Non fossil fuel propulsion

The cause of global warming has not been proved. Consensus by people on the take is not proof. We are emerging still from the last ice age so there is no record of what qualifies as "normal" temperature. There is certainly no proof that Man is capable of warming the Earth.

 

You are wrong. It has been proven, scientists 'on the take' is a rediculious statement, and I am not going to debate global warming with someone who refuses to listen to evidence.

 

Not at a rate fast enough to be of any interest to us. When we use up what's available now we'll be left with effectively zero.

Yes, yes it has.

So what? The earth can handle natural levels. It can't handle the excess from man, which sits in the atmosphere.

Temperature changes caused by CO2 are deadly to plants - each type of plant can only handle a very limited range of temperatures.

 

Whatever you say.

 

I'm not so sure that they are 'spitting the seawater' into components in the traditional manner we often think of,...and which most of us understand needs lots of energy.

Rather It seems to me that you are indicating that the aircraft carriers are equipped with an unlimited power source (nuclear) with which to perform this separation of the hydrogen from the water in order to facilitate this sea water conversion process.

Rather I think they are experimenting with a different process altogether. And note the quoted 'use of small quantities of electricity' to do so.....

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas

 

Brian,

So e further reading I did indicated that it took about twice the amount of electrical power as the liquid fuel contained. So it takes about 68MJ/L of fuel created (compared to 34MJ/L per gall of diesel). While this conversion would be terrible if you start with diesel, if you start with a nuclear power plant, any underutilized portion of its potential power could be converted into liquid fuel. Even assuming a pretty crappy storage rate, it's still better than nothing.

Some back of the envelope math I did (and thus very suspect) indicated that using 10% of a Nimitz carriers 1GW engines would result in a fuel production of 100,000 gallons a day (someone please check my math). Given that a carrier of this type carries 3.5 million gallons of avgas, that is a pretty substantial potential.

Again, I absolutely do not stand by those numbers and I could easily be off by an order of magnitude, but it's what I got. But if they are correct, that means that a stationary carrier could have effectively unlimited fuel.

 

Together with Stumbles insightful contribution, I think large scale Nuclear powered fuel production is exactly what they have in mind.

From your own source

"Refueling U.S. Navy vessels, at sea and underway, is a costly endeavor in terms of logistics, time, fiscal constraints and threats to national security and sailors at sea.

In Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. Navy Military Sea Lift Command, the primary supplier of fuel and oil to the U.S. Navy fleet, delivered nearly 600 million gallons of fuel to Navy vessels underway, operating 15 fleet replenishment oilers around the globe.
Refueling of Naval Vessel Refueling Navy vessels at sea can prove in many ways to be a costly endeavor. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is developing the chemistry for producing jet fuel from renewable resources in theater. The process envisioned would catalytically convert CO2 and H2 directly to liquid hydrocarbon fuel used as JP-5.
(U.S. Navy Military Sea Lift Command)

From Seawater to CO2

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing a process to extract carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce hydrogen gas (H2) from seawater, subsequently catalytically converting the CO2 and H2 into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process.
- See more at: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas#sthash.PUvz5Gwj.HLOn734t.dpuf"


Its only Aircraft Carriers that have jets, and they have the nuclear power.

Stumble also pointed out that the amount of power needed for the conversion is not really small in regards to input versus output.

The production of H2 is a well known process covered in Youtube a great deal. If a more efficient method is being developed thats good, but the laws of physics "there is no free lunch " apply.

 

This sounds most likely to me too.

One nuclear generator at sea could power a fleet of ships and aircraft.

Perhaps they'll replace their oilers with floating nuclear power stations that process seawater. No need to go home and fill up until you run out of food.

 

You guys seem to think nuclear reactors in ships don't have a use already.
You also seem to think that building and refueling them is free.

TNSTFL

I wonder why we only have nuclear carriers and subs? You know there originally was a cruiser, etc.

I wonder why we don't have those other smaller ships as nucs, any more?

Oh - TNSTFL - is "there is no such thing as a free lunch".

 

You're jumping to conclusions.

No-ones saying there actually is - just that there effectively (from the limited point of view of the fleet) is while a reactor is floating with the fleet and has fuel. Everyone is well aware of the need for the reactors to refuel eventually.

 

No we don't - how could you assume that ????

But - when your refueling ships are being chased by subs on their way from the refineries, and you are getting close to running out of fuel in a hi risk scenario, being able to keep a few jets in the air by directing even half of your available power is a major strategic adavantage.

For general info
"We estimate that it will cost about $14.9 billion to operate and
support a nuclear carrier over its lifetime, which is nearly 34
percent more than the $11.1 billion we estimate it will cost to
operate and support a conventional carrier. As shown in table 3.4,
the cost for a conventionally powered carrier's fossil fuel is more
than offset by the added cost for a nuclear-powered carrier's
personnel and depot maintenance. A major cost difference between the
two carrier types is in the indirect cost category for support
activities provided by DOE to the nuclear carriers. "
https://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad98001/c3.htm

 

Nuclear energy at sea has the logistical advantage of no re-fueling while on station and the advantage of very high power density. There are disadvantages with respect to required space and the complexity of running a reactor. This is why nuclear is used for larger vessels and not smaller vessels.

Taking advantage of the on-station nuclear energy source to generate fuel for the planes just makes sense to avoid the transportation costs and risks of the current method.

Regardless of what the US Navy wants, this type of technology could be used to convert nearly free geothermal or solar at remote locations into high density easily transportable fuel. I kind of doubt that this specific technology would scale up and be economical. However, the better we get at this kind of thing, the more likely we will eventually develop process that can economically use high density geothermal energy to produce large volume burnable fuels.

And from what I have read, the earth's C02 has never really been "in balance". Natural processes lock up C02 when it is more abundant. C02 tends to trend down slowly until a periodically major volcanic event occurs. The major events will discharge more C02 is a short time frame than man has discharged in the last 50 years.

We can and should be concerned with man's impact on the environment. The trash floating in the Pacific, the many examples of contamination of localized areas with hazardous materials, the smokestack emissions of a 1950 vintage coal fired plant, smog near large cities in the 1970s are all examples of where man can really screw up.

The big ocean circulation patterns that regulate temperatures and the inputs into the warming / cooling cycles of the earth are real import to life as we know it. However, these are big and complex systems. We definitely should put lots of resources into studying these things since any significant shift would be terrible. However, making huge changes to how do do things without proper understanding is both wasteful and unlikely to achieve what we want.

 

and I am not going to debate global warming with someone who refuses to listen to evidence.

THERE IS NO EVIDENCE , just man made theorys , and computer models that give ZERO long term predictive results.

The HOAX was created because the consensus always results in Gov getting more power and people loosing theirs.

Thats always worth a few billion in grant buck$ to the buroRATS .

 

That is an unbelievable statement,...and a very narrow view that I wouldn't have believed coming from you.

Perhaps this warming is somewhat negligible in the theme of what catastrophic events have happened in the past, and might happen in the future, but that is NOT a reason to accept a lot of serious studies that have been done on this 'happening'.

And I think a lot of the serious studies have been done in those great repositories of the earth's history in the two artic regions of our earth.

 

At the very least you should learn to spell Arctic before you put yourself forward as an expert on climate.