Navy makes jet fuel from seawater

[werepossum]

I seriously thought this was an April Fool's joke, but apparently not. Basically Navy researchers are first splitting seawater (and perhaps also air as atmospheric CO2 is much higher than dissolved marine CO2) into CO2 and hydrogen, then forming those via catalysis into hydrocarbon molecules suitable for use as jet fuel or bunker oil.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/04/navy-just-turned-seawater-jet-fuel/82300/

Announcing a major breakthrough, Navy researchers for the first time have converted seawater into CO2 and hydrogen, which could be used to produce jet fuel within a decade.

In the next seven to ten years, the military will be able to run jets, ships, and other vehicles on a fuel derived from seawater, according to Heather Willauer, a research chemist with the Naval Research Laboratory or NRL.

“It has to meet military specifications to go into a jet,” Willauer said, at the annual Sea Air Space Expo near Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. “We haven’t actually made it to the specifications stage yet. But we know we’re in the hydro-carbon region and it shouldn’t be very difficult to meet that specification.”

The breakthrough, though impressive, does not mean that we will be filling jets and ships with seawater in the very near future. The fixed-bed catalysis process Willauer and her team used to recover the hydrogen and the CO2 from the seawater is highly energy-intensive, requiring almost twice as much electricity to convert the water into fuel components as the process yields in terms of power. Catalysis is a process that combines chemicals, energy and pressure to accelerate chemical reactions. At current energy pricing, the cost of the fuel is between $3 to $7 per gallon. Willauer says the numbers should get better in the years ahead.

With a stable and, hopefully, clean electricity source, seawater-based fuel could reduce dependence on oil or other polluting fuel sources, first in the military and then elsewhere. “The idea is really from a logistics standpoint, you’re no longer dependent on foreign fossil fuel,” said Willauer. “You can make fuel where and when you need so you can stay on station, and it elevates that burden cost of fuel, of carrying it to different parts of the world.”

This is incredible since fuel transportation is both a line of communications vulnerability and expensive. Navy carriers are of course nuclear powered and have a good deal of excess capacity. One could also bring back the nuclear powered cruiser in oiler form, producing jet fuel and bunker oil from the safety of the carrier battle group. Overall, quite a promising development in the projection of force.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

The Navy has been extracting oxygen from seawater for years on submarines, they always vented the hydrogen back into the ocean.

 

[NetWareHead]

The Navy has been extracting oxygen from seawater for years on submarines, they always vented the hydrogen back into the ocean.

Thats only half of the chemical reaction described in the article. Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen is one thing but then reacting those with CO2 to produce a hydrocarbon based fuel is what they are talking about.

There was a post about this in Off topic not too long ago: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2377527&highlight=

 

[TurtleCrusher]

It requires a vast amount of energy to do so. I can only see carriers making the oil and shipping it off via tube.