Why Synthetic Fuel Could Replace Electric Cars

porsha are you for real are you really making a clean fuel so that i can drive my camaro when i'm 100 years old when i actually look like uncle jerry or is this clean fuel business just all smoking mirrors can a gas powered car actually be as clean as an eevee maybe even cleaner or is porsche just greenwashing internal combustion well today we're gonna open up the donut investigation unit and figure out the science behind synthetic fuel and if it could really be an eco-friendly alternative to electricity so stick around i guess no big deal really we're just going to figure out how to save internal combustion a big thanks to car insurance comparison site the zebra for sponsoring this video i know what you're thinking have i seen this before am i having deja vu nope i didn't do this and that ad see proof is in the pudding we like working with the zebra they're an independent car insurance comparison site with no stake in the provider or policy that you choose they just want you to get the best insurance policy to fit your needs and they cut to the chase and so do we so here goes nothing whether job is doing donuts in the e36 or this time too the zebra wants you to know that they'll be along for the ride they are experts in getting you the insurance policy that fits your needs maybe you're an enthusiast that wants to save an average of 440 a year maybe you just want to keep it simple and get the most bang for your buck either way they want the insurance process to be easy and designed for you 440 james that's a lot of money i could buy a car part well i guess we know what policy job's going to go with go ask the experts at the zebra all of your car insurance questions today go to thezebra.com bumper to learn everything you ever wanted to know about car insurance and now back to the show what exactly does porsche mean when they say they can make internal combustion as clean as electric well to figure that out we're gonna have to sort out the chemistry of combustion it'll be just like freshman kim class except without graphing calculators and your study buddy you know the one that makes you feel uh funny anyways porsche isn't talking about hazardous chemicals like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides that we normally think of as air pollution all modern cars they have catalytic converters and mandatory emission equipment which turns the majority of these pollutants like carbon monoxide into ordinary atmospheric gases like nitrogen oxygen and carbon dioxide and that co2 is the main problem even though co2 isn't inherently bad increasing atmospheric co2 is one of the primary drivers of climate change that's why the current gold standard for eco-friendly is carbon neutral which just means not introducing any new co2 into the environment unfortunately co2 is an unavoidable product of combustion which means creating carbon neutral fuel is tricky combustion is an energy producing chemical reaction between an oxidant and a carbon-containing fuel source like wood coal or gasoline you can probably see where i'm going with this about 90 of gasoline is made up of hydrocarbons a family of naturally occurring chemicals composed of hydrogen and carbon inside an engine these hydrocarbons combined with atmospheric oxygen releasing energy and sending water vapor and carbon dioxide out the tail pipe so has porsche figured out some new way to carry out combustion that produces less co2 no they have not synthetic fuel releases co2 just like good old-fashioned dinofuels the difference that can make it carbon neutral is where that carbon comes from see ordinary gasoline comes from crude oil a naturally occurring liquid composed mostly of fossilized plankton and algae extracted from the earth's crust cannon and i we actually took a field trip to an oil refinery and we saw those pump jacks i tried putting a pump jack in my backyard to get that black gold and all i got was sewage i hit the old septic tank that means when we combust fossil fuels we're taking carbon from inside the earth burning it and introducing it as new co2 into the environment but remember being carbon neutral means not making new co2 so if porsche can figure out a way to extract the hydrocarbons necessary for combustion without taking them from the earth they've got a chance well what if instead of looking for hydrocarbons you go out and look for hydrogen and carbon independently or fortunately for porsche there are two ready sources of hydrogen and carbon and that's water and air to get hydrogen porsche plans to use an electrolyzer which uses electricity to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen electrolysis unlike combustion is an endothermic process that means the reaction needs a constant input of outside energy and in this case in the form of electricity well now that you have hydrogen how do you go about getting carbon well the next step is to filter carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere they haven't said exactly how they plan to do this but a likely option is an electrically powered panel that separates co2 from the air but once they have the co2 they can use another form of electrolysis to combine that with their hydrogen to create synthetic methanol in water after that still more electrolysis is used in a methanol to gasoline process this starts by converting two methanol molecules into one dimethyl ether in one water molecule dimethyl ether by itself is a synthetic alternative to diesel fuel but it can also be converted through a series of additional endothermic steps into the right mix of hydrocarbons needed for gasoline engines you probably noticed that each of these steps use electricity so how does porsche plan to make this truly carbon neutral if so much electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels the answer is location location location porsche is building their facility on the surface of the sun i mean in chile where there's cheap green electricity because of the abundance of wind and solar power which doesn't create co2 and the fact that the whole process is powered by electricity is why they're calling it e-fuel this flips the script on the electric car instead of using carbon releasing fossil fuels to produce the electricity for electric cars porsche is using carbon neutral electricity to produce a synthetic alternative to fossil fuel for gasoline cars even though the cars burning it will still be emitting co2 into the environment the fuel is carbon neutral because it's created by removing an equal amount of co2 from the environment give it it and then you take it away you get it then you take it away and there's one additional bonus to making fuel this way the 150 or so ingredients in commercial gasoline isn't just because of additive it's also because the complex chemical mixture found in crude oil includes dozens of different hydrocarbons many of which are still present when it's refined into gasoline porsche says by using pure hydrogen and carbon they will create a fuel that inherently burns cleaner producing 85 percent less co2 than your good old-fashioned dino juice so how does this all stack up against electric cars there's two things to look at the co2 released during the production of that car and the amount of co2 released by that car during its lifetime manufacturing a gas-powered car requires about seven tons of co2 on average while manufacturing an ev which requires mining minerals like lithium and cobalt for batteries will generate between 14 and 21 tons of co2 pretty clear when for the gas car here round two emissions a car running on traditional fuel releases about 50 tons of co2 from combustion over its lifetime electric cars they don't release any co2 directly but if their electricity comes from co2 emitting sources we need to take that into account as well the epa estimates that the electricity used by an average ev over its life is responsible for around 20 tons of co2 and a car running on this new e-fuel well it probably isn't exactly zero but it could be close odds are that synthetic fuel is going to have to be transported by another vehicle that likely isn't carbon neutral and evs could get down to zero in this category as well so let's call it a draw with the optimistic hope that they both get down to near zero two rounds that was it another major advantage compared with other fuels like hydrogen for example is that these e-fuels can be distributed via the existing gas station network there's over 115 000 gas stations in the u.s alone they're already built and capable of supplying e-fuel it would be way less wasteful to keep using our old cars than it would be for everyone to go out and buy a new ev so i mean this is really it guys they cracked it porsche saved gas powered cars it's guilt-free combustion v12s are coming back to formula one and ls swaps are going into every prius unless of course maybe just maybe it's all too good to be true first there's a lot of carbon created when you build a major production facility like the one they're planting in chile construction and concrete they're the two biggest sources of co2 emissions there's also the carbon emitted during shipping of the finished product to wherever it eventually be used this fuel still has to be transported by big ocean tankers to refineries where the finished fuel is produced also porsche isn't the first company to have this idea if this worked wouldn't everyone be doing it i mean methanol to gasoline technology has been around since 1975 but it still hasn't achieved widespread implementation audi started experimenting with synthetic fuel for diesel cars in 2015 and for a while they looked like they were going to produce it and that project was scrapped for unknown reasons in 2018 and audi is now making one of the strongest pushes for electrification in the industry the most likely reason why nobody's done this yet isn't much of a surprise in fact it's an answer we see repeatedly here when we report on new technology at b2b cool things are expensive but even if we're not all getting to drive combustion engine cars guilt-free forever this synthetic fuel might let combustion-based motor sports an area where porsche has made a lot of investment continue without the increased carbon emissions associated with fossil fuels heck formula one they have committed to being carbon neutral by 2030 and they've explicitly said it's not electrification that will get them there well maybe we'll be seeing synthetic fuel in f1 soon and really the one question i have will it smell the same we'll find out nobody ever cares about the smells cars used to produce okay it's always about oh the engine sounds good oh what about this sense huh what about the nose sense okay i want to smell the gas thank you guys so much for watching this episode of b2b follow us here on donut at donutmedia follow me at jeremiah burton until next week

Channel: Donut Media

Views: 1,290,379

Keywords: bumper2bumper, donut, donut media, doughnut media, donut medeia, synthetic fuel, EV, electric cars, fuel, gasoline, automotive

Id: aEnWFucxkEY

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021

Reddit Comments

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[u/Norbert1641]

I've never been a fan of EV's so I hope that clean synthetic fuel becomes a viable option soon!

[u/Domowoi]

I think synthetic fuels can replace "regular" fuels at some point, but they don't really compete with electric cars.