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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, th
by philipkglass 5y ago
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 5y agoSo 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?
- SilasX 5y agoI don't think the point is to compete with power grid energy storage, but for cases where the energy must be in the form of aircraft fuel, so it doesn't quite matter if it's less efficient on all metrics that pumped hydro -- unless you plan on running a cord from a dam to the planes.