Keep using fossil fuels (untill truely renewable fuel is available) and planting forrests on the areas now wasted on sugar cane and corn is much more defendable than this destructive dead end.

Only quantifying the polution on particle size is obviously practical and simplifies comparison and statistics, but it is an oversimplification of health effects. The effect of a dustgrain depends not only on its size but also largely on its chemical composition. For instance, a grain of NaCl of 2.5 um is completely harmless, while a grain of asbestos or sooth is not. Sooth of ICE exhaust is probably much more harmful than the inert particles of tires

"particularly in cosmetics" this will replace huge amounts of petroleum. I hope they have other applications, and that the economics also work for less high-end products.

coal has no future for many reasons. These technologies, however, will be useful for many other applications. Higher efficiency steam turbines will be useful for nuclear and concentrated solar. materials for ultrasupercritical powerplants is also good for high-temperature nuclear, and high-temperature electrolysis. subsurface carbon storage will be needed to actively lower atmospheric CO2 using direct air capture or CCS of biomass/waste. recovery of rare earth elements or toxic heavy metals from coal ash can be done with the megatons of coal ash we already have, or to extract those elements from low-quality ores. If some politicians like to sell the development of those technologies as "coal promotion" for political reasons, I grant them the pleasure. At least it will be used for entirely different applications, and it is not immediately harmful to the planet. By the time these technologies are developed, and coal is history, they will be used in advanced nuclear plants, concentrated solar plants, high-temperature electrolysis, wind turbines, electric cars and geoengineering. Those technologies may even hasten the end of natural gas. At least coal proponents can do a last useful act before finally admitting it's over.

Li is great, so hopefully Mg is even better. The more options, the better. Nevertheless, even if Li is the best option, there will never be real scarcity since it can be extracted from seawater at limiteless volumes. Admitted, there is even much, much more Mg in seawater. But still, the amount of Li available is vertually infinite.

Interesting and useful concern. However, such kinds of algorithms can be monitored and legally regulated. Moreover, once fully autonomous driving electric cars are available, taxies will be so cheap and convenient that they will most probably take over private driving. A taxi ride will probably be much cheaper than the parking charges today. An electric car that can drive 1,000,000 miles before it needs to be replaced, and costing $50,000, costs about 5c/mile capital investment cost. The "fuel" cost is less than 2c/mile. Let's say a "total overhead cost" of 5c/mile. Total : 12c/mile . Free competition will ensure reasonable profit margins, so this will be much cheaper and more convenient than driving your own car.

1 ppm of co2 equals about 7.81 gigatons of CO2. decreasing the atmospheric CO2 from 410 ppm to 250 ppm level of two centuries ago would cost about $37,000 billion. Not too much to save the planet, if we need a plan B

@Roger: they do direct air capture (climeworks). Even if no liquid organic fuel is needed in the future, we will still need gigatons of plastics. Wheen cheap green energy will be abundant, it will be obvious to make them locally from air. Certainly for countries with no domestic crude production, and with a correct carbon price.

I doubt many people will be willing to damage the batteries of their cars to stabelize the grid. EV-batteries are too expensive for this application. And people prefer having their car battery fully charged whenever the want to start driving. Mass-produced dedicated battery packs (which are cheap because often second-hand cells) would be preferable I foresee. The technical requirements for a stationary battery pack is also very different from a driving and crashable car. Waste heat from charging/decharging can also be used more cleverly with dedicated stationary systems.

I fully agree with PE. The greatest advantage is that it will permit high-power delivery at locations where the grid wouldn't permit it through smoothening of the load, and to optimize the use of renewables and nuclear. Mass production of such units will permit higher penetration of renewables and better utilisation of nuclear. Great evolution.

I love the idea that there seems to be no other metal used than magnesium. The organics can be made from carbon and at end-of-life be completely destroyed to CO2. The Magnesium can be extracted from seawater, and at the end-of-life recycled or returned to seawater. This is the ultimate circular economy, very environmentally sound, and endlessly scalable (which is not the case for cobalt). Even if power density and capacity is not optimal, this is a great chemistry for stationary batteries.

if bacteria with a suitable combination of lipids and proteins can be produced, which are selected for maximal biomass production, very nutritious alternatives for conventional animal feed can be developed with enormous efficiency. With a coulombic efficiency of only 50%, one 5MW wind turbine (with a load factor of 50%) can produce on average 2.5 M joule/second = 7.9 E 13 joule/year = 18 billion kiloCalories per year. if this electricity is converted to protein rich biomass (like soybean meal for animal feed) with a coulomb efficiency of 50%, this accounts to 9 billion kCal per year. Since one kg of soy bean meal is about 4000 kCal, this would account to an equivalent of 4.7 million kg soy bean meal per year ! (and you could build your windmill close to your pig farm or fishfarm, so no transportation costs/polution required anymore either)

The article says : Coulombic efficiency is calculated based on the equation: CE = Q acetate /Qtotal (where Qacetate is the coulomb required for the acetate production (measured by High-performance liquid chromatography) in one batch, and Qtotal is the total coulomb produced by the current in the corresponding batch). It seems it is indeed coulomb efficiency

This is if you want to use conventional "organic chemistry". When the depolymerisation of cellulose is done with enzymes or microorganisms instead, the use of those massive amounts of dangerous formaldehyde is not necessary. what about all the highly polluted wastewater? I would still prefer a biochemical approach over this "old fashioned" organic chemistry with a lot of dangerous solvents and waste products.

I suppose they like cheap frying oil

Why would the cost stop dropping after 2023? More plausible it keeps dropping, blowing all fossil alternatives from the table. Cheap (nobel metal free) electrolyzers and ever cheaper solar energy is around the corner.

Electrolytic conversion of CO2 tot CO and of H20 to H2 is also comming, putting them back in business.

In the last paragraph, they mention the need for "the supply chain for the proprietary anode and cathode material" They are also lost in the process it seems. I wonder what these are. I hope it is not platinum.

Using the waste heat for high temperature electrolysis of H2O to H2 and of CO2 to CO could improve conversion rates further with relatively low electricity use. Even now, those are impressive results to convert waste to fuel. Not only forestry waste but also municipal waste should be converted.

CCS will be needed in the future to reduce atmospheric CO2. While fossil fuels will be abandoned soon by virtue of marked forces, these CCS technologies will be usefull. There are gigatons of garbage, biomass and sewage sludge that are being incinerated or composted now and will be in the future. The CCS can be used there. Biomass growing and transformation to H2, combined with CCS could also capture gigatons of CO2/year while producing carbon negative fuels. There won't be any excuse for burning fossils soon, but industrial scale CCS technology must be developed. Go on !

Coal will be obsolete, but many of these technologies could be usefull. Supercritical CO2 as a working fluid could also be beneficial in nuclear plants. Carbon capture from biomass or waste incineration or pyrolysis could provide carbon negative H2 and carbon extraction from the atmosphere.

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Apart from any use in cars, our industry uses huge amounts of H2. So very large scale of renewable H2 production must come on-line as fast as possible. Whether the electricity will come from nuclear, solar or wind doesn t matter. And whether it will be used in cars or fertilizer or chemicals or food production will depend on future developments. One thing is clear: we need verylarge scale renewable H2. This is a good start

Atomic weight Lithium : 7 Atomic weight Magnesium : 24 Mg may have 2 valence electrons, but is still heavier per unit of charge. Li is abundant in seawater (Mg even much more) so will never be scarce. It is best to have both technologies. Depending on the application, one of them is preferable, as is H2, or Na.

That's insane. It would inevitably involve unseen habitat destruction. Better produce efuels from solar and wind. Will eventually be much cheaper and much less destructive