US Navy Makes Oil Obsolete

But there is no bias in media, remember?

CNN said so!

Edit: This is great news btw. I just wish it wasn't broadcast on a partisan network...

The U.S. has just about dried up its oil supply. Fracking will only last another 18 months or so. After that you're gonna have to cut oil cold turkey.

Your objections about the media and networks would make sense if this article wasn't literally from http://proudtobeafilthyliberalscum.com/

As if it wasn't already obvious that certain posters don't read links.

It doesn't even have to be from that anyway.

It is just that the article itself brought politics where it didn't belong. That's like saying "We cured cancer! Too bad the Republicans will just block the drug from everyone because they like watching poor people die all the time!"

Which is basically what they said....

Will you admit that the political commentary wasn't needed in this article?

Or OPs... >.>

Kinda like bringing up a political gun debate in a thread about a school stabbing? Irony.

I can barely follow rules you expect me to read !

An interesting concept is using energy excess from current or new infrastructure and "storing" the energy using this. So those times when we produce more electricity than we use, we could use it to convert salt water in to fuel to be used in things that the grid can't effectively power. I can't say much about how practical this is as I don't know much about the logistics of energy creation or storage but it seems like a decent idea.

Admittedly, the energy cost does seem rather high and it does say this makes JP-5(which is standard jet fuel) but could be modified to make any fuel type, though I don't know exactly what cost difference that would be. The prediction was 3-6 for JP-5 and I dunno what that will be for standard gasoline. I wouldn't expect lower prices though. Obviously if it goes main stream it may be able to get some additional efficiencies that could lower cost a bit more but with the current plans being 7-10 years out, I don't see it being the miracle fuel that topples oil giants anytime soon.

I'll admit, while I tend to be skeptical of stuff, I did have a bit higher hopes when I read the title.

You sound like my students.

I had students in mind when I made that comment.

I read the article from the navy source and thought "This is pretty cool."

And then I read this


And now I'm just all "Wut?"

Yeah I laughed at that too.

It means in a contest between proof of concept vs reality, reality will win.

Best get a move on it!

Oil isn't our primary fuel source, Coal is. If your talking for transportation, then you won't be replacing hydrocarbon based fuels for a very long time due to gasoline / diesel's energy density.

Now as for the article, what they are doing is creating hydrocarbon fuel from CO2 and H2. They happen to use Ocean water as the feed stock, we've already been able to do that for decades. The development here is they built a better catalyst that can do the chemical conversion at a much better efficiency rate then before. Doesn't change the fact that you need to put the exact same energy into the fuel as you expect to extract from it in addition to any extra energy lost from the conversion. As seawater has significantly less energy then hydrocarbon fuels your still going to need an external source of energy input, most likely Coal or Natural Gas.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3


http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/early_fuel.cfm

Why would you burn more coal / natural gas only to produce another hydrocarbon fuel in the process when you can just use a hydrocarbon fuel to begin with? The reason the Navy developed this is the same as why they are developing compact fusion reactors, to extend the duration and range of ships underway. Nuclear ships are only refueled every 5 years (Subs) or 20~25 years (Aircraft Carriers). Using their nuclear power to convert seawater into a hydrocarbon fuel would allow an Aircraft Carrier, or even a special purpose designed ship, to resupply the fuel for it's own aircraft or even other ships in the fleet. That would give the US Navy another immense strategic advantage over anything else on the water.

How does this help regular people? Not much at all as natural hydrocarbon based fuel will still be cheaper as the chemical energy is already present in the fuel. "Peak Oil" was always a myth, we now have more hydrocarbon reserves (Oil and Natural Gas) today then we did a decade ago and it's only projected to go up. Plus it's not exactly hard to create, as the Navy just proved, just need Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen with lots of energy available.

The US already produces more Natural Gas then it use's, we are now an energy exporting nation and production is scheduled to keep going up. There is more Shale Oil under the US then all of the middle east combined, Shale Oil actually accounts for most of the available Oil reserves in the world. Previously it wasn't economically viable to extract and thus was largely ignored, modern technology has changed that, just like technology has made producing synthetic hydrocarbon fuel cheaper (that's what the Navy did btw). Last year the US became an oil exporting nation, your graph should of kept going rather then cut off at 2000.

Oil exports

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/u-dot-s-dot-makes-more-oil-than-it-takes

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTEXUS2&f=M

Gas exports

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9130us2a.htm

Actually, the gun debate was not political at first, it was certain liberal posters who made it political.

There is a correlation between articles and what type of people makes it political. I hope you see it for yourself....

I was gonna link to the eia eventually, thought I had to dumb it down first, my bad.




And shale gas extraction uses more energy than what they get out of it. It's a temporary boom at best.

U.S. Shale-Oil Boom May Not Last as Fracking Wells Lack Staying Power

There's more information I'll research later if needed.

Consumption is slowing down, however. Their data only goes to 2010. Everything else is projections.

While it is not an article /. Has some insightful comments on OP's article (the original Navy article). Less politics and more debating of the technology (most of the time).
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/04/09/0246236/navy-creates-fuel-from-seawater


NRL has been researching multiple ways for the military to diversify their energy consumption:
Navy's plan to get energy from orbiting solar panels

Don't want to be rude but this is dumb as f*ck.


That is the exact same thing said when it was first started, it has since ramped up and we're actually selling natural gas to other nations. It costs X to extract a resource from the ground, it costs Y to produce that resource synthetically. If X is every greater then Y, we then produce it synthetically, if Y is greater then X, we drill it from the ground. We've been able to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels for decades, it's not hard but it requires quite a bit of energy due to universal conservation. The Navy isn't defying physics nor are they creating a perpetual energy machine, they found a catalyst that allows them to extract the CO2 from the water cheaply, they still need to add the required energy into the equation to synthesize the fuel. In a land based production facility there is no need to separate out CO2 from water as you can just use carbon from coal which would be cheaper to acquire.

If your statement was remotely true, they would instead take mounds of coal (cheap supply of carbon), huge vats of water (cheap supply of O and H2) and synthesizing large amounts of synthetic gasoline to sell on the open market. You wouldn't even need to be inside the USA to do this as the materials are cheap, just park your a$$ on an island somewhere. The catch is the energy costs of synthesizing hydrocarbon fuel are so exorbitant, its' cheaper to extract it from the ground where the Sun and gravity have already done all the work to put the energy into it equation. We've been able to extract shale gas and oil for decades, it was simply too expensive and energy intensive of a process and so it was ignored, until recent technology allowed it to be done cheaper.

Notice how the energy input cost vs resource price is what drives the decisions here. In the case of synthetic production, universal conservation acts as a hard limit to the lower bound of production, no amount of technology will lower the energy cost beyond the chemical energy difference between original materials and finished product. With the resource extraction method there is no theoretical lower bound to energy costs, though practical reasons apply one based on current technology.

Long story short, no you won't be using cars burning seawater anytime from now until the sun explodes. Will you be using cars that burn synthetic fuel created from raw materials? Most definitely once a cheaper power source is found. That power source is most definitely not solar, wind, hydro or any other "green" source, they aren't even in the same magnitude required for it to be practical. Coal, Gas and Oil are closer but if they are cheap then using them as fuel is cheaper then trying to produce a synthetic fuel. That leaves nuclear as the only energy option and Gen I/II PWR/BWR reactors aren't enough, even Gen III won't be good enough. You need Gen IV MSR/LFTR to make it economical, and the greens would never allow that. The real solution would be Fusion as that could put the costs of synthesis under the costs of extraction, though the greens probably wouldn't want anything to do with a "nuclear" anything.

I can post links later in the day, but living in Pennsylvania, let me tell you that the "benefits" of fracking aren't all they're cracked up to be. (womp womp).

I drink sea water all the time it does give me gas though.

And tortilla chip lips.

Not discussing the pros or cons, only the economic viability of such.

I actually like the idea of synthetic resource production and I can see how we will eventually get there. The cost of energy is the driving force behind the costs of everything else. Get energy cheap enough and there is practically no limit to what you can do. The greens have lobbied out the only viable alternative to hydrocarbons so for the time being we are stuck with them. I was laughing my a$$ off at the people who thought this was some new super special fuel production that would "replace" hydrocarbons with seawater and put the "evil Oil companies" out of business. Just shows how little people know about the economics behind energy production.

On a side note. The only reason the Navy can pull this stuff off is that they aren't regulated by the NRC or DOE. They have their own internal regulatory entity so they can design and utilize whatever technology they want for their ships.

I would like to make, what seems to me an obvious point here, about the clearly catastrophically idiotic and apocalyptically suicidal nature of using water to produce energy....

Even I, in all my diabolical splendor, wouldn't come up with a plan as stupid and evil as that. AND I HAVE TRIED TO SELL OUR WATER TO SPACE ALIENS!

The water you are filtering right now through your miserable little parasitic organs is dinosaur piss. The water you are drinking is all the water we ever have had here on earth, and all we ever will have. If we destroy it, it will be gone forever. AND THAT'S BAD! you can't live past three days without water,

It's the one truly irreplaceable natural resource. Stop destroying it, you idiots.

Umm... did you even read the article or attempt any sort of research into what they are taking about? Cause you just made yourself sound like an idiot.

They aren't burning water. They are extracting CO2 from water to use as the carbon feedstock for synthetic gas. They are also taking some H2 out. Now eventually you burn that synthetic gas. Now I am sure in your head you believe that the materials vanish into nothingness. In actuality the burning produces CO, CO2 and H2O vapor. Whatever water is used comes back out and falls back to the surface. The actual amount is incredibly small as the atomic weight of hydrogen is.. well the lowest of all elements. Its the carbon they need as its heavy and impractical to carry with you. The CO2 that's in the ocean mostly came from the atmosphere, the place you complain has too much CO2 to begin with.

It's because ocean water now contains enough spilled oil it can be used as fuel . . .

The reason I joined the Navy.

Women and sea men don't mix.