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Audi Creates "Fuel of the Future" Using Just Carbon Dioxide and Water

Posted by samzenpus on from the fiture-fill-up dept.

EwanPalmer writes: German car manufacturer Audi says it has created the "fuel of the future" made solely from water, carbon dioxide and renewable sources. The synthetic "e-diesel" was made following a commissioning phase of just four months at a plant in Dresden, Germany. Germany's federal minister of education and research, Dr Johanna Wanka, said she has already used the fuel in her Audi A8, and the company hopes to produce at least 160 liters of the crystal clear fuel every day in the coming months. "This synthetic diesel, made using CO2, is a huge success for our sustainability research," Wanka said. "If we can make widespread use of CO2 as a raw material, we will make a crucial contribution to climate protection and the efficient use of resources, and put the fundamentals of the 'green economy' in place."

2 of 486 comments (clear)

  1. With the best will in the world... by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...renewables are going to have their work cut out for themselves just supplying a majority percentage of the power for national electricty grids. I'm not sure where they think the extra renewable power to do this will come from.

    Now if they plugged the process into a nuclear power plant OTOH...

    Of course the big question is how efficient is the process? Is it more efficient than just using the electricity to charge up batteries in an electric car for example?

    1. Re:With the best will in the world... by tburkhol · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There will be another Chernobyl/Fukushima scale nuclear disaster.

      Fine by me. Industrial accidents are part of the price we pay for our life of ease. If I have to choose between a 3MI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima spread over 40 years, and a Kingston, Macondo, Valdez, Fergana Valley, Ixtoc, Chevron Richmond - you know, the list of fossil fuel accidents affecting tens of thousands of people is just too long to go through. Nevermind the occasional train derailment and fire.

      You design things as best you can against the problems you can think of, and you design mitigation plans against the ones you can't. Every time a new problem comes up, you improve the design. You can not live in a perfectly safe world. If you use electricity, you could shock yourself. If someone produces electricity, they could blow up. If you don't use electricity, a grue might eat you in the dark. Choose your risk, but try to be rational about it. There's nothing inherently worse about the nuclear boogeyman than the coal boogeyman, except that you've been living with the coal boogeyman for 2000 years.