This company is working to produce a machine that produces methane from waste electricity, water, and atmospheric air.
I searched for this company and only found a few references from several years ago.
I’m always skeptical of these bold claims, and my skepticism for something useful is still here with this company.
That said, from all of their public press and their description of their approach and goals, there could be something here. Time will tell.
The most important aspect of their approach is that they make no claim of this being energy efficient. Quite the opposite. They say it takes about 300% more energy input into their process than results from the energy in the methane that comes out.
Why this still looks like a possible viable path, is that they are building this to consume overproduced electricity that cannot otherwise be used or stored. As in, put it at a solar farm where the utility is rejecting more energy at the height of a sunny day (because of overcapacity).
I like how they’ve broken the technological challenges down into three main parts:
- input CO2 source
- input H2 source
- methane formation step.
Further, they’re building out their product to ship on container skids, so deployment (or redeployment) doesn’t have the same permanent infrastructure requirements a virgin build might (such as pouring concrete, etc). They also claim to not require any exotic materials for any of their steps.
Lastly, what give me the most confidence is in April 2024 they have already built a working prototype of their tech and produced synthetic methane from it and sold it to a utility company! I fully recognize that have a working prototype doesn’t mean that that their approach can scale to anything useful, but I give them credit for recognizing the shortcomings of their approach while still producing a prototype that does what it claims to do: Produce methane from waste electricity, water, and atmospheric air.
This has the same problem as CO2 capture technologies, that is the relatively low CO2 concentration in the air.
The only way to make this even remotely feasible are end of pipe solutions where you directly capture the exhaust of a fossile fuel combustion process. But that in turn is at best a temporary band aid.
This has the same problem as CO2 capture technologies, that is the relatively low CO2 concentration in the air.
You’re correct that the CO2 concentration in atmospheric air is low: 0.04%. Consider the following:
- Each molecule of C02 has a single carbon atom.
- Each molecule of methane also has a single carbon atom.
- So we could say that atmospheric air has 0.04% of methane production capacity.
I would agree with you this would be a waste of time if the goal was CO2 sequestration, but it isn’t. The goal is to use otherwise 100% wasted electricity to produce something useful that can be stored long term that there is a market for, in this case methane.
The only way to make this even remotely feasible
What is your definition of “feasible” here? Economically compared to fossil based methane? Volume of production?
… are end of pipe solutions where you directly capture the exhaust of a fossile fuel combustion process. But that in turn is at best a temporary band aid.
The company agrees with you. They called out that being able to direct capture pure CO2 from an industrial application would be ideal, but as they also concluded, thats not where the excess electricity is that is really the primary economic driver of this technique.
Economically feasible compared to other option what to use the excess electricity for, even when you factor in remote location issues.
What are the other options you see for the excess electricity that would be more feasible than this methane approach?
Pretty much anything one can think off because this methane production from normal air is so incredibly inefficient.
The most obvious alternative would be to use the abundant nitrogen from the air and produce ammonia with it, which is both an energy storage and an important precursor for artificial fertilizer production.
What it looks like this company is building would be partially compatible with that approach.
For the Haber-Bosch process needs input H2 (plus the atmospheric Nitrogen). 33% of what this company is building is an electrolyser. Further, the Sabatier reactor they’re using (another 33% of their process) could possibly be swapped out for a Haber-Bosch reactor.
I don’t know enough about the environmental conditions needed for handling ammonia vs methane to understand if there are any “gotchas” to creating ammonia in situ.
That’s why I mentioned it as the process is similar but much more efficient.
The problem with ammonia is mainly that it is poisinous to handle (and very smelly) and burning it in engines without exhaust scrubbing releases nitric-oxides that caused the famous “sour rain” issues of the 1980s, but both are relatively minor technical issues.
We have the excess electricity already, but I’m not yet at the legally required amount of solar panels.
At work we are investing in energy storage, both batteries and heat storage and looking for more solutions.
I’m looking at hydrogen, because it’s known tech and I dream of finding a way to use it in a more stable chemical form for storage.
This is very interesting! And that fuel could be used either to make electricity, heat or a combination!
We have the excess electricity already, but I’m not yet at the legally required amount of solar panels.
At work we are investing in energy storage, both batteries and heat storage and looking for more solutions.
For any but the largest commercial solar/wind providers, batteries and heat storage (or cold storage actually too!) are the best uses of overproduction of electricity. Batteries at your location are 90%+ efficient round trip, meaning for every 1kWh you shove into the battery, even after all the conversion and storage costs, you’ll be able to get 900Wh or more out of the battery when you have a use for it. Many PV tied batteries are upwards of 97% efficient even!
Heat storage is another great use, whether in water (to mitigate need for new energy expenditure to heat water for use), or in thermal batteries for space heating. Although the biggest downside to thermal batteries are their size. If you’ve got spare space then they can be effective in a home or business.
I’m looking at hydrogen, because it’s known tech and I dream of finding a way to use it in a more stable chemical form for storage.
I did the same looking at Hydrogen, and its pretty bleak. Not only is creating hydrogen safely (from electrolysis) difficult, but storage is a nightmare. Any kind of gaseous storage is incredibly difficult because of how small a molecule H2 is, and if you’re storage is inside a building that leakage creates explosion risks.
The safest way I saw to store and consume hydrogen is absorbed into a metal hydride. The problem there is that fillers (because of pressure) are expensive $2k for the cheapest one I saw, and you need many metal hydride cylinders to store any appreciable amount of hydrogen. So they end up being large, heavy and bulky or relatively little energy storage.
For home use, a regular lithium battery is so much more efficient and safe.
