US Navy Developing Jet Fuel from Seawater

Navy chemists claim to have refined short chain hydrocarbons from seawater and hope to develop kerosene-based jet fuel from the process:

The process involves extracting carbon dioxide dissolved in the water and combining it with hydrogen – obtained by splitting water molecules using electricity – to make a hydrocarbon fuel...

Dorner and colleagues found that using the usual cobalt-based catalyst on seawater-derived CO2 produced almost entirely methane gas. Switching to an iron catalyst resulted in only 30 per cent methane being produced, with the remainder short-chain hydrocarbons that could be refined into jet fuel.


Link via Discover Magazine

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the second law of thermodynamics says that this fuel will come at a very high cost in terms of money and energy input. it might work in a pinch in a nuclear powered navy ship.
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If there's anywhere on earth that this would work it's on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean; a virtually unlimited supply of water (and no, dru, it wouldn't drain the oceans; have you ever seen an ocean?) and a nuclear powerplant under the deck. Bump up the output of the reactor just a tad and you've got fuel to burn.
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