Slashdot Mirror
Biofuels Will Power Navy's Next Deployment (sandiegouniontribune.com)
mdsolar writes with news about the launch of the "Great Green Fleet," part of a Navy plan to use 50% alternative fuels by 2020. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports: "This Wednesday, there surely will be tears, hugs and excitement as sailors begin another deployment to the world's hotspots. On the surface, it will be a replay of a common occurrence in any Navy town when sailors go to sea, but in the ships' gas tanks will be fuel made from renewable resources that has officials back at the Pentagon exuberant. 'Underway on beef-fat power' might not have the same ring as 'Underway on nuclear power,' the historic message the Nautilus submarine beamed when it left the pier 61 years ago today. Nonetheless, the Navy is trumpeting the use of renewable biofuels as a game-changer. In 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that the Navy and Marine Corps would get half of their power from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020, and that the Navy would deploy an entire carrier strike group using biofuels by 2016."
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil...
And our navy locks in bio diesel.
Let's see how long that resolve lasts, now that the US oil price dropped to 1.50$ at some point yesterday.
and the carrier will be powered by organically grown uranium
Yeah, that sounds real ecological. Last time I looked, you had to clear a lot of land for that stuff.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That kind of thermodynamic and/or economic efficiency never even enters into the equation. A navy dependent on a cheap globalized oil is a navy that is entirely useless when the shit hits the fan..
Off!
Used to be that USA and Saudi Arabia were allies of necessity. Not so much anymore. Once the US can project power without risk of getting strangled by OPEC they are no longer a necessary ally, only a convenient one.
I guess Obama telegraphed this message early on in his presidency when he gave that speech in the middle east where he basically said the US would no longer prop up leaders that are not supported by their people.
My theory is that China and the US looked at the projections for 20 years ahead: Oil production would no longer be able to keep up with demand at that point. So time to make the change, and screw over Russia while they were at it. No longer having to prop up a cluster of corrupt despots who desperately tried to hold back the future with guns and bribes is a nice bonus. ISIS and Al Qaida is basically what USA reaps from that :(
The reason that we have all of those ships in the first place is to have the option to use them, if needed. Here, the Navy is creating the option of sourcing fuel from domestic, non-petroleum sources. Add to that the building of the infrastructure and development of efficient techniques of production for military and domestic use, and you've got nothing but gravy (which is not quite a biofuel...)
So long as the admiralty keeps the options of nuclear and petroleum fuels as alternatives, I expect this will benefit far more than it will cost.
$26/gallon.
When oil is what? $40/barrel.
Typical Obama "success" story...
So long as they help keep oil cheap it is unlikely that they'll be edged out of the market; but that's one of the problems for a lot of the petrostates(not just middle eastern, Venezuela is having a hell of a time with this issue right now): if the product is too expensive, customers have an incentive to leave; but if it stays cheap enough to be attractive, you no longer have the same amount of money to spend on whatever mixture of guns and butter keeps you in office.
It's not entirely clear that Malaysian palm-oil barons will be any less unpleasant; but it'll be a change of scenery.
You think the USA hasn't: The USA had a civil war in the 1860s, it had the civil rights conflicts in the 1960s. It's the same thing with the difference being; holding "back the future" is way more effective under a dictator or a theocracy.
This was predicted in the 1950s but was continuously suppressed. The 1970s showed what almost-the-end of oil would be like but no government had a practical plan for it. GW Bush promoted fracking for his own benefit as much as for the hope of oil independence. It's ability to deliver was always questionable but now OPEC is undercutting its own market to ensure fracking isn't used.
Al Qaida was created by the Russian-Afghan war and empowered by the US abruptly withdrawing support for the war. ISIS exists because the USA wages war for profit (See 'War is a racket') or revenge, not actual empire-building. Imperialism requires the invading force to give back to the conquered lands, so peace and stability ensues. The USA gave Iraq an unreliable electrical grid and a collapsing political class: That did not foster stability so when problems from other countries spilled into Iraq, the country was unable to fight. That's how the USA is responsible for ISIS.
No longer having to prop up a cluster of corrupt despots ...
Did you see the earlier Slashdot article about Djibouti? The USA is moving to a flying (literally as well as the "rapid response" meaning) "assassination bureau" to protect its overseas 'interests'. Whether such policies will be used for regime-change or defense of corporate assets is an important question.
This further secures the Obama legacy as being forward thinking. By cutting ties with America's enemies who planned and executed 9/11. Obama has freed America to do deals with Iran which will now put the hurt on Saudi Arabia. About time those bastards paid for their crimes. Better to ally with Iran's secular population and conservative religious government, than remain allied with Saudi Arabia's Crazy Jihadist population and soon to be jihadist government. Just look at the Saudi foreign minister to see how messed up Saudi Arabia is becoming.
Why do we even need to stop using oil? Because of the 'climate change', or rather, 'catastrophic man-made global warming' scam, which 'Climatedot' pushes on us every day. Let's destroy the rainforests to grow crops to burn as 'biofuel'. What a load of sickening bullshit it all is.
Please, please, please - DON'T confuse the right-wing trolls with logic, it just infuriates them.
But the corpses will emit CO2! Global Warming Detected!
Really how did they get around congress?
http://www.wired.com/2012/05/r...
The navy has demonstrated technology to create fuel from seawater. This is a carbon neutral process that can be performed on site with clean nuclear electricity, rather than razing forests and shipping them across the sea. None of the "biofuels" in common use are remotely friendly to the environment.
Waste heat from nuclear reactors can also be used to desalinate seawater, or produce synthetic fuels and fertilizer.
Maybe they should just admit nuclear works better for the Navy and build exclusively nuclear powered ships. As for the Pentagon being excited? Did you see them during the SOTU?
Using whale oil would be much better - they could collect more while at sea.
Damn tree huggin communist hippies! Make love and war! :)
Currently making biofuels from corn takes more energy (in planting, harvesting, pesticides, fertilizers, transport and manufacture) than it produces, so there's o benefit for the enviroment and doesn't reduce the amount of co2 produced, it increases it.
I wonder why the type of fuel is not mentioned. That would seem to be the key point in such an announcement. Maybe the Navy has found a way to capture all of the hot air that Trump is exhaling.
I know right. Its like money has no value and only blind worship to the current progressive fad has any worth.
Brazil too. Here the newspapers (ferociously pro-US) are trying to use the low price of oil as a reason for the public oil company give up the pre-salt exploration and deliver (for pennies of course) the fields for American companies.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Could you have pasted more irrelevant sentences in the summary? If interested in the topic, I dont need to skim through all the crap about a small navy town....
The price of the bio-diesel/JP* equivalents is much, much more than fossil fuels. Just another non-defense expenditure hidden in the defense bill
It used to me that the navy was about winning wars. Now it's about saving the planet with the fruitcakes running the country now. Build more nuclear warships!
It seems every day that the United States is doing one thing or another to cripple her military capabilities in the name of some politically correct bullshit or another.
Between the F35, the Littoral combat ship, the ground combat vehicle, and many other multi-billion or trillion dollar boondoggles, not only is the US bankrupting herself, but she's completely incapable of fighting a conventional war.
You know, some of us have come to depend on the US to be allies in a time of war. My little country, by itself, could never defend against an attack or invasion of a well-organized, nearby nation. That's why we are a member of NATO.
In the last couple of decades, between WJC's systematic dismantling of the US military and creation of al-Qaeda (now ISIS), and the GOP's systematic bankrupting of the treasury on trillion dollar pork like the F-35, we've come to feel like we can no longer count on the US being of any meaningful value in a prolonged, actual conflict.
Sure, if we want them to blow up a hospital or bomb a wedding or level a school complex, she can probably still pull it off. But, fighting an organized enemy? No chance, I don't believe.
Don't know about biofuels, but there are proposals and some development work going on along these lines which actually do help the fleet. The reason for that is simple: you know which is the most valuable and important ship in the fleet? The aircraft carrier? The guided missile cruisers? The landing craft? Nope, it's the ugly, lowly oiler. Unless these ships are successful in their mission, the entire fancy multi-billion dollar fleet grinds to a halt within a week. You don't see spots on them being promoted in military advertising, but the oiler is really the centerpiece. When the fleet is out, all the oiler does is continuously hop around the carrier battle group while everybody sucks on its pipe like a total addict. And once the oiler is out, it's in a mad dash to the nearest middle eastern port for a refill and a mad dash back to the fleet. Without a continuous supply of fuel (and the fleet goes through *lots* of it), all your carrier escort ships stop and all flight activity stops. Essentially, at that point the fleet is useless, a victory to the enemy without a single shot fired.
So the new idea is at least partially solving this problem by synthesizing fuels directly in deployment. The carrier has plenty of nuclear power. At the very least, in theory, this can be used to synthesize jet fuel and keep the air superiority. This could help significantly lower the burden on the supply line to the fleet and thus increase the fleet's combat effectiveness. Current problems involve cost, buying fossil fuels is just too cheap. But it will not remain so forever.
Biofuel is not replacing nuclear. According to the article, carbon-neutral biofuel is replacing fossil oil in the same engines.
Deciding on the infrastructure for a military naval fleet based on today's price of oil is pretty darn stupid. I hope you're not making any decisions bigger than whether to mop the floor counter clockwise or clockwise.
I don't respond to AC's.
Because the US doesn't have PLENTY of sources of oil that it can ramp up quite quickly to meet demand nor the purchasing power to ensure more than a 5 year supply for the Navy should fecal matter impact the rotary impeller if production needs to ramp up. Oh wait, it does and you're a fucking moron. This is ENTIRELY a political stunt for idiots like yourself to ooh and ahh at like the trained monkeys you are.
Biodiesel is pretty close to mineral diesel wrt to energy density. And it'll burn in a diesel engine. What might be a problem is that although many of its properties are very similar to the mineral stuff, it's not identical chemically. Biodiesel is a mixture of vegetable fats whereas the mineral stuff is mostly straight chain hydrocarbons. The vegetable fats tend to gel when cold and tend to form varnishes when left on surfaces. Those are not necessarily desirable qualities in emergency equipment that may be unused or lightly used for long periods of time, but are expected to work reliably when called into service.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
All that matters is if it saves tax payer money. If it dose not, then it is a bad thing. We should not spend more tax payer money just to please tree huggers.
Oil is less than $30 a barrel, yet the Navy is paying $26 a gallon for "green" fuel.
The next time any of you SJW/Environmentalists bitch about the cost of the Armed Forces, please go fuck yourself.
If it's beef fat as stated in TFS then it's hardly carbon neutral... but it might smell nice...
Are you cooking a steak or is there a Frigate in your pants?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Every war we avoid through better logistics saves blood and treasure.
Cows don't eat fossil fuel. They eat grass that is fresh or which grew recently, absorbing carbon from the air. In the path from grass through cow to biofuel, the carbon that is finally released is recent carbon, not fossil carbon.
Oil wells are strategic targets. That's why Rommel was in Africa. Feedlots may end up being harder to capture or destroy.
I know we are more in a posture to hunt down terrorists these days, but having the option to destroy rather than capture enemy controlled oil fields owing to strategic oil independence means an easier slog in the more traditional strategic posture. Always winning the last war faster is not a bad contingency to cover.
OP says mod parent up.
So the navy will scrap the nuclear powered ships and start making smoke screens again?
the poop sloop
Seriously, all of our destroyers should be nuke powered. Smaller ships and boats that get in close to shore should remain non-nuke. But, Destroyers are going to head towards electric weapons, so all of them should be able to have excess electricity.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I dunno, it could be made to work. It's better than 'Victory Through Vegetables!'
Making wheat and oil interchangeable is about the evilest thing you can do. Now they will be able to resupply from any piece of harvestable land.
From an energy policy perspective biofuel makes zero sense because it can't scale to our energy needs, so there's no point in jump-starting the infrastructure with a fat military contract because the end-game is pathetic. But from perspective of sheer evil it makes great sense: get the food-to-oil factories built to excess capacity so the single market becomes real. We can now out-bid starving Africans for access to the food they grow for themselves.
How does burning beef-fat actually help clean up the planet? Its going to pollute similar to hydrocarbon oils...so what the freak is the point?
Well, disregarding all the energy it takes to raise a cow, turn a into a nice steak or burger, and store and transport the finished product, there are other factors:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/29/opinions/sutter-beef-suv-cliamte-two-degrees
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
It used to me that the navy was about winning wars. Now it's about saving the planet with the fruitcakes running the country now. Build more nuclear warships!
Part of winning wars involves protecting one's supply chain. Biofuels make us less dependent on foreign sources. The more we use domestically sourced the better for the military and the trucks that bring food to your local grocery store.
Nuclear power is not practical for "smaller" ships. The US Navy experimented with nuclear power cruisers and found the cost of operation to be too high.
The Navy's interest in biofuels is not about being "green", its about better national security. The "green" part is just part of the PR campaign to sell the idea to the public. For the military to truly switch to biofuels a lot more money, research and infrastructure will be needed. That requires public support.
What difference does it make if it is 'recent carbon' or 'fossil carbon'...carbon is carbon is carbon...
Its about increasing the carbon in the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon goes into plants, this carbon eventually finds its way into fuel, its burned and returned to the atmosphere, no net gain. Unlike when the carbon is sourced from petroleum removed and sequestered from the atmosphere for millions of years. When this sequestered carbon is burned there is a net increase in the atmosphere. In this respect not all carbon is the same, some carbon increases our atmospheric problems, some carbon does not.
Oil wells are strategic targets. That's why Rommel was in Africa.
Actually Rommel was in Africa to save Mussolini. The real strategic target for oil for Germany was the Soviet Union's fields at Baku.
Feedlots may end up being harder to capture or destroy.
Biofuel from food industry waste is probably only enough for these demonstrations, not ongoing operations. For ongoing operational needs of the US military we will probably need biofuel production infrastructure, for example facilities where algae are excreting fuel. Burgers and fries will only get us so far. While there would still be industrial targets they would be domestic, not industrial facilities across the oceans, not commercial oil tankers upon the ocean.
The carriers will still be nuclear, but many of the support ships aren't. Those are the ones they're switching over.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
So... the US military should wait until it DOESN'T have that safety net, before starting down the road of weaning itself off oil?
Reducing dependence on oil (foreign or domestic... they will both eventually run dry) is in the US's long term strategic interests. Period.
If you're arguing against that, you're simply not thinking long term enough.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
President Obama's "green" backers get rich off this stuff. Oil is at decade-low prices and Obama has just opened the spigots on the Iranian ocean of crude oil, but the American taxpayer will get less "bang for the buck" from its defense dollars by buying $60+ per gallon biofuels for our navy. Anybody here know how much oil a single destroyer or frigate burns in 24 hours underway?
Here's how Obama's supposedly "green" backers have been getting rich off crap like this (and Solyndra):
1. invest money in a company that is cheap because few others are investing in because it has an impractical business model and a product that is to expensive.
2. invest money in the election of politicians who will favor that company.
3. when that politician is in office, get him to force people to by the company product, or to drive competing products out of the market or artificially inflate their prices - at which point the previously bad company and product become artificially profitable.
4. lobby the politician to provide subsidies and research grants and exclusive government contracts to the company for its otherwise too expensive products.
5. if the company gets in trouble, lobby the politician for a bailout or government-guaranteed loans. Then cash-out and leave the taxpayer holding the bag.
Woo Hoo!!! profits galore!
The next time somebody whines that the US military has a bigger budget than any other military, keep this sort of biofuel idiocy in mind: we get less for our money than everybody else. We currently spend more per year on the military than we did under Reagan, but the Navy is less than half the size of Reagan's, the Air Force is smaller than it has ever been, the Army is 30% smaller, etc and to top it off: all our allies have cannibalized their own military forces to fund their socialist programs, so they depend on us to protect them.
You seem to be missing exactly the point that this exercise is making. The message is not "We're going to use bio-diesel regardless of the cost". The much more frightening message is "The Navy has plenty of sources of diesel, conventional and now also renewable. Don't even bother." Diversity in supply is a strategic benefit.
BTW, keep in mind that there may be plenty of oil sources, but ships don't exactly like crude oil. You typically want minimally refined oil, to get at least the tar out. And refineries are strategic targets: limited in number and highly flammable. Bio-diesel on the other hand doesn't need to be refined; it contains virtually no tar to start with. A ship's engine will burn it without a significant loss of peak power, and without substantial fouling.
because will never ever go back up in price.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No because biofuels will always be problematic
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...
It's the exact same reason the Germans turned to synfuels during WWII.