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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.
I guess we better do nothing then and abandon this project...
where does algae get its carbon?
You're talking about economists here, and economists have no problem extrapolating exponential growth indefinitely to the future, never mind the physical limits of the planet. You're right about US aviation collapsing. Anybody who can afford it, meaning corporate VPs and up, are abandoning commercial flights in droves. You'd be a fool not to.
haha. anyway, the grandparent poster was talking about people with their head up their ass when that's where he stores his. taking carbon from the air to release it back again is better than what we're doing now.
I used to think like that but:
A few major problems with your solution
1> Salt water is only mostly water. Where are you going to dump all the waste (something like 25Kg of salt per 1000 liters)
2> Hydrogen by itself is fairy hard to handle - it escapes most containers, and it makes metals brittle so pipelines (and engines - think about the pressures inside an engine cylinder and what happens when your engine block and cylinders become very britle)will have some severe problems.
3> although #2 touches on it, hydrogen will need an entirely new support infrastructure - I did not see that mentioned before you start profiting.
4> Along with that new infrastructure, you will have an entirely new level of security issues. I invite you to consider the explosive potential of a hydrogen tanker being used by "youths" as an improvised FAE.
But I am in agreement that we should be building nuclear power plants - I would try to find more ways to replace fossil fuels with electricity as well as finding more non-fossil alternatives.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Sorry man. You really don't understand the carbon cycle.
You should know that the majority of organic material (like leaves or algae) and the carbon they contain does not get trapped away from the atmosphere. For the most part, dead organic material slowly decays releasing that carbon back into CO2.
Using algae as a source of fuel can decrease the amount of carbon we are pulling out of deep sequestered sources. It would decrease global CO2 concentration as the source of carbon is part of a closed loop. We'll be pulling carbon out of the air when we grow more algae.
On another note. Electrolysis is not easy. Right now, electrolysis terribly inefficient and needs platinum electrodes. There's a reason that hydrogen today is produced by cracking oil and not extracted from water.
Step 2: Split salt water into hydrogen and oxygen
Step 3: Profit
Step 4: Goto 1 Expanding our nuclear infrastructure is important, but it's also important that we do it intelligently. CO2 may be bad, but 100,000 years worth of toxic, radioactive actinides is pretty nasty too. We need to invest in nuclear technologies that don't leave such unwelcome stuff behind. Newer reactor technologies are being explored that a) can burn through stuff that is now part of the waste problem, b) leave waste behind with a much shorter half-life, c) are less risky to operate than a lot of the older technology in use today. Driving a Prius isn't helping, buying a hybrid Chevy Suburban isn't helping. If hybrids can cut your CO2 output by anything (and yes, they do), that helps. Priuses and other hybrids are not addressing the root of the problem, which is our assumption of cheap transportation. THAT is what we need to cure. Gas prices are already doing that. The neo-hippies with their lattes and they horn rimmed glasses are not helping the cause, they're hurting it by buying into a false reality and encouraging others to do so. Giving in to sterotypes is another form of false reality.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Oooh, terrible idea. We don't have another planet currently, and living in artificial structures is just SLIGHTLY risky :P Not to mention that we would need fusion and anti-gravity to really make leaving the planet feasible in the long term.
I suspect you are just trying to annoy me since you think I'm a tree hugging hippy. This is not the case, and you should probably mind your own quote from Mark Twain!
Well, I don't know where you're getting your numbers. Perhaps for short distances and certain areas (ie, up and down the Eastern Seaboard), but for cross country travel, trains aren't price competitive at all. I travel to Seattle once or twice a year from Boston, and I can still get ~$300 round trip tickets. I also get there in a few hours. I've priced out train travel, and it comes out to almost $600, and 6 solid days of travel time for the round trip. Even more if I want a guaranteed electrical socket so I can plug anything in and do work/other stuff during the 3 day journey each way (you've got to buy a room for the long distance trains, the special seats with plugs only seem to be on the trains that run along the Eastern Seaboard, that's something like $300 per CONNECTION).
Now, I don't imagine that the cost of air travel is going to stay that low, so in the near future train travel may very well become the only reasonable option left to me, but even with the nightmare that is air travel today, it's still a better option than the train.
If we could only learn to convert greed, stupidity and bigotry to fuel, we'd never have to worry about energy again.
Heck, 23% of the country could supply the energy needs of the entire nation.
You are welcome on my lawn.
American's don't 'love' their cars. The zoning, design and construction of their homes and cities make them reliant on cars.
Evil people are out to get you.
Don't worry, the new FAA user fees are going to put those sort of companies firmly out of business and force their customers back to the airlines.
...program to develop jet fuel from algae and other biomass...
Yes, but can they use grey goo?