Could fossil fuels be used in an environmentally ‘clean’ way ? Fossil fuels are going to be available for a long time. About 50 years ago they provided around 66% of all the world’s energy; now it is down to about 60%. One possibility is absorbing the CO2 at / near the combustion engine source. A European shipping company is looking at this.
The growing concentration of China’s economic power is disturbing for some. The emphasis on battery-electric drive is handing over great portions of western GDP to China. It already controls nearly every aspect of electric drives, batteries and vehicles; their key minerals; photovoltaic / solar arrays; and – increasingly – wind-turbines.
If super-efficient uncooled engines using green fuels are developed in the West, they will capture a large market, using a tiny fraction of the mineral and human resources of battery-electric drives and be more energy efficient overall. Large battery packs and their disposal / recycling would not be needed, nor would new electricity generation, expensive links to costly charging stations, nor the time and costs spent charging. Current laws limiting ICEs after 2035 are unlikely to be applied to ICEs using green fuels.
CO2 absorption, often together with carbon monoxide (CO) removal, is used in submarines, space craft and other applications. One of the established methods the submariners use is a process called “CO2 scrubbing”. This is done chemically using soda lime (sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide) in devices called ‘scrubbers’. Can such technologies be replicated at scale and appropriate cost for large vehicles, rail, marine craft and stationary applications? Shrinking them down for smaller vehicles and engines would be more challenging. During the last decade many new ways of removing CO2 and converting it in and to another material have been developed. Litus is researching CO2 removal at source.