Honeywell & Airbus To Turn Algae Into Jet Fuel

mystermarque alerts us to an announcement by Honeywell, JetBlue Airways, International Aero Engines, and Airbus about a program to develop jet fuel from algae and other biomass. They hope to supply nearly 1/3 of the demand for jet fuel from these sources by 2030. A Wall Street Journal blog points out that even if this program's goals are met, we will be worse off by 2030 in terms of jet kerosene released into the atmosphere, assuming that the rapid growth in the aviation sector continues apace.

Comments

Re:Some assumption.

[homer_ca]

If you can't afford a private jet there's Day Jet and Net Jet. They're like buying a time share in a private jet. Either way, you don't deal with the crowds and hassles of commercial airports.

Re:I've got a secret for them

[smooth wombat]

We NEED hydrogen power.

You should do some homework regarding using H for power. First, being the lightest element, it does not like to be constrained and so seeps easily out of containers which are not properly sealed or, and this is key, thick enough.

Yes, thick enough. Do a Google for how thick tanks have to be to contain hydrogen and you will see that you are adding substantial amounts of weight to any vehicle which uses hydrogen as a power source. Why thick? Because you need a lot of H to do the same amount of work that gas does and the only way to get a lot of H into any area is to compress it. To keep it under pressure you need a strong containment vessel (or wessel as Chekov would say).

Second, you can't just have Joe Six Pack walk up to an H filling station, pull out the hose and start pumping. To use the compressed H (see above) it has to be liquified which means extremely cold temperatures. Usually, tranferring H to containers involves an automated process, not some guy with a cigarette hanging out his mouth, a cell phone in one hand and the other hand holding the valve open.

In the end, using H as a power source, while a nice idea, is not feasible. You're missing at least one, if not more, steps in your example above. The liquification stage. That takes large amounts of energy to do so by using your example, you'd have to build the liquification plant next to the nuclear plant which is doing the electrolysis. That's what we need, a large source of explosive material next to a nuclear plant.

This is not to say that we shouldn't use H where it can be easily applied but as a source to fuel cars, buses, planes, etc, it's simply a pipe dream.

For your reading pleasure: eSkeptic