[ExI] Cost of synfuel was Air-powered cars

[Lee Corbin]

Keith wrote

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "hkhenson" <hkhenson at rogers.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 1:37 PM
Subject: [ExI] Cost of synfuel was Air-powered cars

> [someone wrote]
>>That's an interesting idea, but how exactly is this done?
> 
> Overall, nCO2 + 3n+1H2 --> H(CH2)nH + nH2O 
> That's where oil came from in the first place.

What I read was that no one has ever succeeded in 
producing one drop of oil by any process that nature
could have used to produce the vast amounts of
"fossil fuels" we have found.

Do you have some explanation of how nature would
have gone about using the above equation, or whether
it's true that so far no one has produced oil in a way
that is thought to be how nature did it?

Lee

> In detail, CO2 + H2 --> CO + H2O
> 
> Condense out the water, add more hydrogen and you have 
> syngas.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
> 
> Feed the syngas to Fischer-Tropsch synthesis plant.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_synthesis
> 
> There is a detailed flow chart of how Sasol does it here
> 
> http://sasol.investoreports.com/sasol_sf_2008/html/sasol_sf_2008_10.php?PHPSESSID=9df857efb179c75ba73ae3a11246d695
> 
> It is a relatively low temperature (350 deg C) exothermic process 
> described here:
> 
> http://sasol.investoreports.com/sasol_sf_2008/html/sasol_sf_2008_11.php
> 
> They produce about 7 million metric tons of synfuels a year.  That's 
> about 0.2% of the world's oil production, but it's plenty big enough 
> to get an accurate estimate of what such plants cost...