US Navy successfully demos jet fuel made from seawater

[Ventanni]

Yeah, but aren't most modern ships run on nuclear anyways? In other words, the power source is already onboard. So while the energy requirement maybe large, it's not like you have to burn fuel to produce it.

They are not, actually. Most ships now are powered by gas turbines.

 

[DesiPower]

Firstly, its good we are thinking out of the box, these are generally signs of a healthy society. There are numerous such researches and inventions going on around the world, like capacitor based batteries, so many different types of other energy storage systems, energy from feces, from hair and the list goes on and on. This needs to go on as one day something will click and we will find a mass producible, viable solution.

Secondly, there is so much govt waste all around us, big name researchers and professors clogging the public grant system and using it as their private banks, I do not mind Navy spending money on something that invokes thought process. Its like a concept car, we may never see it on the road but its still stretches your imagination.

Thirdly, why is Dr. Pizza so frustrated and butt hurt today? had a fight with his old lady :biggrin:

 

[SSSnail]

I think wave-powered generators on ships would be swell.

You should try to float that idea by them.

 

[IronWing]

You should try to float that idea by them.

It would probably break the bank.

 

[SSSnail]

It would probably break the bank.

No, they can shore up any technological voyage, as often seen.

 

[NetWareHead]

Well, it is the Navy, andthey have the jets that need to be fueled...

Anyways, I think at some point, they'll scale down the technology and retrofit all ships with nuclear plants > turn sea water into fuel hocus pocus and eliminate the dependency. Wait, so Jesus is working for the Navy? :awe:

I don't know about that. It would be a huge strategic advantage, but IMHO I think that money would always be the biggest problem. Naval nuclear power is absurdly expensive. Every plant is crazy over engineered (for good reason), repair parts are very expensive, you would limit the number of ports you could use (there are rules about ports, they have to agree and have plans in place for an incident).

Nuclear ships also require many more personnel on board. More mouths to feed and pay and one of the reason the sailor hungry ships like Iowa class battleships were retired. The navy also built nuclear powered cruisers and stopped in the 70s, retiring all of the ships eventually. It was found that, while it was possible to mass-produce nuclear-powered warships, the ships were less cost-efficient than conventionally powered warships and the new gas-turbine-powered ships then entering the fleet.

Its political too. Any nuclear powered naval vessel fails under jurisdiction of "Naval Reactors", an office responsible for safe/reliable operation for the navy's nuclear propulsion program and all naval reactors. Headed by a Naval admiral, the rest of the Navy might not like giving that much power to the one Naval Reactors Admiral.

Reactors are also not appropriate for every ship. The navy has tons of destroyers which are typically less than 10000 tons displacement. To give you an idea, the S8G reactor for Ohio class subs weighs almost 3000 tons. Thats a third of ship's displacement for just the reactor on such a small ship. Perhaps a smaller reactor could be designed, who knows. My logic is that the majority of the fleet will stay oil powered for a good time and only ships that crucially need nuclear power like carriers and subs will be the only ones to receive it.

 

[IronWing]

No, they can shore up any technological voyage, as often seen.

It would be frigate awesome!

 

[LetsGetReal]

It looks like they need some form or energy to actually get the hydrogen needed to make this stuff, which means the process uses more energy than what they get out of it. Isn't that the same with any other fuel though? Instead of getting oil out of the ground and refining it to get fuel, we get the fuel out of seawater (or rather, the CO2 in the seawater). It costs more energy than what you get out of it, but you'd no longer be beholden to getting the carbon source from unstable regimes around the world. At least that's my understanding. Am I missing something?

If this process looks feasible, it would seem to be a good thing to do on a large scale no?

what source of energy to start with? if you have more energy to start with than what you get out of the process why not just use the energy you have to start with? Whats the point?

 

[IronWing]

what source of energy to start with? if you have more energy to start with than what you get out of the process why not just use the energy you have to start with? Whats the point?

It's hard to fly a plane using nuclear power. The navy could use a carrier's reactor to power the seawater conversion process to make jet fuel on the fly.

 

[skimple]

Wow. Who put a bug up your ass?

It is not a fuel SOURCE any more than a rechargeable battery is an energy source. The energy came from some where - this method provides a mechanism to store and transfer energy.

Sort of like petroleum, which is made of hydrocarbons?

Re: the recycle CO2/green thing. The effects would be incredibly insignificant.

Your analysis is based on what? Your vast knowledge of refining hydrocarbons from seawater? How much CO2 per gallon of seawater is extracted? How much CO2 from fossil fuels is absorbed into each gallon of seawater?

Shame on Discover Magazine - employees writing articles who don't even know some of the most basic laws of physics, namely, conservation of energy. There is no free lunch.

Please point to the sentence in the article where the writers claim that they are getting energy for free. I believe the words they used are:

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have now proven that it’s possible to power engines instead with a cheap, convenient supply of fuel: seawater.

I think you're both misunderstanding. Let's say you need 5megawatt hours of energy to power <whatever>. That energy doesn't come from the ocean. That energy comes from the nuclear reactors on the aircraft carrier. It would take more like 6 megawatt hours of energy from the nuclear reactors to process the CO2 in the sea water to make the 5 megawatt hours worth of energy for the jets.

No, you are the one who is misunderstanding. The objective is not to lower energy consumption. The objective is to be able to generate fuel on-site (or nearby), rather than relying on long, complicated, supply chains that can be easily disrupted.

...but going from nuclear to electrical is far far more efficient than nuclear to chemical to combustion. We don't have the infrastructure presently for battery recharging stations, but implementing that would be much better in the long run.

Umm, we are already in a "chemical to combustion" model. The only difference is the raw material. You don't pump crude petroleum out of the ground into your car. If a usable consumer fuel could be made from this process, there may not be a need to convert any infrastructure. And I think your assumption that electric cars are "better" needs to be reviewed:

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/13/electric-cars-not-so-green-after-all/

It looks like your belief that electric cars are more efficient and better for the future is making you blind to the potential environmental and political impact. Broheim's post is more on target:

if they can perfect this to the point where we can rely solely on this process for carbon based fuel it would change the world. The world could tell the middle east to go fuck itself, Russia would become completely irrelevant, and we could stop burning coal. The only ones missing out on the new resource would be landlocked countries and nobody gives a shit about those.

If this process could be commoditized for "the masses" - it could eliminate the need to drill and transport petroleum. What's the long term impact of that?

It would eliminate the monopoly that OPEC and other dictatorships hold on global petroleum. You know - those countries where they don't give a rat's ass about what the environmental activists say?

This is a much better solution than re-using french fry oil.

 

[DrPizza]

Do you not understand "source"? It was the same argument people made with hydrogen. "Wow, the ocean is filled with water! The water is a source of energy!" It's not. To get the hydrogen from the ocean requires energy. And, it requires more energy to get that hydrogen than you're capable of getting from the hydrogen. The hydrogen is not a "fuel source" - it's a method to transport energy. The source of the energy is however you obtain the electricity used to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water molecules. This system differs ONLY in that the product is a hydrocarbon rather than hydrogen. (Well, plus it's easier to store.)

Now, my ability to estimate might be off, but I don't think there's any way that the nuclear reactor of an aircraft carrier has an energy output capable of powering all the ships in the carrier group. Because that's where the energy is coming from. It's not coming from the ocean.

 

[CZroe]

The advantage here is that they wouldn't have to waste energy carrying jet fuel that they can make as needed. Because it takes energy from the ship it is less efficient than using the ship's power source in the first place. They only do it because there is no such thing as an electric jet. It makes more sense to power our day to day lives from the same energy source the ship uses: nuclear power.

 

[Sonikku]

Shame on Discover Magazine - employees writing articles who don't even know some of the most basic laws of physics, namely, conservation of energy. There is no free lunch. The energy available as fuel in a plane, jet, or ship had to come from somewhere. The hydrocarbons that they're producing turn back into CO2 and H2O when they're burned. The amount of energy to turn the CO2 into a hydrocarbon is MORE than the energy you get by burning that hydrocarbon. There needs to be a source of energy, say a nuclear reactor (very feasible on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier). But, to think that a ship is going to make its own energy from seawater to fuel itself? That's worse than even Rossi's claims.

Tell that to Tesla.

 

[dighn]

The advantage here is that they wouldn't have to waste energy carrying jet fuel that they can make as needed. Because it takes energy from the ship it is less efficient than using the ship's power source in the first place. They only do it because there is no such thing as an electric jet. It makes more sense to power our day to day lives from the same energy source the ship uses: nuclear power.

yeah looks like the navy is moving more and more towards electrically powered ships. they've got railguns for bombardment, FEL lasers for anti-missle/aircraft and now this to power their aircrafts. kind of cool if you can look past the tools-of-mass-killing part.

 

[SSSnail]

yeah looks like the navy is moving more and more towards electrically powered ships. they've got railguns for bombardment, FEL lasers for anti-missle/aircraft and now this to power their aircrafts. kind of cool if you can look past the tools-of-mass-killing part.

Ahem, tools of liberty and freedom.

'Muricah, fuck yeah!

 

[NetWareHead]

yeah looks like the navy is moving more and more towards electrically powered ships. they've got railguns for bombardment, FEL lasers for anti-missle/aircraft and now this to power their aircrafts. kind of cool if you can look past the tools-of-mass-killing part.

If I can nitpick a little there are no electrically powered ships in the us navy. Just ships that have more and more electrical generation capabilities over their predecessors.

A ship like the current destroyer class (Arleigh Burke class) in the us navy uses its gas turbines to directly spin the propellers. They have additional onboard diesel generators to generate current for their radar systems, sensors etc...

Nuclear powered ships have reactors on board with one purpose and that it to make steam. The steam is routed to turbines which spin the props. Steam is also diverted to other turbines which spin generators for electrical power.

A legitimately "electric powered" ship would be examples like French and Chinese nuclear subs. Reactor steam spins turbines connected to generators which generate electricity. The electricity is then fed to huge electrical motor(s) that spins the propeller(s). Like I said, nitpicking... 🙂

I don't know if the "seawater-fuel" reaction can use steam directly from the reactor or if electricity is the energy source behind it all.

 

[DrPizza]

Your analysis is based on what? Your vast knowledge of refining hydrocarbons from seawater? How much CO2 per gallon of seawater is extracted? How much CO2 from fossil fuels is absorbed into each gallon of seawater?

I was referring to this: " Also, many global warming advocates believe that the oceans are absorbing CO2. This process would extract CO2 from seawater, which may lead to a "recycling" of CO2. " Compared to the volume of the oceans, and the amount of CO2 in the oceans, the effect of removing some of that CO2 from the oceans is incredibly insignificant. My analysis is based simply on the volume of the ocean.

Please point to the sentence in the article where the writers claim that they are getting energy for free. I believe the words they used are:

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have now proven that it’s possible to power engines instead with a cheap, convenient supply of fuel: seawater.

The U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer typically burns 1,000 gallons of petroleum fuel an hour. That's completely irrelevant to the article unless the suggestion is that the destroyer could refuel itself from sea water. The destroyer cannot. Perhaps it could refuel itself from the aircraft carrier, but (and, I'll admit, this is a bit of a guess), there's no way in h e double toothpicks that an aircraft carrier's nuclear reactor has that sort of excess capacity.

Umm, we are already in a "chemical to combustion" model. The only difference is the raw material. You don't pump crude petroleum out of the ground into your car. If a usable consumer fuel could be made from this process, there may not be a need to convert any infrastructure.

Well, except for the part of the infrastructure where we increase the capacity of our electric grid via more nuclear reactors, more wind, more solar. It would be rather silly to use fossil fuels to create electricity to create fossil fuels.

And I think your assumption that electric cars are "better" needs to be reviewed:

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/13/electric-cars-not-so-green-after-all/

It looks like your belief that electric cars are more efficient and better for the future is making you blind to the potential environmental and political impact. Broheim's post is more on target:

I make no such assumption. I merely make the point that if you produce 100 units of energy from nuclear, wind, or solar, it seems incredibly wasteful to not use them in vehicles whereby about 70% or more of that energy goes to power the vehicle, rather than somewhere in the 25% ball park.

If this process could be commoditized for "the masses" - it could eliminate the need to drill and transport petroleum. What's the long term impact of that?

It would eliminate the monopoly that OPEC and other dictatorships hold on global petroleum. You know - those countries where they don't give a rat's ass about what the environmental activists say?

This is a much better solution than re-using french fry oil.

I agree that it's better than reusing french fry oil, except perhaps for that one employee of a restaurant that might be able to get a large enough supply. But, how do you eliminate transportation of this fuel? The ocean isn't at the end of my street.

 

[MaxDepth]

Yes, but to process the fuel we'd have to shunt power from other operations. So that means we'll have to put the ship in neutral and rev the engines.
😛

Yeah, but aren't most modern ships run on nuclear anyways? In other words, the power source is already onboard. So while the energy requirement maybe large, it's not like you have to burn fuel to produce it.

 

[CZroe]

I was referring to this: " Also, many global warming advocates believe that the oceans are absorbing CO2. This process would extract CO2 from seawater, which may lead to a "recycling" of CO2. " Compared to the volume of the oceans, and the amount of CO2 in the oceans, the effect of removing some of that CO2 from the oceans is incredibly insignificant. My analysis is based simply on the volume of the ocean.

Taking CO2 sequestered in the ocean and liberating it into the atmosphere does nothing but increase atmospheric CO2. Because that's where it originally came from anyway, it will be absorbed back in the ocean even faster and we are simply left with the intermediate problem with higher atmospheric CO2 in the time between. If you believe that oceanic acidification due absorption of man-made atmospheric CO2 is a problem then you probably also believe that atmospheric CO2 comes with a host of it's own problems that this does nothing to resolve.

 

[NetWareHead]

Taking CO2 sequestered in the ocean and liberating it into the atmosphere does nothing but increase atmospheric CO2. Because that's where it originally came from anyway, it will be absorbed back in the ocean even faster and we are simply left with the intermediate problem with higher atmospheric CO2 in the time between. If you believe that oceanic acidification due absorption of man-made atmospheric CO2 is a problem then you probably also believe that atmospheric CO2 comes with a host of it's own problems that this does nothing to resolve.

If we run with your explanation, it is still more "carbon-neutral" to take CO2 from seawater which came from the atmosphere than to burn fossil fuel petroleum and release that CO2 into the air (which will get back into the water anyway).

For the same reason it is carbon neutral to burn firewood instead of fossil fuel. Instead of releasing the energy (and CO2) from solid biomass such as wood, we are doing the same thing but with seawater.

Besides, DrPizza is right. We are talking about a volume of CO2 so small when compared to the volumes of both the oceans and the atmosphere. A typical fossil fuel power plant will exponentially input more CO2 into the atmosphere than CO2 generated from naval aircraft operations. I'd be way more worried about CO2 ocean acidification from steel industry, power generation, motor vehicles etc... before seawater generation of hydrocarbon fuel would even register as a radar blip. The fact that at the moment it is only technologically and economically feasible for the military to do this sort of thing will keep it this way for the time being.

 

[Miramonti]

Save the plankton!

 

[Phoenix86]

Soooo...

Build a reactor-ship with significant output so it can create the fuel for the CSG, planes, and helos. Bam, no more refueling for any sea-based vehicles?

 

[Ruptga]

Soooo...

Build a reactor-ship with significant output so it can create the fuel for the CSG, planes, and helos. Bam, no more refueling for any sea-based vehicles?

That is the obvious solution. The new Ford class of carrier already has a much greater emphasis on electricity generation and upgradeability. They could probably install a unit as soon as it's ready for production, with no need for a dedicated fuel ship.

 

[NetWareHead]

That is the obvious solution. The new Ford class of carrier already has a much greater emphasis on electricity generation and upgradeability. They could probably install a unit as soon as it's ready for production, with no need for a dedicated fuel ship.

It still would not work. Look at the typical destroyer that accompanies a carrier battle group: Arleigh Burke class destroyer. 4 gas turbines of 27,000 SHP each = 108,000 SHP plus 3 diesel generators for electrical needs rated at 3 x 2500 KW. 7500 KW equals 10,050 HP (1 KW = 1.34 HP). So in total, the sum horsepower of a destroyer is 118,050. This btw is assuming no conversion losses from carrier horsepower when creating the fuel from seawater. If we calculate for those losses, we will need more energy from the carrier.

I cant find the shaft horsepower rating for a Ford Class reactor so lets use the Nimitz class carriers which has 260,000 shaft horsepower.

As you can see, the aircraft carrier has enough power to adequately power 1 destroyer. 1 destroyer has effectively "halved" the power for the carrier.

There is no way 1 aircraft carrier can be the fuel source for the entire carrier battle group, much less one destroyer. Like I said before, only ships that absolutely need nuclear power will get reactors (subs and carriers). The rest of the fleet will stay oil burners.

 

[Midwayman]

Interesting how this might tie in with the Navy getting ready to deploy rail guns and their massive energy requirements. Reactors not busy with firing the guns could be tasked to the sea water conversion.