rsaesha

What is specifically stopping Uber from providing an autonomous driver service so hard to warrant being classified as a pipedream event?

Yes, exactly like that, but instead of using a sarcastic tone, use a matter of fact tone.

"You want A game or you want THE game?"

Maybe add a slide showing how much concentrated toward the very best game revenues are.

Yeah, the missing key is seeing power and energy as money, because that's essentially how our economy works.

We can convert one in the other, at different conversion rates granted, but still.

Energy input cost is a line in every company spreadsheet, it can block or allow companies to succeed. Today this line is kept artificially low because we base our economies on a very exothermic open loop CH to CO. Closing this loop is not an option because basic thermodynamics, which is the very logic behind carbon removal.

We have to stop entering this path as much as possible.

Oxidizing carbon fuels is a irreversible process, meaning an increase in entropy. Dispersion of CO2 in the atmosphere also increases entropy.

We will always, 100% of the times, expend more energy to reverse a irreversible process than we could possible extract from this irreversible process.

This statement is valid regardless of the path chosen.

Which naturally spawns the argument 'let's not reverse it, let's do CH to CO to Cx, all we have to do is find x'.

The problem is this is not valid because we burn a lot of fuel.

Even if we found x, it would not be enough to sustain our rate of carbon emissions. In 2022 the world consumed 5.8*10^12 liters of crude oil.

So it would be necessary to include y. And z. Etc until n.

Inevitably including a regeneration step Cn + H to CH + n.

Now the path looks like:

CH -> CO -> Cx -> Cy -> (...) -> Cn -> CH

Which is a closed loop, meaning net power loss. With 100% confidence.

Maybe the one who oxidizes CH pays the bill to remove the CO2 emitted. Is it even possible to put such measure worldwide? Logistics would suddenly be prohibitively expensive for all but the most valuable products per weight/volume. Globalization is addicted to fossil fuels.

Well, that is literally all we did and build and invest in the last century or so. The very power grid of the world is based on carbon fuels. We can't run our carbon removal machinery on dirty power or we would be emitting more than we could possible remove.

It becomes 100% clear the winning strategy is not removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it is replacing all machines and appliances that burn carbon. Worldwide.

Not all are possible, ofc. But a stove ayy.

By benefit I mean the energy effectively extracted from the oxidation of carbon.

It would.

By simple thermodynamics we can be 100%, not 99%, 100% sure, that the energetic cost of removing CO2 from the freaking atmosphere is higher than the benefit of putting it there in the first place.

LNG =/= LPG

Totally different logistics requirements

The challenge of using synthesized chemicals for energy storage exists for quite some time indeed. For aviation and marine there may be no other option outside of synthetic fuels, I agree.

Can this scale up? Or is this a small scale only solution?

Transportation. How much energy would a truck be able to move? How does it compare to a tank truck? Weight is absolutely relevant here.

Also, production. Consider that reducing iron is measured by millions of tons per year per plant, and right now, it's done burning it with plain old coal.

Seems very odd to me the subtitle of the news is 'carbon free fuel'. That alone is a massive bullshit indicator, but I digress.

How something that may have a 10% global energy recovery efficiency could beat a pure redox power storage solution? This question has been avoided so far.

Let's be reasonable here, mantle and nucleus iron don't matter to this analysis.

Crust iron is all oxide. Fe at 5% average. In some locations obviously more concentrated up to 90% ore. Not all sites are viable for mining, and this is very important to understand. Just because there is plenty of iron out there doesn't mean all of it is commercial grade.

This means energy input to turn iron oxide into iron, which the article claims could be used as fuel and/or long term energy storage.

-Fuel I don't believe for a second.

-Energy storage it's a maybe. It needs to commercially beat plenty of options. Which to me seems unlikely since the path still includes heat and steam engine which would incurr at a cicle loss of at least 50%. And this being conservative etc. Would mean a steam engine operated in a very narrow power band - which would mean a baselevel powerplant not a peaker powerplant. And didn't yet consider other possible losses, as for one, the Fe degradation over time. Energy cycles that count on heat and engine are wasteful. Could this waste be compensated by a much cheaper capex and/or opex relative to Li or similar batteries? That's a big Maybe.

I myself want to believe there is a solution to renewables intermittency. But on this one in particular, I'm quite bearish for the reasons above.

If using Fe why not iron batteries? Keep the redox, remove the energy from the system via eletrical current instead of low efficiency heat, boiler and steam engine combo.

>Earth is a big ball of iron.

No it's not.

Inside the crust both Si and Al are more common.

There is plenty of Fe, which is all in oxide form. Mining and processing required.

Hard disagree - to me it made a lot of sense.