[Peakoil] Turning fresh air into petrol

[Antony Broughton Barry]

On 19/10/2012, at 8:43 PM, Keith wrote:

> Sounds like a terrible EROI at this stage, but the advantages of petrol over other energy sources mean that crude EROI equations are not valid.

EROI doesn't apply. It's an energy conversion system all of which are lossy. If you burn coal to make electricity you lose ~40% of the energy. If you burn petrol in a car to get kinetic energy of the car moving you lose over 80% which just heats the air and road.

The question is how much energy do you need to get a given unit out and how much does it cost. I'll be impressed if it's better than running electrical energy directly into batteries to drive an electric car. Essentially it is a device for converting clean (hopefully) electricity into petrol. It has to compete with batteries. Where batteries don't  work such as aircraft and maybe some large scale machinery it could be a goer.

Tony