Posted on 04/07/2014 9:18:38 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
WASHINGTON: The US Navy believes it has finally worked out the solution to a problem that has intrigued scientists for decades: how to take seawater and use it as fuel.
The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is being hailed as "a game-changer" because it would signficantly shorten the supply chain, a weak link that makes any force easier to attack.
The US has a fleet of 15 military oil tankers, and only aircraft carriers and some submarines are equipped with nuclear propulsion.
All other vessels must frequently abandon their mission for a few hours to navigate in parallel with the tanker, a delicate operation, especially in bad weather.
The ultimate goal is to eventually get away from the dependence on oil altogether, which would also mean the navy is no longer hostage to potential shortages of oil or fluctuations in its cost.
Vice Admiral Philip Cullom declared: "It's a huge milestone for us." "We are in very challenging times where we really do have to think in pretty innovative ways to look at how we create energy, how we value energy and how we consume it.
"We need to challenge the results of the assumptions that are the result of the last six decades of constant access to cheap, unlimited amounts of fuel," added Cullom.
"Basically, we've treated energy like air, something that's always there and that we don't worry about too much. But the reality is that we do have to worry about it."
US experts have found out how to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater.
Then, using a catalytic converter, they transformed them into a fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. They hope the fuel will not only be able to power ships, but also planes.
That means instead of relying on tankers, ships will be able to produce fuel at sea.
The predicted cost of jet fuel using the technology is in the range of three to six dollars per gallon, say experts at the US Naval Research Laboratory, who have already flown a model airplane with fuel produced from seawater.
Dr Heather Willauer, an research chemist who has spent nearly a decade on the project, can hardly hide her enthusiasm.
"For the first time we've been able to develop a technology to get CO2 and hydrogen from seawater simultaneously, that's a big breakthrough," she said, adding that the fuel "doesn't look or smell very different."
Now that they have demonstrated it can work, the next step is to produce it in industrial quantities. But before that, in partnership with several universities, the experts want to improve the amount of CO2 and hydrogen they can capture.
"We've demonstrated the feasibility, we want to improve the process efficiency," explained Willauer.
Collum is just as excited. "For us in the military, in the Navy, we have some pretty unusual and different kinds of challenges," he said.
"We don't necessarily go to a gas station to get our fuel, our gas station comes to us in terms of an oiler, a replenishment ship.
"Developing a game-changing technology like this, seawater to fuel, really is something that reinvents a lot of the way we can do business when you think about logistics, readiness."
A crucial benefit, says Collum, is that the fuel can be used in the same engines already fitted in ships and aircraft.
"If you don't want to re-engineer every ship, every type of engine, every aircraft, that's why we need what we call drop-in replacement fuels that look, smell and essentially are the same as any kind of petroleum-based fuels."
Drawbacks? Only one, it seems: researchers warn it will be at least a decade before US ships are able to produce their own fuel on board.
Nothing new. I remember back in the 50’s there was a pill that once you filled your tank with water, you could drop into the tank and turn the water into gasoline. I think there were perpetual motion machines back then too.
They say the cost is about $6 per gallon. That number is in the economic range.
If it was $25 per gallon I would say nice try, keep trying. But $6 gives a green light especially when they say they are working to improve the yield gained from the process. If there is success with increasing yields, then costs can enter the competitive market range.
This reads like the cover of Popular Mechanics.
Sure. All you need is lots of heat and lots of pressure. I mean LOTS of heat and LOTS of pressure, like that found when a star goes nova or is ripped apart by a black hole. I'm working on solving this dilemma in my garage.
True but we’re talking about US Navy Research, not the federal government. Our military research is awesome!
One could get it from the exhalations of the crew, or from following oil burning ships, or the ever increasing concentration in the Atmosphere (CO2 is also dissolved in the Ocean).
...and jetpacks! (there really were)
It doesn’t make sense, if they have such a power source, it will provide more security making the US energy independent than keeping it secret on Navy vessels.
CO2. There’s lots of CO2 dissolved in seawater. In fact oceans are a huge sink for CO2, which of course our esteemed Gore-certified climate changeologists ignore.
Used ta B.
Before the NSF and its running off the rails into the Social "Sciences" weeds, the DoD used to support all sorts of University Departments with contracts (Basic research and Applied) (and Labs full of equipment with brass DoD inventory tags...).
I figure that if a smarter guy like Newton couldn't do it, my time would be better devoted to other stuff (like teaching my dog to climb out of the water onto her own "trailer" kayak).
Heavy Water fusion.
“It doesn’t make sense, if they have such a power source, it will provide more security making the US energy independent than keeping it secret on Navy vessels.”
I don’t know what they have or don’t have. I just know they are funding a new type of fusion reactor that promising cheap and safe energy without hazardous radioactive pollution. I also see they want rail guns which, they can barely power one with the two LCS they designed. And those ships have more electrical generating capacity than any other ship of it’s size.
Maybe they are just dreaming. Because honestly some of the ships in the navy strike me as sucking out loud. One 5 inch gun as the main offensive weapon iirc.
More than one university campus has a working cyclotron bult by the Army.
They were built in the late 50s to early 60s.
Doubt anhy being built today.
Those were the days (slightly post Sputnik).
Used to have 8 nuclear cruisers but they are gone. All our subs are nuclear.
The Climate Change Alarmists are going to hate this!
If we’re able to make clean, easy to get fuel, they won’t be able to use the AGW scam to help them achieve world wide Socialist control.
“Giving society cheap abundant energy is . . .
like giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
-Paul Ehrlich (Econazi)
The undisclosed but obviously crucial power source is the real point of this story. This is a crypto-announcement of that power source! And we know it’s not portable, or it could be used on planes directly instead of being used to make fuel for planes. So the sucker is big.
Some submarines? Except for one small research sub, every submarine in the US Navy has been nuclear powered for 24 years.
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