Looks like the US Gov't has jumped on the free energy bandwagon:
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-...t-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-...t-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept
Looks like the US Gov't has jumped on the free energy bandwagon:
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-...t-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept
I missed that to. Looks ok to me.I saw nothing to suggest it was free energy, only that the raw materials were commonly available and dirt cheap.
Ok so there is a 100mg of CO2 per liter of seawater. Ignoring my chemistry, I'm thinking that would roughly equate to 30mg of carbon per liter. Now then a liter of gasoline contains roughly ~650 grams or so of carbon bound to a hydrogen skeleton. Considering it takes 23+ liters of seawater to extract a gram of carbon and roughly multiply that number by 650 and your looking at processing 21,000+ liters of seawater just to make a liter of jet fuel.Agreed. They said the CO2 and H2 were extracted at an efficiency of 92%. Obviously energy was used to extract them.
And I'm no chemist and don't understand the process they describe but the reaction seems to use up carbonate or bicarbonate? The carbon has to be input somewhere (to make the CO2) so from my understanding their process uses energy AND carbon and the result is a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.
I've been waiting for decades to see someone finally getting stuck into the "holy grail" of making a liquid hydrocarbon fuel (like gasoline) from energy and a cheap carbon material.
Basically it's turning electricity into gasoline, which is a very good thing to accomplish.
(Edit) Sorry I just re read it, and saw this;
"CO2 in the air and in seawater is an abundant carbon resource, but the concentration in the ocean (100 milligrams per liter [mg/L]) is about 140 times greater than that in air, and 1/3 the concentration of CO2 from a stack gas (296 mg/L). Two to three percent of the CO2 in seawater is dissolved CO2 gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate."
So it does look like they are obtaining the carbon component from the seawater. Excellent! Energy in -> gasoline out.
Removing Carbonic acid by removing the Carbon is a good thing, takng carbon from carbonate or bicarbonate in saltwater is not a good thing.Agreed. They said the CO2 and H2 were extracted at an efficiency of 92%. Obviously energy was used to extract them.
And I'm no chemist and don't understand the process they describe but the reaction seems to use up carbonate or bicarbonate? The carbon has to be input somewhere (to make the CO2) so from my understanding their process uses energy AND carbon and the result is a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.
I've been waiting for decades to see someone finally getting stuck into the "holy grail" of making a liquid hydrocarbon fuel (like gasoline) from energy and a cheap carbon material.
Basically it's turning electricity into gasoline, which is a very good thing to accomplish.
(Edit) Sorry I just re read it, and saw this;
"CO2 in the air and in seawater is an abundant carbon resource, but the concentration in the ocean (100 milligrams per liter [mg/L]) is about 140 times greater than that in air, and 1/3 the concentration of CO2 from a stack gas (296 mg/L). Two to three percent of the CO2 in seawater is dissolved CO2 gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate."
So it does look like they are obtaining the carbon component from the seawater. Excellent! Energy in -> gasoline out.