Recently the Navy announced it had found a way to do something similar with seawater, which could potentially allow for greater autonomy from ports and tanker groups. Wonder if it was the same approach.

Promising report indeed. But what does the author mean by 'inexpensive' ? Do the researchers have any idea at all about how realistic this is as a commercial solution?

it sounds to me that it takes more energy for the conversion process than commercially viable.

Audii did this in May 2015,they were making 65 gals. of diesel a day.

Typical of such articles, there is NOT one word of the efficiency or the amount on energy input that is required to make the same unit of energy output in the synthesized hydrocarbon. How much light, pressure and temperature is required to make one gallon of syn fuel?
Without those numbers and some projection for the costs involved the process is meaningless. There is little point in making a gallon of fuel if it takes a couple of hundred kilowatt hours of energy to do it. And that relation is simply not mentioned but is absolutely critical. The fact that it is not mentioned is cautionary tell that there is likely not much here.
I realize that this is research at this point but someone needs to know if this avenue even shows promise and that, unfortunately, is missing.

This is probably not commercially viable to make it in terms of energy in etc, but what about when the oil actually runs out! Hopefully they will have cracked fusion by then.(holds breath for very long time)

Water is most likely the record holder of adsorbing heat and having its molecular structure remaining intact. So it baffles me having CO2 dissolved in water and making a fuel in a heat engine.

After burning this liquid hydrocarbons you get again CO2.

Brilliant! I've always felt that we needed a liquid fuel that uses our current distribution infrastructure and can be used in current gas- and diesel-powered vehicles with only minor modifications for alternative fuel to have the potential for widespread usage. But, I'm not a chemist for an engineer, so it's left to up to scientists like this group to make it happen. Bravo! I wish you the best!

I am leery of this idea. The burning of hydrocarbon fuels is a huge problem. Apparently this product is a direct replacement for gasoline and that may carry the same negative aspects of gasoline and diesel burning. As far as ships go, large ships are ultra violent producers of pollution already. At this time, seven large ships produce more pollution than the entire automotive pollution of the US every year. Concentrating on building homes, industries and cars and ships that all use less energy is much more important than making liquid fuels easier to come by.