News, What a gas: Using water and air to run a car (solar, recycle)

[JD59]

Researchers at Audi are making synthetic diesel fuel using only water and air. Miracle? No. Science.

The German automaker announced it has created the first batch of liquid "e-diesel" at a research facility in Dresden. The clear fuel is produced through a "power to liquid" process, masterminded by the German clean tech company and Audi partner Sunfire.

Audi makes diesel out of water and air - Apr. 28, 2015

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by John1960

Researchers at Audi are making synthetic diesel fuel using only water and air. Miracle? No. Science.

Nothing but air and water, uh huh.... Please ignore the giant cord/gas pipe running to the machine.

This process is not new, they have been doing it with coal for a long time. It requires a lot of energy and while it can produce liquid fuel you are never going to get as many BTU's out of it that you have put into it. Since air contains so little carbon which is the primary ingredient it's going to be even more inefficient, hence the reason they use coal.

[randomparent]

The very small experimental quantities currently produced are created using solar and wind energy.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by randomparent

The very small experimental quantities currently produced are created using solar and wind energy.

..which are very inefficient and costly to begin with. You're going to introduce more inefficiency with the process to convert to fuel.

Call me crazy but since the goal here is to produce fuel and recycle CO2 presumably from power plants perhaps algae is a better method. You'll have infrastructure costs but this requires little to no power input for the process since it's natural. That by itself will put it way out ahead.