Comment on New York Startup Builds Fridge-Sized Machine That Can Turn Air Into Gasoline
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 23 hours agoAny carbon it takes in will be released exactly back to where it was.
Except it won’t be. Combustion is not a perfect CxHy O2 > CO2 + H2O reaction. Theres a bunch of other side reactions happening, NOx, unburned hydrocarbons, particulate matter, carbon monoxide. There are lots of challenges to continuing to utilize hydrocarbon fuels, especially in mobile/small scale applications where you can’t clean the exhaust stream.
The particulate matter won’t occur in a hydrocarbon that is generated, that comes from imperfect processing of crude. If you pull the carbon directly out of the air there are no particulates.
But yes it will still be carbon neutral. No additional carbon will be released back into the atmosphere.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
None of the things you’ve described increase the carbon output.
What chemical reaction gets more carbon out than it puts in? Where do these new carbon atoms come from, fusion?
If anything, those other products include non-gaseous compounds which sequester the carbon from the fuel into a solid resulting in a net-negative amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Those side-products are not good, I’m not saying otherwise, but they are not additional carbon.
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 16 hours ago
Referring to things as carbon neutral is typically shorthand for net neutral CO₂e (or net-zero) CO₂e.
You’re pedantically right that the machine is not creating or destroying carbon atoms, but the things it does create have massive “carbon dioxide equivalence”. Or, phrased differently: the emissions of this equipment are equivalent to emitting significant amounts of carbon dioxide.
They also reek havoc on people’s lungs.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Eh?
You take excess green power and use it to generate gasoline. You use that gasoline in a combustion engine. Where is the extra carbon coming from which makes this non neutral?
b_tr3e@feddit.org 19 hours ago
Right. Because none of it is a fucking coal mine. Which is the only thing that can provide “carbon output”. Except a diamond mine, of course.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Sounds like someone needs to lower your temperature settings.