US Navy develops technology to turn seawater into fuel

[bogan]

Same could be said about Li-Ion batteries vs Super Caps.....

Indeed, fucking supercap powered bike be way more use than hydrogen. Would get past the charging limitations of Li-Ion too. Good thing there are clever chappies working both angles eh!

[husaberg]

You guys are too busy arguing to see Carbon and Hydrogen and oxygen ....................

It works by pulling carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water using a catalytic converter, Discover explains. Those gases are turned into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel that could, experts hope, power both planes and ships, AFP reports.

"We don't necessarily go to a gas station to get our fuel," Vice Admiral Philip Cullom tells AFP. "Our gas station comes to us in terms of an oiler, a replenishment ship.

My guess is the big tanker ships that fuel the conventional fleet are less that 93% efficient......
btw hydrogen works well in a Wankel allegedly........

[mashman]

Problem is, they're using iron as a catalyst.

Smelt it...

[husaberg]

Smelt it...

[Winston001]

Here's a bit more information from the US Navy and must admit it is interesting: they are ripping out CO2 plus a bit of H2 and creating complex hydrocarbons. As Speeding_ant said iron is used as a catalyst to turn gases into a liquid but I've no idea how.




"CO2 in the air and in seawater is an abundant carbon resource, but the concentration in the ocean (100 milligrams per liter [mg/L]) is about 140 times greater than that in air, and 1/3 the concentration of CO2 from a stack gas (296 mg/L). Two to three percent of the CO2 in seawater is dissolved CO2 gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate.


NRL has made significant advances in the development of a gas-to-liquids (GTL) synthesis process to convert CO2 and H2 from seawater to a fuel-like fraction of C9-C16 molecules. In the first patented step, an iron-based catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO2 conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease unwanted methane production in favor of longer-chain unsaturated hydrocarbons (olefins). These value-added hydrocarbons from this process serve as building blocks for the production of industrial chemicals and designer fuels.

In the second step these olefins can be converted to compounds of a higher molecular complexity using controlled polymerization. The resulting liquid contains hydrocarbon molecules in the carbon range, C9-C16, suitable for use a possible renewable replacement for petroleum based jet fuel."

[Winston001]

What doesn't get mentioned is the process requires 23,000 gallons of seawater to produce one gallon of fuel.

Furthermore the seawater has to be extracted by a molecular sieve through reverse osmosis which isn't going to happen in five minutes. Probably not even in five hours.

A Nimitz class aircraft carrier which is reasonably humongous and has 2 Westinghouse nuclear reactors, bunkers 3 million gallons (sorry about all the US measures) of jet fuel which can keep flights rotating up to two weeks.

In order to manufacture that amount of fuel, the ship would have to process 30 billion gallons of seawater a week. Through a sieve.



Very cool stuff but a hard ask even for the USN.