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At best this technology would allow capital ships with nuclear reactors (mostly carriers) to produce hydrocarbon fuel in order to resupply nearby craft. In theo

At best this technology would allow capital ships with nuclear reactors (mostly carriers) to produce hydrocarbon fuel in order to resupply nearby craft. In theory this would help to optimize naval supply chain.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
e.g. nuclear carrier fueling jets
bpodgursky 12y ago
I think that's simplistic. It lets any energy source with access to seawater store energy in a very energy-dense medium, eg gasoline. Oceanic wind-turbines, solar panels, nuclear generators on the ocean, etc. Certainly more useful short-term for the navy, but could definitely be extended to civilian uses.
- jdhawk 12y ago
  I guess the real question is efficiency.
- aaron695 12y ago
  Yes, but given the huge demand for energy everywhere there is absolutely no point wasting so much energy converting it except in locations where/when transporting a energy-dense medium to is difficult but highly valuable. IE The middle of the ocean during a war.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    The cost for this energy is $3-$6/gallon according to the US Navy's estimate. I get about $9/gallon if you include the costs of solar power provisioning. Or $126 - $378/bbl. That's not cheap, but it's a damned sight better than pretty much any biofuel alternative, which runs about $1000/bbl. And fuel is essential for transportation. Some transport can be liberated -- you can run passenger cars on batteries (for a price). Within cities, buses and even delivery vehicles can be electrified (possibly with on-board batteries for short off-grid excursions). Rail absolutely can be electrified. But a lot of uses cannot be. It's difficult to run power cords across oceans (though you might be able to electrify some barge and river traffic). Especially if you want to tap into them at sea. An electrified marine cargo business isn't an option. Your primary alternatives are sail power, biofuel (including possibly pelletized wood ships, an existing proposal), or electrically-generated synfuels as here. Airplanes handle electric cords even worse than boats do. There are numerous airline industry initiatives looking at biofuels, but Boeing's "biggest breakthrough there is" bet really doesn't pan out. Unless you want to cover _all_ of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as parts of Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri, just to supply fuel to the aviation industry. Worldwide, shipping and aviation account for about 5% each of total petroleum consumption. Or you could create the fuel. Yes, shipping prices, airfares, and air cargo rates would increase. But you'd still have them.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      And while that's expensive by the standards of fossil fuel extraction (with oil at an unusually low price of ~$75/bbl right now), the cost of solar generation keeps falling and seemingly has further to fall, whereas the costs of fossil fuel extraction seem set to keep rising - both because of the increasing difficulties of access and because of increasing pressure to account for externalities, whether at the point of production (like wastewater injection) or consumption (CO2 and soot pollution). We should probably be looking at $126/bbl (at $3/gal) for fossil fuel so as to include the refining costs that would be obviated by this technology (and which have unaccounted-for externalities of their own). I don't see what's not to like here. You could even use relatively inefficient solar harvester arrays anchored offshore to do most of the processing, and in the event of a spill it would still be substantially cleaner and easier to manage than crude.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        I'm generally pessimistic about the future. This is among the most interesting and positive things I've run across in years. There are still limitations, as I noted. Solar costs are falling, but if you look at total installed system costs remain high. EROEI and other metrics of net positive energy are perilously close to minimums necessary to sustain civilization. I'm not a fan of marine-based installations just based on weathering and corrosion. But a number of industrially-large plants would work. For the U.S., a single facility 4.5 km x 4.5 km x 10 m high would suffice based on USNRL's scaling factors. Split that among a number of regional facilities and you've got distributed capacity at a large industrial scale. It's the solar collection that's the big and pricey part of this.
        anigbrowl 12y ago
        Thanks for your very interesting analysis here and above - I will certainly dig through your Reddit posts on the subject as I want to learn more about where the manufacturing barriers would be and what sort of private partnerships the Navy would enter into over the projected 7-10 year deployment timeframe, not least because I'm struck by the fact that the basic technology must be unencumbered by patents to the extent that it originates with the government. While agreeing that solar collection is no slamdunk (see for example this story about the SoCal Ivanpah plant running at only half the hoped-for capacity at present: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26954832/huge-mojave-solar-plant-lags-energy-production http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26954832/huge-mojave-...) I'm personally OK with nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric dams as potential power sources notwithstanding their own externalities.
Klinky 12y ago
Reprocessing carbon to run in combustion, jet and turbine engines already in existence could be huge for the environment in the long run. The two best alternatives we have right now are battery or hydrogen powered engines. Both have major hurdles still to cross. Both rely on centralized power, have density issues, and have huge R&D & consumer cost/acceptance issues. Centralize power generation, use a smart grid to efficiently transfer energy to coastal towns, create efficient pipelines to distribute hydrocarbon fuel, use existing gasoline/diesel infrastructure in cities/towns to serve consumers using their existing vehicles.
- GauntletWizard 12y ago
  Further, this technology promises much cleaner, less sulfurous gasoline. Current gasoline is filled with all sorts of impurities, and needs to be significantly distilled to get the long-chain organic compounds that are needed for efficiency; This tech seems to create long-chain compounds from the base materials of carbon and hydrogen, meaning less impurities and less distillation.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    That's the theory. It's possible that in processing the volumes of seawater necessary to provide carbon to this process you'd introduce other impurities. But with a well-regulated process, it does seem to offer the option of a cleaner gasoline / diesel than we've got now.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

e.g. nuclear carrier fueling jets

bpodgursky 12y ago

I think that's simplistic. It lets any energy source with access to seawater store energy in a very energy-dense medium, eg gasoline. Oceanic wind-turbines, solar panels, nuclear generators on the ocean, etc. Certainly more useful short-term for the navy, but could definitely be extended to civilian uses.

jdhawk 12y ago
I guess the real question is efficiency.
aaron695 12y ago
Yes, but given the huge demand for energy everywhere there is absolutely no point wasting so much energy converting it except in locations where/when transporting a energy-dense medium to is difficult but highly valuable. IE The middle of the ocean during a war.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  The cost for this energy is $3-$6/gallon according to the US Navy's estimate. I get about $9/gallon if you include the costs of solar power provisioning. Or $126 - $378/bbl. That's not cheap, but it's a damned sight better than pretty much any biofuel alternative, which runs about $1000/bbl. And fuel is essential for transportation. Some transport can be liberated -- you can run passenger cars on batteries (for a price). Within cities, buses and even delivery vehicles can be electrified (possibly with on-board batteries for short off-grid excursions). Rail absolutely can be electrified. But a lot of uses cannot be. It's difficult to run power cords across oceans (though you might be able to electrify some barge and river traffic). Especially if you want to tap into them at sea. An electrified marine cargo business isn't an option. Your primary alternatives are sail power, biofuel (including possibly pelletized wood ships, an existing proposal), or electrically-generated synfuels as here. Airplanes handle electric cords even worse than boats do. There are numerous airline industry initiatives looking at biofuels, but Boeing's "biggest breakthrough there is" bet really doesn't pan out. Unless you want to cover _all_ of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as parts of Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri, just to supply fuel to the aviation industry. Worldwide, shipping and aviation account for about 5% each of total petroleum consumption. Or you could create the fuel. Yes, shipping prices, airfares, and air cargo rates would increase. But you'd still have them.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    And while that's expensive by the standards of fossil fuel extraction (with oil at an unusually low price of ~$75/bbl right now), the cost of solar generation keeps falling and seemingly has further to fall, whereas the costs of fossil fuel extraction seem set to keep rising - both because of the increasing difficulties of access and because of increasing pressure to account for externalities, whether at the point of production (like wastewater injection) or consumption (CO2 and soot pollution). We should probably be looking at $126/bbl (at $3/gal) for fossil fuel so as to include the refining costs that would be obviated by this technology (and which have unaccounted-for externalities of their own). I don't see what's not to like here. You could even use relatively inefficient solar harvester arrays anchored offshore to do most of the processing, and in the event of a spill it would still be substantially cleaner and easier to manage than crude.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      I'm generally pessimistic about the future. This is among the most interesting and positive things I've run across in years. There are still limitations, as I noted. Solar costs are falling, but if you look at total installed system costs remain high. EROEI and other metrics of net positive energy are perilously close to minimums necessary to sustain civilization. I'm not a fan of marine-based installations just based on weathering and corrosion. But a number of industrially-large plants would work. For the U.S., a single facility 4.5 km x 4.5 km x 10 m high would suffice based on USNRL's scaling factors. Split that among a number of regional facilities and you've got distributed capacity at a large industrial scale. It's the solar collection that's the big and pricey part of this.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Thanks for your very interesting analysis here and above - I will certainly dig through your Reddit posts on the subject as I want to learn more about where the manufacturing barriers would be and what sort of private partnerships the Navy would enter into over the projected 7-10 year deployment timeframe, not least because I'm struck by the fact that the basic technology must be unencumbered by patents to the extent that it originates with the government. While agreeing that solar collection is no slamdunk (see for example this story about the SoCal Ivanpah plant running at only half the hoped-for capacity at present: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26954832/huge-mojave-solar-plant-lags-energy-production http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26954832/huge-mojave-...) I'm personally OK with nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric dams as potential power sources notwithstanding their own externalities.

Klinky 12y ago

Reprocessing carbon to run in combustion, jet and turbine engines already in existence could be huge for the environment in the long run. The two best alternatives we have right now are battery or hydrogen powered engines. Both have major hurdles still to cross. Both rely on centralized power, have density issues, and have huge R&D & consumer cost/acceptance issues. Centralize power generation, use a smart grid to efficiently transfer energy to coastal towns, create efficient pipelines to distribute hydrocarbon fuel, use existing gasoline/diesel infrastructure in cities/towns to serve consumers using their existing vehicles.

GauntletWizard 12y ago
Further, this technology promises much cleaner, less sulfurous gasoline. Current gasoline is filled with all sorts of impurities, and needs to be significantly distilled to get the long-chain organic compounds that are needed for efficiency; This tech seems to create long-chain compounds from the base materials of carbon and hydrogen, meaning less impurities and less distillation.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  That's the theory. It's possible that in processing the volumes of seawater necessary to provide carbon to this process you'd introduce other impurities. But with a well-regulated process, it does seem to offer the option of a cleaner gasoline / diesel than we've got now.