Petrol from Water and Air; Now a Possibility

Ever wish petrol could be created out of thin air and our wallets wouldn't suffer the dent petrol prices currently put in them? Maybe you can. A small British firm has developed a way to do just that. The firm has developed a way for petrol to be created from simple air and water giving hope to the vision of low cost petrol. The engineers at Air Fuel Synthesis say that they have created 5-litres of petrol in over 3 months. According to the engineers, they used technology that involves extracting carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and then mixing them in a reactor along with a catalyst that creates methanol. The resulting methanol is later converted to petrol.

According to Peter Harrison, Chief executive officer, AFS, "It's actually cleaner because it's synthetic. You just make what you need to make in terms of the contents of it, so it doesn't contain what might be seen as pollutants, like sulphur," he said. He went on to clarify stating, "We can't make (petrol) at pump prices, but we will do eventually. All we need is renewable energy to make it, and so when oil becomes a problem we will be able to make a contribution to keep cars moving or to keep airplanes moving."

While all this sounds great, we cannot say with certainty that the efforts of the AFS will pan out to create low-cost alternative fuel. The work currently being carried out by AFS is a 2 year project that has so far cost them 1.6 million dollars. Currently their plans involve building a commercial plant that will produce 1,200-litre on a daily basis. So can we get petrol from air and water? Fingers crossed!