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This tech could be useful in a majority renewable economy. If we assume that there is a certain amount of single use plastic that fulfills useful funtions that

This tech could be useful in a majority renewable economy. If we assume that there is a certain amount of single use plastic that fulfills useful funtions that are hard to replicate, then turning that into jet fuel is kind of useful, as jet fuel needs high energy density and is one of the things we probably are not going to electrify any time soon. The CO2 is not new emission, but is just displaced, plus any CO2 cost of the process, which is somewhat reduced if the rest of the power and transportation has already transitioned across to other power sources. This is not a way of solving anything per-se, but is a potential technology in an economy where we have already banned burning oil that hasn't been used a few times, and then only in things that absolutely require it.

dTal 7y ago
>The CO2 is not new emission, but is just displaced How do you figure? It wasn't going to be burned before. Now it is. The sustainable way to make jet fuel would be some kind of renewable-powered carbon sequestration - for example, the process described in the paper, but fed with biomass. Burning old plastic is just fossil fuel with extra steps - looked at another way, it's a way to make fossil fuel cheaper by making it earn money as plastic before it gets burned. It's not a win.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >It wasn't going to be burned before. Now it is. Unless we are burning it in a second load of planes built specially for the occaision, it will replace the jet fuel from virgin crude that was going to be used for those trips. I agree that it would be better to feed it with recent biomass, though I would note that this process would also presumably work with plastic made from recent, rather than fossil biomass and we may find that making some single use plastic, (sometimes having a single use wrapper is important), from biomass and then jet-fueling it at the end, might not be a bad way to go, at least until we have developed really good power storage in other ways.

dTal 7y ago

>The CO2 is not new emission, but is just displaced How do you figure? It wasn't going to be burned before. Now it is. The sustainable way to make jet fuel would be some kind of renewable-powered carbon sequestration - for example, the process described in the paper, but fed with biomass. Burning old plastic is just fossil fuel with extra steps - looked at another way, it's a way to make fossil fuel cheaper by making it earn money as plastic before it gets burned. It's not a win.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
>It wasn't going to be burned before. Now it is. Unless we are burning it in a second load of planes built specially for the occaision, it will replace the jet fuel from virgin crude that was going to be used for those trips. I agree that it would be better to feed it with recent biomass, though I would note that this process would also presumably work with plastic made from recent, rather than fossil biomass and we may find that making some single use plastic, (sometimes having a single use wrapper is important), from biomass and then jet-fueling it at the end, might not be a bad way to go, at least until we have developed really good power storage in other ways.