Way better then the battery and hydrogen solutions. I guess that they can also make gasoline and diesel.

Gorr said;

' Way better then the battery and hydrogen solutions'

Not really. You still need to add hydrogen to make the fuel work, and then you end up with a fuel which still turns out pollutants, which hydrogen especially in fuel cells doesn't, and which higher potential weight and hence cost than hydrogen.

Note 'potential' there, as there is one heck of a way to go to develop hydrogen technology to that level.

However, they are looking to do a round the world flight non stop on hydrogen:

https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/ekpo-to-supply-fuel-cell-stacks-for-first-non-stop-h2-flight-around-the-world/

What SAF does is avoid the need for substantial redesign of aircraft, which is why the airline companies are so keen on it.

Boeing comment that they are unsure of the safety of hydrogen aircraft.

I think they underestimate themselves.

They have proven expertise in building unsafe aircraft using regular jet fuel, and don't need the help of hydrogen to do so.

I found an open access paper (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(23)00485-X) on bicarbonate electrolyzers that gives some insight in to how this technology could be used to capture CO2. In this paper they are considering the production of formate for direct formate fuel cells rather than the production of jet fuel, but the CO2 capture principles are the same.

Here are some paragraphs from the introduction:

"Traditionally, CO2 capture and CO2ER have been considered separately.10 CO2 captured from dilute sources should be first converted (typically to solid calcium carbonate, CaCO3), transported, thermally decomposed, and pressurized to become ultra-pure CO2 gas feedstock (Figure S1).11,12 For the prevalent alkaline- or neutral-medium-based aqueous membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzers, over 50% of the capital cost would come from this solid-state thermal regeneration process4,9 which is highly energy intensive.

To address this critical challenge, rather than relying on the CO2(gas) feedstock, bipolar membrane (BPM) electrolyzers with aqueous bicarbonate HCO3-(FAQ) input were demonstrated (Figure S2b).11,15,20,21 In principle, the energy-intensive CO2 regeneration process could be circumvented."

The process starts from a metal oxide (KO2 in the example given in the paper). The process may be summarized as follows:

KO2 ==> KOH(Aq)+CO2 ==> KHCO3(Aq) ==> KHCO2(Aq) + oxygen

KO2 obtained from mineral sources is dissolved in water where it becomes potassium hydroxide (KOH). KOH absorbs CO2 and become potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) which is electrolytically upgraded to potassium formate (KHCO2). The potassium formate can be used to power a direct formate fuel cell (DFFC). This method of producing hydrocarbon fuel avoids going all the way down the energy well to carbonate and therefore avoid the high energy cost of pulling the CO2 back out of this well. However several additional comments are in order.

First this method of carbon capture is not circular. The KOH is not regenerated at the end of the process ready to capture more CO2. Instead you have to keep mining and process mineral rock containing metal oxides as the following paragraph from the paper makes clear:

"At scale, our strategy fits well into the global framework of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS). Various alkali basalt mineral rocks, containing CaO, MgO, SiO2, Na2O, and K2O, were found in abundance on Earth and used for enhanced weathering.25 They are efficient for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and would form carbonates and bicarbonates.25,26 The insoluble components could be separated and buried for carbon sequestration, while the soluble components, containing potassium, sodium, and calcium, etc., with our method, could be converted electrochemically into energy-rich metal-formate fuels (Figure 1G) for seasonal energy storage. A direct formate fuel cell (DFFC) possesses a high volumetric energy density (53g H2 per liter) and high specific energy density (2.13 kWh kg-1, more than 5 times that of the state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries). Currently, a state-of-the-art DFFC demonstrated a peak power density of 302 mW cm-2, which is already quite competitive against the standard H2 PEM (proton-exchange membrane) fuel cell (~700 mW cm-2),27 thus opening the door for seasonal or even multi-year storage of the intermittent wind and solar electricity."

Secondly the claim of 20x lower cost of carbon capture seems questionable. Enhanced rock weathering has been considered as a mean of CCS and the economics are considered to be highly doubtful (https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/enhanced-rock-weathering). I suspect the 20x claim depends on accounting methods. If you count the mining and processing of minerals as a cost of fuel production and only count the cost of the blowers required to pass air over your vats of KOH then maybe you can claim low carbon capture costs. However, I do not think that this method could be used for pure CCS at such low cost.

Roger:

Perhaps I should note that I am not disagreeing with your comment, but simply dottiing some i's on it, to make it more bullet proof by using the exact quotes.

I dunno anyone who is currently doing DAC for $200 ton, nor even $400, so what you said is actually accurate, it is just that that is not quite how Sora fuels have laid it out themselves.

Anyhow, they are most certainly claiming a massive reduction in cost, and your link puts some meat on the bone of what they are on about.

Make the jet fuel at natural gas processing plants They get plenty of CO2 from the wellhead. where they just put it right into the air. Instead you're actually making a fuel out of it, less CO2 omissions

If you want to do this on the large scale my method will work there are a lot of natural gas processing plants they take the wellhead gas they clean it up they remove the CO2 it's done every day they can make tons of synthetic jet fuel if you use the CO2 twice you've cut the emissions in half it's not slightly.

In my method you'll be using renewable hydrogen made with renewable electricity and waste heat to make it more efficient it's just where do you get the CO2, you can do direct air capture very expensive or you can get it from power plants, have to separate it from the other gasses or you can get it from well heads its pure CO2