Carbon-neutral diesel is now a reality thanks to Audi

[daib0]

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.

Full article y graphs: http://www.sciencealert.com/audi-have-s ... -and-water

This is BIG news, surely?!

[Aaron]

"This synthesis of fuel is called the Fischer-Tropsch process and it's been known since 1925.

Audi did not invent it. It's been used before by the countries that could not procure enough fuel by other means (i.e., Nazi Germany during WWII).

Also, it's quite energy inefficient, meaning that you will spend way more energy than you'll be able to recover when you burn the fuel. The fuel you make will be much more expensive than producing fuel from oil."

[Deleted User 728]

Am I the only one laughing at this story ??



Johanna Wanka ??

[mapperleywhite]

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.

This is BIG news, surely?!

So that 160 litres is about 3 Golf tankfulls...

Or looking at it another way it will take over 150 days to produce enough fuel to fill a standard 25,000 litre road tanker in order to make a delivery to a fuel station....

[Deleted User 728]

I'm hoping he meant 160m.

On this subject, when I worked at Southampton University I attended a working party to look at transport and how we could cut our carbon footprint.
There's lots of cross-organisational meetings on all sorts of things and once in a while the student union has to send someone along. You sit there with a complete mix of people from the vice-chancellor to cleaners and security staff.

I thought I'd be bored out of my mind, but it was really interesting.
I sat at a table with two other blokes and two women and we had to list all the ways we could get to work and how we generally doing it, using a big map to annotate all the different options from where we lived.

I had a couple of funny looks when I said I drove a 4x4, but one of the men held up a finger to quell the condemnation and rather authoritatively asked "Which one ?"
I said "A ten year-old Cherokee, 2.5 diesel - I get about 30mpg " and he immediately replied "Better than a Prius !"
I beamed as he explained that it'll last forever, is made from readily available, multi-vehicle parts local to the factory and the only cost to the environment in real terms is shipping it to Europe if it wasn't actually made there.

Turns out his job is head of research on hydrogen fuel cells for cars

[johnh]

Rigger, he wasn't head of research on hydrogen fuel cells for cars for Chrysler was he?

[Deleted User 728]

Rigger, he wasn't head of research on hydrogen fuel cells for cars for Chrysler was he?

No, mate - research professor at the Uni itself.

[Deleted User 728]

Rigger, he wasn't head of research on hydrogen fuel cells for cars for Chrysler was he?

... and I just got the joke


Cheeky bar steward !