Fuel

As any car-chase action movie will tell you, the gasoline used in our vehicles is flammable, explosive stuff. Scientists have created a new combustible fuel, however, which stays safely non-flammable for transport and storage.

BMW i Ventures announced today it is investing in Prometheus Fuels. The Silicon Valley startup is working on technologies for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and processing it into carbon-neutral gasoline.

Artificial leaves can convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy or even be used to produce fuels. Now, researchers from Cambridge have developed a new version that can produce synthetic gas (or syngas) without releasing carbon dioxide.

​​Millions of metric tons of plastic are produced each year and in reality, very little of it is recycled. But what if there were more ways of turning this waste into something valuable, be it new plastics, hydrocarbons or different types of fuel?

Direct air capture (DAC) systems have been discussed as a possibility for removing CO2 from the air, but until recently seemed too expensive. After running a pilot plant for three years, Carbon Engineering (CE) has broken down the costs of a DAC system and found how it can work.

Several experiments have shown that the EMDrive can generate thrust from basically nothing – in apparent violation of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Unfortunately, a German team has now built and tested their own EMDrive, and found that environmental factors may have been responsible for false positives.

Used to make most of our disposable food and beverage containers, polyethylene is produced at a staggering volume of over 100 million metric tons each year, most of which ends up in landfills. Now researchers have devised a way to recycle this waste into usable liquid fuel.

Just weeks after producing its first batch of synthetic diesel fuel made from carbon dioxide and water, Audi has laid claim to another synthetic, clean-burning and petroleum-free fuel called "e-benzin." The fuel was created by Audi's project partner Global Bioenergies, in France.

Audi is making a new fuel for internal combustion engines that has the potential to make a big dent when it comes to climate change – that's because the synthetic diesel is made from just water and carbon dioxide.

Researchers at Virginia Tech claim to have created a method to produce hydrogen fuel using a biological technique that is not only cheaper and faster than other methods, but also produces hydrogen of a much higher quality ... and all from the leftover stalks, cobs, and husks of corn.

Ethanol may be touted as a more eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels, but it requires a great deal of plant-based feedstock. Now, however, scientists at Stanford University have devised a method of producing liquid ethanol from carbon monoxide gas.

Although no one is saying that aircraft carriers will soon be able to fuel their jet fighters using water from the ocean, such a scenario has recently come a step closer to reality. Scientists have successfully flown a model airplane that was running purely on fuel derived from sea water.