Fossil fuels can be a bit fussy to access, and geopolitics tends to make prices volatile. Burning them also takes carbon out of the ground and puts it into the atmosphere, with undesirable climate implications. The hunt for a solution has been on for quite some time.
Various synthetic fuels have been proposed as a solution, wherein carbon dioxide is captured from the air and chemically processed into useful fuel. Done properly, this could solve the climate issue where any fuel burned has its carbon later captured to make more fuel. The problem, though, is that this process is very energy intensive. Given the demands, it’s no surprise that some are looking towards nuclear reactors for the answer.
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Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, but the problem is that they’re so very useful. Take transport, for example. Fossil fuels are perfect for this application because they pack a huge amount of energy into very little space while weighing relatively little to boot. At the same time, more than a third of global carbon emissions in 2021 came from transportation, according to the International Energy Agency. While electric vehicles are rapidly gaining market share in some areas, the complete phase out of internal combustion engines is by no means a sure thing. Meanwhile, sectors like aviation are proving especially difficult to fully electrify. We want to get off fossil fuels, but circumstances demand we continue to use them.
Enter synthetic fuels. They’re essentially drop-in replacements for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel that are produced from CO2, water and clean energy rather than being refined from petroleum. When made using captured CO2 and cleanly-produced hydrogen, they have the potential to significantly reduce transport emissions when taking the whole system into account. All this, without requiring an entirely new fueling infrastructure or any changes for the end user.
By capturing carbon and then chemically processing it into a useful combustible fuel, we could keep using existing technologies that we already find practical, like combustion-engined vehicles. Their emissions would still be undesirable, but they’d be offset by the capture process used to make new fuel. The idea is to create a closed loop for carbon emissions. The problem is finding a synfuel production process that’s efficient—both in terms of carbon capture and chemical processing—and to find the energy to run it.
Indeed, synthesizing hydrocarbons is an energy-intensive process. The process is well-understood at this point. Capturing CO2 from the air, generating hydrogen via electrolysis, and catalytically combining them into fuels at high temperatures and pressures all require a lot of energy input. For synfuels to deliver real climate benefits, this energy must come from clean, non-fossil sources.
What do we do when we need a lot of power with minimum emissions? We look at nuclear! Several U.S. Department of Energy labs are actively researching nuclear-powered synfuel production, and the DOE is funding a $20 million demonstration project in Utah. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the Nuclear Industry Association has been urging the country to seize a leadership position in this emerging field as well.
On a very basic level, a conventional nuclear power plant could provide electricity for various processes involved in synthetic fuel production. However, that’s not the only way to go. For some processes, the heat from a nuclear reactor could be directly used to power the synfuel production process. That is, rather than using heat from a nuclear reaction to create steam to turn a turbine, a purpose-built synfuel reactor could just deliver heat directly to a chemical process that needs it. Nuclear heat could be useful for desalinating seawater for hydrogen electrolysis, or for carbon capture, too.
The question is whether all the effort will be worthwhile. Competing with regular old fossil fuels on price will be a must, even if some degree of subsidy is used to lean the scales in the favor of synfuels. There are hopes that nuclear-produced synfuels could reach prices of $3 a gallon with the right feedstocks and input costs, but that’s words on a page at this stage. There is plenty of engineering to be done before you’ll be filling your car with 20 gallons of nuke gas at your local station.
Efficiency also comes into it, and this could play a big role in how synfuels pan out. Take cars, for example. Automakers have figured out how to make supremely efficient electric vehicles in the past decade. Electrical engineers have become experts at squirting power efficiently all over the country, and there are more EV charging stations than ever. Does it make sense to spin up bespoke nuclear synfuel plants to keep internal combustion alive, when the technology to replace it already exists? Arguments could be made for more demanding applications like trucking or aviation, but then the market for synfuels grows smaller.
In any case, nuclear synfuel holds great promise. Whether it can overcome the general resistance towards all nuclear technologies remains to be seen. Still, the tides may be changing on that front, and the future is anyone’s guess. If you’re a fan of fossil fuels and the like, be happy—there is hope yet that the flammable fluid market will roll on.
Make nuclear synfuels and bring muscle cars back. I believe in a less shitty and annoying future, I am ready for it
AMEN!
Also, another point being that heavy machines will not be electric, unless somehow a miracle battery comes along, that does not require limited amount materials and has the charge capacity near fuel. And seriously, i see no army having an electric tanks etc for a long long time.
I know there’s those heavy heavy earth moving machines, that are electric, but they do not move outside the given path, like a tram.
I know, i know, there’s some electric tank prototype, but how are you going to charge that in the middle of a field? Generators with fossil fuel or mobile nucular truck.
The best way imho is to get the E-fuel infra built as fast as possible, so that current and future ICE engines can be run, until the electric utopia becomes a reality.
But why even use FT process in the first place? With our current reactor technology it’s already possible to transmutate other elements into diesel, gasoline and propane. It’s not rocket science, all it takes is right people with the will to do things (like Musk) instead of current gerontocracy hell bent on taking bribes and being corrupt just for the heck of it.
Why do that when it’s cheaper to cut down all the trees and turn them into syngas? That’s the future we’re gonna get.
No it’s not, unless you want very radioactive diesel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation
When you just produce CO2 (+other gasses) by burning (syn) fuels and there’s far less “capacity” for removing those gasses from the atmosphere you got a long term problem…
Nothing about nuclear energy generation is cheap.
If you want to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels, use surplus solar energy during peak production times which IS cheap energy.
Opposite day
Except the energy, in unit prices.
You can sell nuclear electricity profitably at 4 cents per kWh before transmission.
If the efficiency was 100% one gallon of synthetic fuel would only cost about $1.30. If you want the price below $3 per gallon, you need a process efficiency above 43% which isn’t unrealistic at all.
not unrealistic? I don’t know man, you need hydrogen and a carbon source, clean supply of either will put a sizeable dent into that target efficiency…
No it’s not. It’s just paid by someone else, through taxes and subsidies.
“carbon capture” is a buzzword…neither CO2 sequestering from the atmosphere or capturing it at the source is sustainable, as both require a shitload of energy, which has to come from somewhere…
“Carbon Capture” is something invented by oil companies to make everyone believe it’s possible to keep burning fossils and running away from the consequences with “clever tech.” Like the “carbon footprint” and “individual responsibility.”
geoengineering is clever tech and would solve the problem…we “just” have to figure out the practical bit
Like nuclear?
Yeah. Uranium.
Or planting trees. What are you talking about? CO2 sequestering is a natural process and has been for eons
What? Someone has already been planting trees for centuries on a massive scale and felling adult ones just to put them back into coal mines and oil “holes”? Why have I never heard of this? /S²
“for eons” – that’s the problem, plants and algae are orders of magnitude slower at capturing CO2 then we are releasing it
If we wanted to be a bit radical we could require large shipping vessels to be powered by nuclear reactors. If there are concerns about security then you could have the reactor run and secured by military personnel on board.