S3 | Science, Startups, & Stories
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2024
19:59 · 228K views · Mar 23, 2024
A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.
HN commenters point to it as a clear, short tour of Terraform's synthetic fuel approach and goals.
4 comments from Hacker News
Related, and yet not mentioned in TFA: "Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas" [LINK] Excellent S3 piece on Terraform [20min]: this video I agree with Terraform's founder on at least one thing: atmospheric carbon capture needs to be cheaper than ground extraction. Market forces will decide the rest. This is not a CO2 cop-out, we need to both stop introducing CO2 into the atmosphere, and also extract gigatons from it. Terraform Industries is addressing both sides.
Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: this video . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic hydrocarbons.
For more, I'd recommend Jason Carman's recently released videos on Terraform: Overview and tour (~20min): this video Deeper Interview (~40min): [LINK]
On this video he says the goal is $100/tonne carbon capture and $1/kg H2, which puts those inputs well under the $10/kcf leaving some margin for the cost of the sabatier. Both processes are directly proportional to the cost of electricity and heat so assuming the thesis of decreasing solar costs holds true, it's a question of when not if.