Synthetic hydrocarbons for many purposes - RB

Some preliminary thoughts about synthetic hydrocarbons for many applications Russ Babcock, Biochemist British Columbia, Canada November 15, 2021 I have nothing against using electricity to power vehicles. The idea has been around and usefully employed for a very long time. For example, golf carts and urban transit. But I do find the promotion of electric cars as a replacement for gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and propane powered cars on a wholesale basis to not only be premature, but also unnecessary, and it will not serve the purpose it is being touted to serve anyway, [helping to control supposed man-made global warming].

Although we don't know exactly when, we will one day probably have to augment our supply of usable, reliable, naturally occurring hydrocarbon fuels, but we have at least 100 years and likely much longer to do that. At this point in time, we really don't even know how finite that supply even is. There is good reason to believe that hydrocarbons are now being produced naturally in the same manner as they have always been over the millenia and eons. Hydrocarbons are the products of anaerobic decay of once living organisms. All that's needed are the dead organisms, an oxygen-free environment, and plenty of pressure and heat. ALL of this is provided in the sediments at our ocean floors aided by the incessant activity of plate tectonics.

Mother Nature has been very good at doing this, just like she's so very good at a whole lot of things that keep our world livable with her billions and billions of checks and balances. So best we try to copy her instead of trying to beat her at her own game. There's no way I can describe the intricacies of Mother Nature's carbon cycle in sufficient detail to answer this question without writing a book on it. But how describing in very simple terms just what it is that Mother Nature does to produce hydrocarbons that we need to learn to copy on a commercial scale?

We already know what we need to accomplish, and we already have the ingredients to accomplish it, and we already have an inexhaustible supply of energy (the sun) to power the endothermic processes.

Through the process of photosynthesis, and with the power of the sun (specific UV wavelengths), and naturally occurring chemicals such as chlorophyll, and invivo reactor sites provided by naturally occurring enzymes, we know how to produce gigatons of feedstock for our hydrocarbon production process from CO2. Algae farms might be our best alternative to accomplishing this part. We would probably need other reactants as well. Hydrogen for example. We already know how to produce it. I do not know every step of an endothermic reduction process that would result in the production of methane from the algae's organic chemical makeup, but it would involve pressure, a 1

source of heat, and probably enzymes. Methane (CH4) is the simplest hydrocarbon, but it can be polymerized to longer chained and ringed hydrocarbons to mimic crude oil.

The following is meant only to be a summary set of chemical reactions that would have to be thoroughly understood in detail to artificially produce hydrocarbons on a commercial scale. The actual process would most certainly involve very many more reactions that this summary does not even begin to describe.

6CO2 + 6H2O -----

12H2O ------------

& enzymes ------> C6H12O6 + 6O2

electrolysis------------> 12H2 + 6O2

C6H12O6 + 12H2 --------------enzymatic anaerobic digestion-----------------> 6CH4 + 6H2O The NET REACTION of the above is all ultimately powered by the sun and is THUS: 6CO2 + 12H2O ---------------------------------------> 6CH4 + 12O2 It is noteworthy that the above anaerobic digestion of sugar is similar to but goes much further than does the anaerobic fermentation of sugar. In the above case the products are fully reduced CH4 and O2, while in the fermentation case, the products are partially reduced C2H5OH (ethanol) and CO2. The energy content of CH4 is considerably higher than the energy content of ethanol. That is just one of the reasons why ethanol in gasoline is a bad idea, but it is at least a step in the right direction to the mass production of storable liquid fuel.

I think we're looking for more, but the details of such a process are not yet known (at least not by me). BUT, we've managed to copy Nature before in many ways, and we can do it this time too. All we have to do is put some good minds to doing it ..................... instead of futilely looking for ways to control the climate.

2