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.
I think the single gun is a giveaway that there is something far more powerful on these ships. Probably scalar weapons, probably using the large flat transmissive surfaces on the sides of the upper superstructures.
From the same source as they get the energy---magic. Obama has used his pen and phone to overrule the First Law of Thermodynamics.
If NASA gets their hands on it, they will give it to the Muslims. If Democrats are in charge, they will trade them campaign donations.
The last diesel electric sub was built when? Early to mid 50s maybe if that late.
Sounds much more promising than some of the “green fuels” the Air Force was working on a couple of years ago. I remember reading some of the press releases about the renewable jet fuel being used in various aircraft, then someone did a little digging and discovered the “green” version of JP8 goes for $60 dollars a gallon.
In case you’re wondering, the regular stuff, refined from good ol’ crude oil, is available for under $4 a gallon.
This inversion of the laws concerning the conservation of energy puzzled me as well.
Simply unlocking CO2 and hydrogen from seawater is highly energy-intensive, and it has to come from SOMEWHERE. CO2 and hydrogen CAN be turned into fuel, through something called the Fischer-Tropsch process, but to proceed on an efficient basis, it requires a relatively high temperature to assure the carbon dioxide transforms into carbon monoxide, then the reaction can continue in the direction of forming hydrocarbon fuels.
The chemistry has been widely studied for 80-some years, and was put to use by the Third Reich in its dying days, to supply fuel for the Wehrmacht, after they had been denied access to oil fields in Romania and elsewhere. But the Germans still had a lot of coal, which was their base resource, and the process of making “syngas” had been well established many years before.
THERE IS NO COAL FLOATING AROUND IN THE OCEAN, but there may be a lot of organic matter there, which would be the source of the carbon necessary to make the carbon monoxide feedstock. Water, of course, is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, but it still takes considerable power to unlock that source.
They are replacing decks with corn rows to grow biofuels. Makes about as much sense with this government in charge.
A friend of mine had a bumper sticker one time that read:
"Navy Nukes Are Built Better Than Jane Fonda."
Last diesel sub commissioned was USS Blueback (SS-581) in 1959.
Just a small expansion on this “organic matter” and its conversion into feedstock for the synthesis of hydrocarbon fuel:
There is a technology called “Plasma arc trash reduction”, a process by which ALL forms of trash are reduced to their constituent atomic structure, then the heat generated by this process is used to drive electric power generation. The primary products of this process are “syngas”, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, both of which are excellent fuels that may be used to drive the generation of electric power, and a silica slag which contains practically all other components of whatever went into the trash stream.
Once up and running, the operating temperature of the plasma torch is about 33,000 degrees F., about three times the temperature of the sun’s surface. The syngas generated is about 2,200 degrees F., and is passed over a heat exchanger to generate superheated steam (diverted to the generation of electricity), in the process of cooling it. Once cooled, the stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide may be separated, yielding up pure hydrogen which may be used to power a fuel cell, or burned directly in the presence of oxygen to yield a very hot flame, which may be used to further produce power through the medium of superheated steam. Carbon monoxide itself is an excellent fuel which when combined with oxygen, forms carbon dioxide, a safe, NON-POLLUTING fraction of our atmosphere, and one that is vital for the photosynthesis of oxygen and carbohydrates in green growing plants. The carbon dioxide may also be captured, cooled and compressed into either liquid CO2, or allowed to become “dry ice”, an intensely cold and solid form of CO2, and an important industrial product.
The hydrogen, of course, when combined with oxygen, becomes water vapor.
Now, if this sounds like “perpetual motion”, keep in mind that the system, once charged up and functioning (by creating the plasma arc in the first place), it is possible to generate from three to six times the power necessary to maintain the arc, so long as the trash stream continues to be fed into the reactor chamber. The surplus electrical energy produced then goes into converting any “syngas”, not consumed in generating additional electric power, into hydrocarbon fuel, among other byproducts.
Scoop up the floating debris on the ocean surface, divert all the existing waste into electric power, and reduce need for and dependence on fossil fuels. And not only the floating debris fields, the sewage sludge that is now dumped by ships at sea could go through this plasma arc, with the decomposed fecal matter adding its bit to the “syngas”.
I don’t see a downside. Most elegant solution.
And carbon-neutral to boot. NO fossil fuels are used once the cycle is started.
Can’t get greener than that.
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