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A New US Plant Will Use Captured CO2 to Make Millions of Gallons of Jet Fuel
(singularityhub.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Cool, do they know how they will do carbon capture? Is it going to come from the atmosphere or are they doing like Porsche: burning fuel to get the carbon to make the environmental friendly synthetic gasoline?
the first three words of the article say it's using 'Direct air capture' it goes on to explain it's able to use carbon from any source so while it's intended to use sequestered carbon if that's unavailable they may use carbon captured from processes such burning biomass to collect carbon (which is actually a really good way of doing it ecologically as it uses less power, systems currently under testing can actually generate more power than carbon capture requires thus making them not only free to power but a net positive).
The article also talks about it's location in Washington state being selected to make use of hydropower for the energy intensive stages of development, what they don't mention that might have been interesting is due to the great position of Washington state for windpower it's an ideal location for integrated power systems where excess power which would otherwise have gone to waste is used in energy intensive chemical processes like electrolysis or sequestation - essentially in this process it's like making a chemical battery, the excess power is converted at source into carbon then used to create high density fuels suitable for jets and rockets.
They make the claim that with a 50:50 mix {new fuel : conventional fuel, as tested by USAF) it can reduce lifecycle emissions by 90% (overall greenhouse gas impacts of a fuel, including each stage of its production and use) which would be huge for the climate, likely making air travel the more ecological option for medium to long distance travel even beating out well run train networks (of which there are vanishingly few)