Slashdot Mirror
The Development of Ecologically Sound Jet Fuel
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at Princeton University are currently working on two projects to reduce jet travel's role in global warming. The first one, a major project funded by the U.S. Air Force with $7.5 million, is focused on developing computational models that accurately simulate the burning of jet fuel, a complex process not well understood today. The second one, funded by NetJets, a company providing business jets, will help to develop new jet fuels with near-zero net greenhouse gas emissions."
If a few large corporations can really clean up on this - it wont be a problem. You'd be amazed how fast laws can change when high profits can be tied to even the impression of environmental gain.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
But haven't I read a number of stories just this week that Ocean Shipping and Cement Production are bigger CO2 emitters than airlines?
$7.5 million is nothing to the military, especially the Airforce. They blow $100 of millions on customized database applications, billions on building single aircraft, and trillions on R&D for Airframes. $7.5 million is like some spare change they give to some college students to work on a project for 5 years that will end up being canned.
BMW have probably invested a lot more into research into alternative fuels like hydrogen and still haven't come up with something that has us all dumping our hydrocarbon ways.
What needs to be worked on is a more novel way of taking in air and forcing it out the back, past that you need to work out how to apply external forces to aircraft. We're looking at a lot more than $7.5 mil for that kind of physics lab experimentation.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
You're wrong. According to wikipedia, contrails have a negative effect. Anyways, the effect of the contrails is vastly outweighed by the carbon emissions. I remember hearing about a study that was saying that after the 9/11 attacks, when there was no air traffic, the temperature dropped. Of course, it's a small sample size, but you can't shut down all air traffic for a month to do a science experiment.
Several studies have indicated that despite the carbon emissions, the vapor trails of commercial jets actually create a net COOLING effect due to albedo. The conclusion of one research paper from a reputable institution stated that if we want to alleviate global warming due to CO2, we should actively encourage jet travel!
Jesus, people. In our zeal to protect the environment (which I share), let's concentrate on the REAL problems please! And stop all this irrelevant noise which just distracts us from those real problems.
You're wrong. According to wikipedia contrails have a positive effect. Anyways, I'm not saying that the carbon emissions are good so that is irrelevant. If all they do is switch fuels, but the engines operate under the same principles as they do now, then I imagine contrails will continue to exist as engines will continue to put out water vapor.
I don't think anybody has nearly as clear a picture of how our planet's weather as we would like. It sure would be nice. I could plan my days at the beach better and we could quit guessing about what is best for the environment and maybe get a little more consensus and action, though I doubt too much more. So are contrails in and of themselves good or bad? I don't think anyone can say.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Some guys in Japan made a piloted plane that flew on 160 AA batteries: http://www.primidi.com/2006/07/17.html#a1571
Still, I'm a little more impressed by what NASA pulled off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Prototype
For flights that don't cross the oceans it seems to me that Maglev trains is the way to go. They can actually reach higher speeds than a commercial airliner, and if you want to be really sci-fi you could operate them inside an evacuated tube, effectively eliminating air-resistance, and thus allowing velocities far above the speed of sound. Power would of course come from nuclear reactors, because as we all know, nuclear reactors cure cancer... ( no, really ).
Which is the giant greenhouse elephant in the room, but nobody pays attention to it because it doesn't help the world socialist cause.
CO2 injection is a useful tool for oil engineers for maintaining the flow of oil within a reservoir. It is not really about keeping reservoir pressure up, but more about enhancing flow by lowering the effective crude viscosity. Having said that, what CO2 you pump into the reservior will also come up with the crude, resulting in additional CO2 handling costs.
So don't expect CO2 sequestration to be the climate change saviour. The use in oil production is still limited to certain field geologies and crude types. Straight sequestration of CO2 in old gas reservoirs will be very expensive. The current use of CO2 injection is to enhance oil production, not purely for the purpose of sequestration - i.e. there's currently a net economic benefit. It's not a technique that's used willy-nilly, just for the heck of it.
There will have to be huge penalties for CO2 emissions before any companies will bother with commercial geosequestration.
Speaking of which, one of the ingredients of Russian solid rocket fuel (for military rockets) was rice husk - a byproduct of rice production. They actually cultivated short grain rice that would have a disproportionate amounts of husk specifically for this, and grew it in Southern Russia near Krasnodar. The grain itself was edible, of course, but it was not particularly good from the culinary point of view.