[HN Gopher] The Air Force has a plan to make jet fuel out of air
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The Air Force has a plan to make jet fuel out of air
Author : nradov
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-10-23 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| candiodari wrote:
| This sort of research always runs stuck on the concentration of
| CO2 required to operate it effenciently. Even the climate-change
| tripled CO2 content of the atmosphere is only 0.04 percent. If
| you can get even 0.5% CO2 gas it is possible to hit 10%
| efficiency with very old processes, but that's just not possible
| to do without a lot of energy. Efficiently isolating it either
| takes months or uses way too much energy.
|
| Now of course in warfare conditions "way too much energy" may not
| such a big problem. Price may also not be much of a problem.
| Militaries have done it in the past.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Stick one of those factories on the tailpipe of a coal-fired
| powerplant to raise the incoming CO2-concentration for a double
| win: you get to use coal (and, hence, gain votes in coal
| states) while producing JP6 (or something similar) without
| adding any CO2 to the environment.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can just Fisher-Troph coal directly to aviation fuel.
| Nazi Germany was forced to do this and the Allies kept
| bombing the plants.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuna_works
|
| "A total of 6,552 (!!) bomber sorties over 20 US Eighth Air
| Force and 2 RAF attacks dropped 18,328 tons (!!) of bombs on
| Leuna ... Leuna bombing from May 12, 1944 to April 5, 1945
| cost the Eighth Air Force 1,280 airmen (!!)"
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Sure you can, but that means you're using additional coal
| just for the purpose of making jet fuel, adding additional
| CO2 to the balance. By using CO2 from existing coal power
| plants you'll be CO2-neutral for the jet fuel. After all,
| if the point is to get fossil jet fuel it is even easier to
| use crude oil, of which there is plenty to go around. The
| Germans used the FT-process to get around the fact that
| they had coal of different types but only little oil, not
| because it is the easiest way to produce liquid
| hydrocarbons.
| kfprt wrote:
| The correct price comparison is the cost of getting fuel to
| some remote FOB in Afghanistan which is extremely high.
| wffurr wrote:
| How do you generate enough electricity at said remote FOB to
| create a useful amount of fuel? Forward-deployed nuclear
| reactors would do the job, but would also be enormously
| expensive and vulnerable.
| kfprt wrote:
| Solar? It doesn't matter really since the technology is too
| far out.
| wffurr wrote:
| Fischer Tropsch synthesis is ancient tech. It's not far
| out at all.
|
| Perhaps making it portable with a convenient, also
| portable, energy source is?
| p_l wrote:
| US Navy AFAIK considers using nuclear power on carriers to
| ignore the high energy requirements, and it's a net win for
| them as it reduces UNREP needs for aviation fuel.
| jagger27 wrote:
| The two reactors of a Gerald R. Ford super carrier can output
| more than a gigawatt of power together. Seems like plenty to
| me.
| spockz wrote:
| What is the effect on the nu nuclear fuel and in the
| maintenance windows? I don't know enough about nuclear
| power plants. But it seems to me they degrade faster under
| full load. Or is this not the case?
| jagger27 wrote:
| Yes, I think the fuel would be spent faster. No clue
| about maintenance windows (I am a layperson on this
| topic).
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think with membrane separation you can get staged
| concentration, like they do with say, isotopic separation of
| heavy water (H2O vs D2O). With a 10-fold increase at each stage
| (400ppm -> 4000ppm -> 40,000ppm -> -> pure CO2) you end up with
| a pure CO2 stream (which is typically what you want for
| efficient high-pressure, high-temperature industrial
| chemistry).
|
| The real question is what kind of scale is needed to generate
| fuel at the levels desired - powering the concentrators, the
| water electrolyzers, the actual process (high pressure high
| temperature F-T synthesis). Ten square kilometers of solar
| panels and wind turbines for one oil tanker's worth per month?
|
| Of course, if the world had exhausted its fossil fuel reserves
| by say 1970 we'd already be doing this at scale.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It looks like a modified Fischer-Tropsch, so they're likely
| concentrating CO2, blowing off one O to make pure carbon
| monoxide, and then adding hydrogen gas (from water) under
| pressure over a catalyst to generate long-chain hydrocarbons.
|
| Now, what would be nice to see as a proof-of-concept is an entire
| oil tanker's worth of jet fuel made by this process. How far off
| is that?
| barney54 wrote:
| The problem isn't the proof of concept, it's reducing the
| energy penalty. It takes a lot of energy to reverse combustion.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The Germans used this process during WW2 to cover a part of
| their fuel needs. That is enough of a "proof of concept".
|
| So there is no doubt that it works. It was abandoned after the
| war only because it was more expensive than extracted
| petroleum.
|
| Almost a century later after its invention, it should be
| possible to have better efficiencies than in the past.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Sasol of South Africa has made liquid fuels via the Fischer-
| Tropsch process for decades. The synthesis gas comes from
| coal or natural gas. Clean synthesis gas from water, CO2, and
| clean electricity should be a drop-in replacement for fossil
| derived syngas. But it's relatively expensive to make liquid
| fuels this way even when starting with cheap coal. I only
| expect synfuels to be used for performance critical
| applications and niches like keeping collectible classic cars
| running.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Since the 1950s.
|
| https://www.sasol.com/media-centre/media-releases/sasol-
| prod...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yup.
|
| For the Air Force, their particular need is to avoid
| billions of dollars in contractor expense for reliably
| supplying fuel to remote bases in hostile territory.
| kwere wrote:
| shouldnt itself manage fuel logistic or it is contracted
| away?
| pstrateman wrote:
| regardless of who is doing the logistics it's expensive.
|
| synthesizing fuel also means nuclear powered aircraft
| carriers would be vastly more self sufficient
| spockz wrote:
| I read elsewhere on hacker news that the us military runs
| through 20 million barrels of fuel _per day_. I can
| imagine there is a great desire to be less dependent on
| suppliers both in terms of quantity _and_ logistics.
| Imagine a nuclear powered aircraft carrier being able to
| generate fuel for its planes and support ships.
| njarboe wrote:
| Since world production of oil is currently about 75
| millions of barrels per day (mbpd)[1], this 20 mbpd
| figure is certainly wrong. Probably someone wanted to
| make the figure seem higher than it was and used gallons
| instead of the standard barrels unit. Even then, 1/2
| million barrels of fuel per day would seem high to me
| when the US is not in an active shooting war.
|
| 20 million barrels of oil would be worth about $1.6
| billion dollars. So the military would be spending about
| $580 billion a year on fuel. Or 3/4th its budget.
|
| [1]
| https://ycharts.com/indicator/world_crude_oil_production
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You're missing the point. The really large number _feels_
| right.
| nradov wrote:
| Yes the US Navy has been researching synthesizing
| aviation fuel onboard nuclear powered carriers since at
| least 2013. The goal is to reduce fleet dependence on
| vulnerable tankers.
|
| https://www.autoevolution.com/news/us-navy-aircraft-
| carriers... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/us-navy-
| aircraft-carriers...
| pm90 wrote:
| Amazing. At what point do these carriers become totally
| self sufficient.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| When they can make food from waste.
| Lev1a wrote:
| - water filtration/desalination
|
| - Maybe in the future they could use fusion reactors for
| power, synthesizing Deuterium and/or Tritium to enhance
| their endurance (maybe indefinitely?)
|
| - make the carrier (with minimal crew) and the planes
| into drones (AFAIK already in research/testing) since
| even if the material could be at sea forever the people
| could not endure and also many probably wouldn't sign up
| for such a job
| adolph wrote:
| Is what the AF attempting much different from plans to make
| methane on Mars?
|
| https://www.space.com/future-astronauts-methane-rocket-fuel-...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The Mars process is the Sabatier process, rather than
| Fischer-Tropsh, and reuslts in methane (and water) rather
| than heavier alkanes (petroleum-analogue hydrocarbons).
|
| (Corrected from earlier misstatement of methanol production,
| thanks to philipkglass.)
| philipkglass wrote:
| The Sabatier process yields methane, the lightest member of
| the alkane series. Methane also has the best gravimetric
| energy density of the alkanes. But for ease of handling,
| heavier alkanes that liquefy at above-cryogenic
| temperatures are better.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thanks, corrected.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This has been around for a while in various forms:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/fuel-seawater-what...
| (2014)
|
| I wonder how close it is to "production" status and whether
| that's public information.
|
| (I would also note that if the elaborate plans Musk has for Mars
| are ever to come to fruition, there has to be a CO2-to-fuel
| technology deployable there ...)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Interesting. I kind of err on skepticism based on previous
| attempts ala "Electric cars were tried in 60's, it will never
| work". It is worth trying and retrying old attempts at a
| problem, since a lot of underlying technologies, economics and
| affordability change rapidly. There is probably a whole host of
| old attempts that might be worth revisiting today in a startup
| context.
|
| Apparently, Twelve is a new spinoff/rebranding from Opus-12
| here in Berkeley which I had heard of, opus-12.com URL now
| points to Twelve.com, but certain pages are still accessible:
| https://opus-12.com/press
| qayxc wrote:
| > I kind of err on skepticism based on previous attempts
|
| There's a very powerful yet simple tool that helps with that:
| just ask yourself "what has changed?".
|
| In your electric vehicle example it was battery technology
| that made all the difference.
|
| The Fischer-Tropsch process hasn't changed in the past 100
| years and neither has the underlying physics and chemistry or
| its efficiency (edit: efficiency improved with new catalysts
| and technology, but not as dramatically as with batteries).
|
| The reason synthetic fuels didn't take off is that they're
| more expensive to produce than crude oil can be extracted and
| refined.
|
| This is still true today, but the AF has a different problem
| statement than the economy of fuel production - it's the
| economy of fuel _logistics_ - a subtle, yet important
| difference.
|
| As long as Twelve's concept relies on syngas from water, it
| won't be any better in terms of that, though (if the area of
| operations includes deserts and dry land).
|
| Otherwise there's no fundamentally new technology or
| breakthroughs required here. It's just a matter of finding
| creative ways to get the required hydrogen, really (in terms
| of improved fuel logistics, not necessarily cost vs fossil
| fuels).
| lordnacho wrote:
| What does the energy balance for this process look like? I don't
| know anything about it, but I would guess that it takes some
| energy to pull the CO2 out of the air and turn it into fuel.
| That's gotta come from somewhere? How does it become carbon
| neutral?
| philipkglass wrote:
| I'd guess that 30-40% of the original electrical energy gets
| stored as chemical energy. If the electricity originally comes
| from nuclear power or renewables, the life cycle carbon
| footprint is far lower than for fossil fuel. It's still not
| _exactly_ carbon neutral because even nuclear power has a non-
| zero CO2 footprint, but it 's tiny compared to the status quo.
|
| Since many military aircraft are going to need chemical fuels
| indefinitely, it makes sense that the Air Force is interested
| in electricity-to-fuels. There was an analogous surge in
| researching coal-to-liquids in the 1970s after the oil price
| shocks. Liquid fuels are going to have at least military demand
| for a very long time, and planners are interested in mitigating
| supply threats before they become supply emergencies.
| mulmen wrote:
| So this is less efficient than something like pumped hydro
| for energy storage, yeah? But what about the _density_? Or
| maybe a better question is how does energy /m^3 storage
| compare between pumped hydro and fuel synthesis? Could we do
| some kind of closed-loop combustion process where we capture
| the exhaust gas then re-synthesize the fuel? Or are the
| conversion losses just too great?
| barney54 wrote:
| The energy balance is significant negative. The point is to
| take cheap renewables and renewable hydrogen to make the fuel
| so I can be carbon neutral. But basic thermodynamics says it
| will always be energy negative.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well, the point is not really to make it carbon neutral, but
| rather to reduce the amount of liquid fuel that needs to get
| supplied to a base, since tanker trucks and ships are fairly
| soft targets.
| callesgg wrote:
| If you are on a aircraft carrier you have nuclear reactors for
| power.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| My inner voice: "Scale those damn bastards! Build a whole
| bunch of these, stack 'em on land and boy you've got yourself
| something really special. Nuclear driven CO2 suckers."
|
| Tell me why this is a bad idea?
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you wanted to retool a big chunk of the world economy
| you could indeed solve the co2 problem by mass producing
| nuclear reactors attached to synthetic hydrocarbon plants
| that dumped the products in deep mines.
|
| You would have to spend trillions of dollars though.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If we assume the price for a carrier nuclear reactor +
| generator would stay the same. Wouldn't the costs come
| down simply from basic economies of scale? The costs are
| high because we've build a few dozen of these ever.
| colechristensen wrote:
| building reactors has a lot of up front expense,
| operating them is expensive, and you would have to make a
| whole lot of them to make a meaningful dent
| nradov wrote:
| That's not a _bad_ idea necessarily, it 's just not
| economical for regular civilian use. Fossil fuels are still
| far cheaper than synthetics regardless of the power source.
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm not sure the Paris agreement optimises for "far
| cheaper" but for a maximum temperature increase instead.
| The consumer can't be expected to individually take one
| for the team (as it is presumably cheaper in the long run
| to not deal with a globally failing ecosystem) so through
| legislation and incentives we'd transition to clean
| energy, not necessarily by making something cheaper.
|
| Of course, where possible the solution is to just use
| batteries, but try telling frequent fliers that they'll
| need to take a train in the future. We're going to need
| some synthetic fuels where energy density is paramount.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Energy is lost in the process.
|
| _Flexibility_ and _utility_ are gained, in the form of a high-
| enegy-density (by both volume and mass) energy store with
| excellent storage capabilities, a widely-developed extant
| handling and utilisation infrastructure and knowledge, and,
| considering the capabilities, extremely positive safety and
| interactions properties: hydrocarbon fuels are non-explosive,
| non-toxic with incidental exposure, and do not erode metallic
| or polymer components of fuel and power systems.
|
| Net energy loss is at least 40% of input (hydrolysis to produce
| hydrogen), as well as the energy cost of carbon capture (this
| varies by methods). For seawater-based carbon sourcing, net
| synthesis costs of about 50% are what I've seen (see my earlier
| long comment on sources and references).
|
| For _seawater_ extraction: "CO2 extraction from seawater using
| bipolar membrane electrodialysis", Matthew D. Eisaman et al is
| a 2011 paper discussing CO2 extraction via a "BPMED" (bipolar
| membrane electrodialysis) process. It delivers CO2 at 1.52
| kWh/kg, vs. a value of 0.54 kWh/kg cited by Terry, though it's
| not clear on first reading if Terry performed actual
| experiments or used theoretical values.
|
| http://talknicer.com/co2extraction.pdf
|
| My recollection is that atmospheric extraction costs are 1.5--
| 3x higher, though I'm uncertain of that precise figure.
|
| Recovered energy through Carnot and Rankin-cycle engines is on
| the order of 20--40%. The round-trip energy recovery from input
| electricity to delivered motive power is about 10--20%. Those
| are inherent to the processes and cannot be improved on.
|
| Note that electric generation itself converts only about 30--
| 40% of input thermal energy (from a nuclear reactor in the US
| Navy's scenario). Again, this is an unavoidable energy loss
| given the physics of thermal-to-mechanical energy conversion
|
| Military aircraft and marine vessels can make at best limited
| use of direct electrical power given limitations of batteries,
| extension cords, and transmission lines, particularly with
| regard to energy and power demands. Any fuel, even
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Since you seem knowledgeable about this process - can it be
| miniaturized for personal production? I realize it is a net
| loss but storable high density energy is useful for various
| applications like off grid use or home generators. For
| example, people who need refrigerated insulin but live in
| remote areas (where they often get delayed fixes when a
| weather event disrupts utilities).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| And as far as flexibility goes, there are military bases in
| hostile territory with fuel demands far exceeding what the
| normal supply chain demands even if it were reliable.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Land-based synthesis strikes me as more problematic.
| There's a lot of gain in offsetting fuel use entirely
| (solar and wind generation, both of which see fairly
| extensive use).
|
| For a large established base there might be some benefit.
| But there's also the last-mile problem.
|
| Aircraft are effectively addressing the last-mile fuel
| delivery problem directly (by carrying it with them). They
| tend not to loiter long over the engagement area.
|
| Long-mission drones might be an exception to this. If
| sufficiently lightweighted and dedicated largely to
| surveillance, these could benefit by solar + battery
| electric power. Personnel risks would be low, and aircraft
| flight dynamics improve as scale is _decreased_ (square-
| cube law of lift (square) vs. mass (cube) relation. This is
| the inverse of aerostats, which are more efficient at
| providing lift with size.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Why would there be a last mile problem if you were
| directly generating on base for synthesis?
|
| Solar and wind have the issue of land usage, in that the
| large land requirements of renewables mean more land to
| secure. That and military bases do not have the luxury of
| being conveniently sited next to the best places for such
| things.
|
| It would hardly be the first environmental disaster
| happening on a military base. Even as recently as Iraq
| and Afghanistan:
| https://www.military.com/benefits/veteran-benefits/what-
| burn...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm not talking of last-mile in terms of fuel synthesis
| alone, but in terms of _all_ logistics.
|
| Land-based actions have a last-mile problem in that to
| put _and establish_ boots on the ground, they need to
| traverse that mile directly, and extend supply lines to
| that last mile.
|
| Tactical aircraft have an effective combat range measured
| in hundreds or thousands of miles. Mechanised infantry in
| miles or tens of miles. Foot soldiers in yards to miles.
|
| A Naval task force's operation is at sea, outside the
| effective range of virtually any of the opponents the US
| has faced in combat since WWII.[1] Aircraft and crew
| depart a carrier or other base, conduct a mission, and
| return to base, outside the area of engagment. The
| logistics chain occurs through what has been for nearly
| three quarters of a century non-hostile territory.
|
| An FOB is right in the stinkin' middle of the mess. It's
| within the area of engagement, supply lines move through
| hostile territory, are subject to ambush attacks, both by
| live opponents and remotely-activated or passively-
| triggered IEDs and mines. Total supply requirements are
| too great for aerial supply alone.
|
| That's the last-mile problem.
|
| At the same time, FOBs and other installations are
| subject to enemy attack, and large-scale renewables
| deployments and synfuel equipment would be attractive and
| viable targets for relatively simple attacks (mortars,
| drones, missles), which could easily degrade, disable, or
| entirely destroy such equipment.
|
| I'm unsure of what a major Army or Marine unit's fuel
| requirements are, but assuming a 40% conversion
| efficiency from sunlight and 8 hours at 200W per m^2 of
| PV array, creating 1 barrel of oil per day (42 gallons)
| would require on the order of 2,700 m^2 of PV array, or a
| square roughly 50 m on a side. A 100m square might
| provide 4 barrels/day.
|
| There might be some land-based operations which could
| support this, but I strongly suspect many could not.
|
| Actual solar performance would also likely be far lower,
| likely yielding only 25--50% of the output I'm listing
| here (spacing factor, overcast, and other standard
| reductions on nameplate capacity), even before accounting
| to combat-based degradation.
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. Five ships were lost to mines during the Korean war,
| the USS _Liberty_ was scrapped after it was attacked by
| Israeli forces in 1967. The USS _Cole_ was damaged, but
| not lost, in a suicide-bombing attack in 2000. Numerous
| other vessels have been lost largely through accidents
| and occasional sabotage (all by US nationals or service
| members). The USS _Pueblo_ was captured intact in 1967.
| https://news.usni.org/2012/08/28/notable-us-navy-ships-
| lost-...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I suppose in the Air Force's mind, even a slight
| reduction in delivering fuel via tanker would be a
| significant cost savings. Either way, they're operating
| from land.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I expect the military will be the among the first to
| deploy portable nuclear generation in containers. Then
| this process becomes an obvious win for these bases.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Since they're already removing co2 from the atmosphere as part
| of the process they could divert some of that to get
| sequestered underground. The process could be carbon neutral or
| carbon negative even.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The process described is not new, and has been explored in
| various forms for 59 years by institutions including Brookhaven
| National Laboratory, M.I.T., the US Naval Research Lab (USNRL),
| and Google (Alphabet)'s Project Foghorn, an X-project "moonshot"
| which was cancelled on economic considerations. That is the
| constant theme for this work, which I'll address after noting
| research.
|
| Prospects are often announced as "new" and "novel", despite
| extensive prior science and technology. In numerous cases, this
| is true not only of press and news releases, but of articles
| themselves ... as if, say, an evolutionary biology paper failed
| to credit Darwin and Wallace's original work. Much research has
| been by or associated with the US Navy, which has a considerable
| fuel-related logistical problem, especially with its aircraft-
| carrier-based force-projection capacity and supply-chain
| vulnerability. Other military branches have similar concerns,
| though have additional challenges with prospects of _in situ_
| fuel synthesis. For all branches, the cost of fuel delivered to
| combat and operational theatres is many times, often orders of
| magnitude greater, than the domestic "price at the pump". Given
| energy and feedstocks, synthesis is absolutely a credible option.
|
| The chemistry works and is proven. Scale, operations,
| maintenance, logistics, and costs appear to remain hurdles.
|
| I researched this topic fairly extensively in 2014 following
| release of a number of papers and articles over earlier USNRL
| studies and reports.
|
| Early history is covered in a history of synthetic fuels roughly
| 1944--1960, "The Early Days of Coal Research: Wartime Needs Spur
| Interest in Coal-to-Oil Processes":
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20120111183405/http://fossil.ener...
|
| 1962 M. King Hubbert (peak-oil pioneer) mention as an alternative
| to petroleum fuel, using limestone and hydrolsis-generated
| hydrogen as feedstocks utilising nuclear power to create a non-
| carbon-neutral hydrocarbon synfuel:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20061030044204/www.hubbertpeak.c...
|
| Meyer Steinberg at Brookhaven picked up research based on
| Hubbert's suggestion:
|
| Steinberg, M., and Beller, M., "Liquid Fuel Synthesis Using
| Nuclear Power in a Mobile Energy Depot System," Transactions of
| the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 8, pg 159, June 1965.
|
| Steinberg, M. et. al., "Methanol as a Fuel in the Urban Energy
| Economy and Possible Source of Supply", BNL 17800, Brookhaven
| National Laboratory, April 1973.
|
| Steinberg, M., and Dang, V.D., "Use of Controlled Thermonuclear
| Reactor Fusion Power for the Production of Synthetic Methanol
| Fuel from Air and Water", BNL 20016, Brookhaven National
| Laboratory, April 1975.
|
| Steinberg, M., "Electrolytic Synthesis of Methanol from C02,"
| United States Patent #3,959,059, May, 1976.
|
| Steinberg, M., "Nuclear Power for the Production of Synthetic
| Fuels and Feedstocks," 11th International Energy Conversion
| Engineering Conference, American Institute of Chemical
| Engineering, New York, 1976.
|
| Steinberg, M., "Combined Coal and Nuclear Plants for Power, Heat,
| and Synthetic Fuels," Transactions of the American Nuclear
| Society, Vol. 27, November, 1977.
|
| Steinberg, M, Fillo, J.A., and Powell, J., "Synthetic Fuels and
| Fusion," Nuclear Engineering and Design. Vol. 63, No. 2,
| February, 1981.
|
| Several Masters theses at M.I.T. listing Michael J. Driscoll as
| advisor also reported on the prospect, with at least three
| appearing in 1977, 1992, and 2012.
|
| Robin Paul Bushore, "Synthetic Fuel Generation Capabilities of
| Nuclear Power Plants with Applications to Naval Ship Technology",
| 1977
|
| https://calhoun.nps.edu/public/bitstream/handle/10945/18307/...
|
| Kevin B. Terry, "Synthetic Fuels for Naval Applications Produced
| Using Shipboard Nuclear Power", 1995
|
| https://archive.org/details/syntheticfuelsfo00terr
|
| John Michael Galle-Bishop, "Nuclear Tanker Producing Liquid Fuels
| From Air and Water", 2011
|
| http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/76359
|
| Terry's thesis includes multiple citations of Meyer Steinberg.
| Sadly none of these appear to be generally available online,
| though some (and a few other papers) appear in Google Scholar.
| I've listed these above.
|
| US NRL research ran from 2010--2013 (it may have continued though
| I've seen no further announcements). Conspicuously, Willauer
| cited no research prior to the 1990s IIRC, an exceedingly
| misleading practice.
|
| "The Feasibility and Current Estimated Capital Costs of Producing
| Jet Fuel at Sea Using Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen". Heather D.
| Willauer, Dennis R. Hardy, Frederick W. Williams. Navy Technology
| Center for Safety and Survivability, Chemistry Division.
| September 29, 2010. NRL/MRi6180--10-9300
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131031050117/http://www.dtic.m...
|
| "Extraction of Carbon Dioxide from Seawater by an Electrochemical
| Acidification Cell Part I--Initial Feasibility Studies". Felice
| DiMascio, Heather D. Willauer, Dennis R. Hardy, M. Kathleen
| Lewis, Frederick W. Williams. Navy Technology Center for Safety
| and Survivability, Chemistry Division. July 23, 2010. NRL/MR/6180
| --10-9274
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201031083322/https://apps.dtic...
|
| "Extraction of Carbon Dioxide from Seawater by an Electrochemical
| Acidification Cell Part II--Laboratory Scaling Studies eather D.
| Willauer". Heather D. Willauer, Felice DiMascio, Dennis R. Hardy,
| M. Kathleen Lewis, Frederick W. Williams. Navy Technology Center
| for Safety and Survivability, Chemistry Division. April 11, 2011.
| NRL/MR/6180--11-9329
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140427044107/http://www.dtic.m...
|
| "Extraction of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen from Seawater by an
| Electrochemical Acidification Cell Part III: Scaled-up Mobile
| Unit Studies (Calendar Year 2011)". Heather D. Willauer, Dennis
| R. Hardy, Frederick W. Williams, Felice DiMascio. May 30, 2012.
| NRL/MR/6300--12-9414
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140427044107/http://www.dtic.m...
|
| "Extraction of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen from Seawater by an
| Electrochemical Acidification Cell Part IV: Electrode
| Compartments of Cell Modified and Tested in Scaled-Up Mobile
| Unit". Heather D. Willauer, Dennis R. Hardy, Frederick W.
| Williams, Felice DiMascio. September 3, 2013. NRL/MR/6300--
| 13-9463
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140427001947/http://www.dtic.m...
|
| These references and some additional discussion are noted here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...
|
| And I've posted a number of additional items about related
| research which can be found through subreddit search:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=fischer-tropsc...
|
| Project Foghorn is noted here:
| https://x.company/projects/foghorn/
|
| Again, the chemistry works, the economics do not. However that is
| due to a mis-pricing of fossil fuel resources that may well prove
| fatal to civilisation.
|
| The principle problem with synfuel economics is that the process
| pays full energy costs _of the actual creation of hydrocarbons_.
| By contrast, petroleum and other fossil-fuel _extraction_
| supports present utilisation _at millions of times the rate of
| initial formation._ Whilst we often hear of carbon taxes and
| similar costs for the _output consequences_ of this activity,
| economics is completely silent on the question of _total resource
| input costs_ of hydrocarbons, which includes the time factor at a
| rate five million times current extraction. If I were to spend
| money at five million times my level of income ... I could live
| extravagently. For a short time. Geologically, this is precisely
| what the current fossil-fuel-powered economy has been doing for
| roughly 250 years. That gravy train will run out shortly
| (presuming we don 't choke ourselves, or flood ourselves, or
| experience other as-yet-undetermined unanticipated consequences
| first).
|
| An excellent analysis of the particulars of fossil fuel formation
| inputs (including also the very considerable biomass inputs) is
| Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine". I cannot recommend
| the PDF highly enough, despite its awkwardness on many mobile
| devices. There's a short HTML summary as well:
|
| HTML summary: https://plus.maths.org/content/burning-buried-
| sunshine
|
| Full PDF: https://www-
| legacy.dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_C...
|
| (I believe I've checked all URLs and swapped in archive links
| where necessary, please comment if any are still missing or are
| misdirected.)
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Very cool. What are your thoughts on peak oil?
| poetaster wrote:
| Thank you for your labours, above and below the surface.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It has occurred.
|
| Traditional (nonenhanced) extraction of liquid petroleum
| peaked in the early 2010s, largely as forecast. The peak was
| delayed a few years possibly due to both economic slowdowns
| and efficiency measures (the late 1990s Asian financial
| crisis, the post-9/11 crash, the 2007-12 global financial
| crisis), though China and India's meteoric growth compensated
| in the other direction.
|
| I'd have to dig into US DOE (EIA) and IEA data and charts,
| but enhanced and nontraditional recovery (deepwater drilling,
| which presents its own risks, fracking, heavy crudes as from
| Venezuela, and tar sands) have held up to demand, but at
| extreme cost and with huge impacts on prices and volatility.
| The industry itself is highly sensitive to _both_ demand
| increases (surging prices and leading to political
| instability) and decreases (bankrupting extractors and their
| fianciers, and leading to financial instability). It 's a
| tightrope walk. Swing producers (low-cost with excess
| capacity) such as KSA remain hugely influential globally,
| even for markets to which they do not ship directly. A
| tankerfull of oil can move across the globe for 1% of the
| realised energy capacity of that cargo. Oil markets remain
| global due to the commodity's extreme liquidity, in both
| physical and financial senses.
| bit_logic wrote:
| An interesting possible future, as the EROEI of traditional
| fossil fuels continues to drop (the cheap easy oil is gone), the
| oil price naturally goes up. At the same time, renewables (solar
| + wind) massively increases, but there's no cost effective
| solution for storing the intermittent excess energy produced.
| These two factors (increasing oil price + a way to store excess
| renewable energy) combine to make synthetic oil competitive. If a
| carbon tax is introduced, that's another third factor that could
| help synthetic oil. Would the market favor increasing
| electrification or a synthetic oil that works immediately in all
| the existing carbon based infrastructure?
| snek_case wrote:
| Battery powered electric vehicles are much more efficient than
| gasoline engines in terms of energy use per mile. With
| synthetic oil, you're losing energy both during the synthesis
| step and while using it. However, I think for airplanes or long
| term energy storage it could still make a lot of sense.
| boplicity wrote:
| Agreed, in terms of airplanes. For airplanes, one of the most
| important considerations is the amount of energy per mass of
| fuel. Batteries are not practical, in this sense, as they
| weigh too much. It is simply not possible for batteries to
| fuel a large plane over long distances.
| [deleted]
| DeathArrow wrote:
| If they are going to use electrolysis to make hidrogen to be used
| in Fischer-Tropsch process, wouldn't it be cheaper to develop
| some engines which can run on hidrogen?
| mcguire wrote:
| Isn't the cheapest way to get hydrogen to break down natural
| gas?
| repiret wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| * There are dozens of aircraft models in use each of which
| would require significant design changes to run on hydrogen.
| It's more practical to design one alternate jet fuel source.
|
| * Hydrogen has worse energy density than jet fuel. Energy
| density is especially important for aircraft.
|
| * hydrogen is a lot harder to handle than than jet fuel. It's
| more corrosive, more flammable, needs to be kept under pressure
| or at cryogenic temperatures.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Hydrogen is scary to handle regularly in large quantities and
| more expensive to achieve the right energy densities.
|
| So no it's not cheaper to redesign every engine and piece of
| equipment to use hydrogen.
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