Carbon Sciences Makes Green Gasoline as Alternative Fuel

Byron Elton wants you to know that the alternative fuel his company is developing isn’t an alternative to gasoline. “It is gasoline,” the leader of Carbon Sciences states.

Elton is CEO of Carbon Sciences, Santa Barbara, Calif., an alternative fuel company that has developed a new conversion process for producing green gasoline as an alternative fuel from a combination of natural gas and carbon dioxide.

Alternative Fuel Takes Green Direction

The concept of producing a new alternative fuel and products from existing ones in itself isn’t new. Look at crude oil, for instance. But what is new is the green approach Carbon Sciences is taking to its alternative fuel approach.

“While it has long been proven that refinery processes can convert natural gas and other gases into products like gasoline, the energy input and ingredients required of these methods simply drove the cost too high,” explains Elton.

Recognizing this hurdle, and also seeing great market potential for an alternative fuel gasoline not made from crude oil, Carbon Sciences devised a less costly process using the vastly abundant ingredient CO2 coupled with a proprietary chemical catalytic procedure designed by the company’s chief technology officer, Naveed Aslam. That’s right; Carbon Science is using greenhouse gases to make gasoline as an alternative fuel. Greenaline, anyone?

Abundance of Green Alternative Fuel Options

“The world is not running out of energy, it is running out of cheap, crude oil,” Elton says. “The world runs on transport fuel and we use more of it every day. The days of putting a hole in the ground in Texas, Oklahoma or Saudi Arabia are over.”

He believes the U.S. has abundant natural resources for solving the fuel crisis, specifically by way of CO2 and methane. “That’s really where the green comes in,” explains Elton. “Gas-to-liquid technology has been done for some time, but not as a particularly green process because not only did you not mitigate greenhouse gases, you created them.”

Carbon Sciences makes use of a chemical catalysis to turn CO2, methane and other ingredients into liquid hydrocarbons and then an alternative fuel gasoline. While currently in the developmental stage, the company plans to have a full-scale pilot project up and running before 2011 is out, when it hopes to attract outside investors. Because no changes in infrastructure are required, Elton says it is feasible—if all goes smoothly—to expect the technology to be road ready in five years.

The company has received its share of media attention, particularly because it utilizes a green process. “Another thing that is key, compared to other alternative fuel routes of which we’re very supportive, is that the end product is gasoline. It’s not like gasoline, it is a direct replacement,” he explains. “With other scenarios, you need a new infrastructure. With ours, it is existing.”

How confident is he that the new fuel production will be up to scale in five years? “We have great faith in the market system,” says Elton. “If it works, which we have a high degree of confidence it will, and we can withstand the scrutiny of every genius in world, the potential implications are so dramatic that normal timelines fall by the wayside. We’re taking greenhouse gases and turning them into gasoline. That, in itself, is pretty cool. Why would you wait?"