Ocean water: new fuel for ships and planes

Refueling of warships on the high seas is a complex and expensive process. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is planning to solve this problem, getting fuel directly from seawater.The scientists plan to create an efficient catalytic process that converts CO2 and H2 directly into liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Thus, military ships can produce fuel grade JP-5 directly into the sea, providing the fuel jets and naval turbines.In fiscal year 2011, the U.S. Navy bought nearly 2.2 billion liters of fuel for the Navy. Moreover, all this is a huge amount of fuel needed to distribute all over the world - in the areas of deployment and patrolling U.S. warships.NRL scientists from developed and successfully demonstrated the recovery technology of carbon dioxide dissolved in water to extract hydrogen using an electrochemical cell and the subsequent conversion of CO2 and H2 in hydrocarbon fuel. In the future, these technologies will create a reactor that will provide the fleet with fuel, without the need to build a complex supply chain and buy oil.In the process of "magical transformation" use catalytic reactions, similar to those used in the Fischer-Tropsch process. Thanks to innovative technologies for the production of iron catalysts NRL scientists improved recovery efficiency up to 60% CO2.The concentration of CO2 in the ocean about 140 times greater than in air. Two to three percent of CO2 in sea water are present in the form of carbon dioxide, one percent as carbonate, and the remaining 96-97% - bicarbonate. NRL experts have developed a two-step process of converting sea water into liquid hydrocarbons. In the first phase of iron-based catalyst is extracted from water to 60% of carbon dioxide, preventing the formation of methane in favor of olefins.In the second phase olefins undergo oligomerization (a chemical process that converts monomers, molecules with low molecular weight compounds with higher molecular weight) in a liquid containing specific hydrocarbon molecules (C9-C16). The resulting liquid with nickel catalysts converted into a finished fuel.According to the calculations of military experts, the fuel from the sea water will cost 06.03 dollars a gallon (about $ 1 per liter), which is comparable to the current market price of fuel, produced in the traditional way of drilling.