Synthetic gasoline

[Katz]

Say you have your own personal renewable energy system. Expensive but all paid for. Are you ok with devoting energy to capture Co2, generate hydrogen and synthetize hydrocarbons in a small reactor?

The US navy is into it.

[freeyourmind]

WAAAAAYYYY more energy loss compared to battery storage.

[spacecase0]

I would consider it,
but if there were a better way to do it,
then I would be using something else.

[anarchyale]

Say you have your own personal renewable energy system. Expensive but all paid for. Are you ok with devoting energy to capture Co2, generate hydrogen and synthetize hydrocarbons in a small reactor?

The US navy is into it.

What's the EROEI?

I'd love to ask how much we paid for it, but my guess is that this is one of those things where you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

If true, this is probably bad news, it shows that hydrocarbons are really it for us in terms of energy density and ease of use/storage. If this has a really bad (negative) return on energy invested, and they are cool with that, it shows we are really coming up with nothing to replace liquid hydrocarbon fuels on a useful, large scale. 

[Phildo]

It makes some sense for the US Navy.

1.  The US Navy has aircraft carriers.  Albeit, they are large floating targets, akin to the Battleships at Pearl Harbor, but they have them. 

2.  While the ships may be nukes, the aircraft on board burn Oil.  It is at the end of a long supply chain and must be stored in bulk for remote use

3.  The Nuke generators on board have a large surplus power capacity. 

4.  There is water all around them.

5.  The only other alternates for Oil are Butanol and/or other Bios -- which are at the end of an even longer supply chain.

6.  So adding up  Free Electric Power + Free Water - Expensive and Needed Oil = a Total Win if they can pull this off.

However, this method makes absolutely no sense for the common small or medium size generator/producer.