Updated 8/6/2012

WindFuels Overview

While almost no one noticed, the economics for producing clean fuels and hydrocarbons from water, waste CO₂, and wind energy improved by a factor of ten between 2002 and 2008. Over the past five years, we have applied for patents on the scientific and technological basis for another factor-of-two improvement in the economics. We have shown that it will be possible (as soon as the plants can be built) to profitably produce high-purity carbon-neutral gasoline, jet fuel, alcohols, and many other hydrocarbons in volumes that cannot be matched by any other renewable avenue, from off-peak wind energy, waste CO₂, and water.

Our breakthroughs permit production of gasoline, diesel, and other fuels and chemicals from waste CO₂ and water on wind farms at twice the efficiency that was thought likely just three years ago.

WindFuels Concept

• First, water and renewable electrical power are fed into an electrolyzer, which produces the hydrogen needed.

• Then waste CO₂ (from coal power plants) and the renewable hydrogen are piped into our novel Renewable Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (RFTS) plant. There, they are converted into fuels and chemicals (including gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel).

• These fuels may then be readily stored and distributed by conventional means – pipelines and tanker trucks.

• The electrolyzer also produces a huge amount of oxygen, which may be sold if market conditions warrant, or it may be utilized in novel processes to improve the efficiency of the RFTS plant.

• There has been steady progress in the development of Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) processes for production of fuels and chemicals of all types over the past 30 years. Within the past 5 years, many of the needed advances have been demonstrated.

• We have pending patents and proprietary technology advancing the remaining key technical pieces. Our RFTS process is compatible with variable renewable energy sources, particularly wind energy, for producing alcohols and hydrocarbons from waste CO₂ and water at maximum practical efficiency.

• We show that WindFuels has numerous economical and environmental advantages compared to all other renewable fuels that have been proposed.

Wind energy is by far our most competitive renewable energy resource. There is enough wind energy (in class 4 sites and higher, mean wind speed above 16 mph) to supply ten times the world’s current total electrical energy usage. The perceived challenge is getting wind energy from good sites to where and when it is needed, both for the transportation sector and for the power grid. Efficient conversion of off-peak wind energy into ultra-clean, stable, liquid fuels solves both the energy storage problem and the grid stability problem. In doing so, it allows wind energy to continue to grow rapidly at least through the middle of this century.

A Major Cut In CO₂ emissions.
Many have said increased fuel efficiency in the transportation sector is the greatest opportunity for reducing CO₂ emissions. However, even a very aggressive plan to that effect would reduce global CO₂ emissions by under 5% compared to expected market forces over the next three decades – partly because cars have an average lifetime of over 17 years and because market forces alone will lead to improved fuel mileages at about the maximum practical rate of a few percent per year.

The only possibly viable option that has been on the table for dealing with climate change is CO₂ separation (capture) and sequestration (CCS). Real-world experience over the past five years at several different sites suggests the cost for the sequestration alone – not including the cost of CO₂ separation from the exhaust of coal plants – will be at least $30/ton of CO₂. (A new DOE 1-million-ton sequestration demonstration project will cost $300/ton.) There is also still uncertainty about long-term stability and safety of CO₂ sequestration on the scale of 10,000 times the current experimental level. Several studies have shown CCS is likely to stimulate earthquakes, and that much of the CO₂ would leak out much faster than most have thought. In about 3 decades, WindFuels will eliminate the need for CO₂ sequestration by recycling the CO₂ from power plants (we do agree that sequestration should be implemented at new coal plants in the meantime).

Some might argue that WindFuels are not ideal because they don’t immediately eliminate fossil CO₂, but economic realities are also essential. When WindFuels are burned, fossil CO₂ is released at that point into the atmosphere (assuming it was made using CO₂ from fossil-fueled power plants), but it has displaced the use of oil. We can use the CO₂ from coal plants as a tool to eliminate our use of petroleum and natural gas (which together account for over 60% of our CO₂ emissions) on a timescale that cannot be matched by any other option. At the same time, we will prevent coal-to-liquids from competing.

• WindFuels eliminates the need for expensive CO₂ sequestration by recycling the CO₂ from power plants.

• WindFuels will be cheaper than heavy-oil products or cellulosic ethanol.

• WindFuels could be a one-trillion-dollar market in 18 years.

• WindFuels is the “greenest” transportation fuel solution yet proposed: Converting CO₂ into gasoline, ethanol, diesel, jet fuel, and plastics – by the gigaton.

• WindFuels will be competitive with petroleum within six years, and WindFuels are scaleable globally in less than four decades to the 10 TW level because they are 80% based on systems currently in commercial production at the multi-billion-dollar level. Each terawatt of renewable power used in the advanced RFTS process will produce 4B bbl/yr of fuels and other high-value chemicals – which would likely be worth over 1.5 trillion dollars per year in less than 20 years.