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.
You’re correct that the CO2 concentration in atmospheric air is low: 0.04%. Consider the following:
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.
What is your definition of “feasible” here? Economically compared to fossil based methane? Volume of production?
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.