US Navy to Produce Jet Fuel from Seawater
At the onset of the increasing fuel prices, refueling ships at sea could a rather expensive maneuver. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is developing a process that will convert seawater around the ship into jet fuel. It may appear fanciful and how far it can be implemented practically is still a question.
They are looking at a process to recover carbon dioxide and produce hydrogen gas from the sea water. After this, they would convert into jet fuel via a gas-to-liquids process. They managed to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater.
The US Navy Military Sea Lift Command is the main provider of fuel to Navy vessels at sea. In the last year, they transferred almost 600 million gallons of fuel to Navy vessels.
More over, refueling is a very complicated process. The Navy hopes that the production cost of jet fuel from seawater can reduce by $3-6 per gallon range with this.
Extracting carbon dioxide from sea water is more useful than using airborne carbon dioxide as the concentration of carbon dioxide is 140 times greater than in air.
If we talk about its green benefits, the energy used while transporting the fuel can be reduced with jet fuel. But, in terms of emissions it may not be called greener anymore.
