely competitive, and perfectly positioned to made sustainable travel accessible to everyone. "If we get the first sales order, we will be ready to commercialise our technology", said von Olshausen.
Just imagine being able to tear around the countryside in an Audi sportscar, and not having to feel guilty for all the CO2 emissions you're producing. We can't wait.
Find out more about how the fuel is made in the Sunfire video below:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye, Oppurtunity. Nasa mars rover 'Opportunity' no longer resposding.

Opportunity, the intrepid NASA rover that spent 15 years on Mars climbing in and out of craters to gather evidence of the planet's watery past, has been brought down by tiny particles of dust. After weeks of trying to revive the veteran Mars rover in the wake of a blinding dust storm, NASA has given up on ever hearing from it again. It's a humble ending for a machine that survived a 300-million-mile journey through space, executed a hole-in-one landing, and set a record by driving more than 28 extraterrestrial miles. Opportunity's last transmission to Earth occurred on June 10 amid an epic Martian dust storm. Still, NASA engineers remained hopeful that when the dust settled, the rover would recharge its solar-powered batteries and resume its superlative mission. Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for a mission that was supposed to last 90 Martian days. Its twin rover, Spirit, had landed three weeks earlier on the other side of the planet. "Wit
Post a Comment
Read more

Telescopic Contact Lens For Visually Impaired People

See far distance just by winking your eyes. A team of engineers have designed a telescopic contact lens that can switch between normal and magnefied vision.  The Researchers at  San Jose, California has built a prototype pf lens that could one day help people with visual impairment  to see. The lenses might be particularly useful with age-related macular degeneration, a debilitating condition in which people gradually lose their central vision. It is the leading cause of visual impairment and affect millions worldwide. The contact lens developed by Ford’s team is one millimeter thick. Researchers used aluminum mirrors, fit tightly together, to create a ring-shaped telescope embedded in the contact lens. The center of the lens allows for normal, non-magnified vision.  Its periphery, where the telescope is located, magnifies images 2.8 times. Switching between normal and magnefied vision Without the glasses, the contact lenses superimpose both normal and magnified images. With
Post a Comment
Read more

A new future weightless Insulation material

A totally new insulation material has been developed that is totally weightless but can still withstand high temperature, that would not be tolerated by other materials and destroy it. The porous aerogel is at least 99 percent open space , with the rest made up of an atomically thin ceramic called hexagonal boron nitride. The design proves extremely durable under high temperatures and rapid temperature shifts of over 1,000 degrees Celsius.  “It’s notoriously hard to make materials that are not just lightweight, but can also be heavily heat resistant,” says Deep Jariwala, an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania.  The new ultralight insulator may be especially well suited to shielding components on spacecraft , which must endure extreme temperature swings when turning toward or away from the sun or re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, he says.  The aerogel comprises a network of tiny air pockets, with each pocket separated by two atomically thin layers of hexagonal b
Post a Comment
Read more