While this is interesting the writer of the article does not seem to be as good at math as they are at bashing republicans. This technology will work fine on a carrier that needs lots of jet fuel but would find getting it from a tanker inconvenient and expensive. Due to transport costs a gallon of jet fuel on a carrier is way more expensive that it is on land. But, thanks to the carriers having their own nuke reactors on board the cost of electricity is pretty low. So, they can use the excess electricity to do something fairly wasteful like cracking water. Cracking water is normally a pretty energy expensive activity. But, when you are out in the ocean the equation changes enough that the cost to crack the water is less important that having the jet fuel you need here and now, So, while this totally works out in the ocean on a carrier to make it make sense on land would first require us to have a way to crack water for dirt cheap. That means we either need solar arrays that are an order of magnitude better than we have now, or using nuke power to crack the water. Coal and Natural gas cannot get the price per kilowatt hour down enough to make it worth the trouble. Even Nuke Light Water Reactors would make the process to expensive. But, with next gen nuke plants being able to produce kilowatts for less than coal then, it would make sense to use them to crack water and produce fuel since it could then be done for cheap..

Unless I am mistaken the process requires more energy than contained in the fuel created, so it is fine for the military where having the fuel in the middle of the ocean in a wartime setting is extremely valuable, but much less valuable in a civilian peaceful setting. Perhaps someday it will be developed to a better than breakeven level, but it has to compete with cheap gas and cheap coal that are (arguably in the case of gas) plentiful.
Coal is currently considered dirty but new tech could be imminent to make coal emissions comparable to natgas in power plants.

Strangely, as the discovery devolved into a partisan battle the inventor destroyed the prototype and walked off, vowing to "stop the engine of the world."

Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute assured reporters the project would continue unimpeded.

Setting aside the 95% BS in the article, I like the concept if only for the fact it would require a source of cheap electricity, nuclear being the obvious choice. And thus, in a wrong-headed rush to kill petro energy, the greenies may finally be moving us toward the real solution, nuclear power.

So much important detail missing. This an energy storage system, not a source. I assume (since the article doesn't explain much) the generation process will depend on using nuclear power from the aircraft carrier itself. I read elsewhere that it takes 39,000 gallons of seawater to generate one gallon of jet fuel. Is this a process that the carrier could operate while underway, or would it have to dedicate most of excess power to fuel generation, sitting idle until the fuel tanks are filled?

No mention of the metals in the cation system (probably rare, expensive metals), so the cost trades may be deceptive, relating only to the generation process after the system is installed. This may work for the Navy, but extending the technology beyond is doubtful.

Anhydrous ammonia can be generated with nothing but water and air, given a power supply. Ammonia is, in some respects, the ideal fuel. It has no carbon component, so it generates no CO2. It has about 70% of the net power per volume of gasoline, and is liquid at pressures similar to those needed for propane storage (~200 psi). Like the seawater fuel, it's strictly an energy storage and transport medium, but it delivers four times the hydrogen content than the most highly compressed hydrogen gas.

Just felt an alternative example might put this in perspective.

And this will also fuel a perpetual motion machine....

HOLY COW!!!

I wish they would have mentioned the potency of the fuel. Maybe they did and I don't know enough about how it works, but what if a gallon of this type of fuel is only half as efficient as gasoline.

One of my friends got the Navy R&D contract to work out the engineering of this changeover back in 2004-2005. Now, after reading AS, I regret to admit that I congratulated him at the time. You cannot imagine how oddly quite a few of my colleagues view me for not accepting the government gravy train any more.

hey, y'all! this is hogwash! it's like separating H from
O in H2O and then burning the hydrogen for fuel.
ridiculous. they are jerking our chain!!! -- j

Read about this a few months ago, but haven't seen any news about a scaled up demonstration project yet - just the lab results. It's earth shattering if scalable and operable.

"I expect the GOP to go ballistic over this..."

Bias? What bias?

I hope to read the same about this subject from a totally different source very soon. And without any displays of political bias one way or the other, though I personally enjoy bashing libtards. Yes, I won't be personally writing that article. Ahem! So there ya go.

Alternate source
http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternati...

There are Absolutely 0 facts cited in this article. No inventors name, no university where it was supposedly developed, no discussion on how it works....we are just expected to believe the notion that fuel can be made from seawater with no apparent cost! . How stupid does the author think we are?

I'm not even going to bother looking up again the stuff I once read on the use of hydrogen as a fuel. BUT ... anyone who has been involved in storage and use of hydrogen gas is aware of substantial problems involved. It can make metal (tanks) brittle. It seeps through containment materials.

And as has been said IT IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY. Nor is the seawater from which it might be generated.

hey, y'all! this is hogwash! it's like separating H from
O in H2O and then burning the hydrogen for fuel.
ridiculous. they are jerking our chain!!! -- j

would be a nice idea, but this seems a few decades away.. could be useful in Nuclear subs, ships.. but like others have stated.. how do they store it?

I absolutely despise writers who pass their op-eds off as news. Mr. Rosario expects his readers to take his rhetoric as cold fact, never mind the lack of citations even those supporting his pro-liberalism view. He seems a bit confused about his topic. Mr. Rosario doesn't seem to have a clear understanding of the science involved.

After wading through all of the Circumstantial Ad Hominem attacks against the GOP and the distractions of the ads, I found very little content to provide critical analysis of the Mr. Rosario's column. I wonder what's the purpose of publishing the article. The topic is not new, the author brought nothing new to the table, we've all read the liberal rhetoric before.

According to this article/video it takes twice as much energy to make the fuel out of sea water than the energy in the fuel created (is that considering efficiencies?). A nuke power plant may be a good option -- so it's a form/byproduct of nuclear power. This fuel will not replace current means of getting oil any time soon -- sorry greenies. But it may be a good means for the navy to get the fuel they need in a pinch.

I'm happy to know that when we run out of cheap oil, our society won't necessarily end due to limited resources. One more thing socialists are wrong about in their attacks on capitalism.

Www.voanews.com/content/us-navy-lab-turns-seawater-into-fuel/1919512.html

The primary potential weakness in any military force is its supply line. If a naval task force can produce its own fuel....there is that much less reliance on outside supply.

I do not know of any naval engagement where the ships involved ran out of fuel. However, keeping ships supplied with fuel requires a steady stream of tankers. Tankers are prime targets for an enemy--take them out, and you limit or even immobilize every ship farther up the food chain.

Whether this is "practical" or not is a matter of question. If the nuclear reactors on, say, a carrier can produce more electricity than is needed, the rest can be diverted to other purposes. Efficiency isn't a significant factor, though improving it will improve the technology considerably. But if there is a current "waste resource" there to be used....if it is doing something productive, it does not matter how inefficient it is. It's a use for otherwise unused energy.

And if anyone can fine tune it, you can bet the military will.

This is not practical. Be very careful about what it says.
It is 92% efficient at the chemical process described, and liberating hydrogen in the process. The typical numerator and denominator for such an assertion are the numerator=energy of the reaction, and denominator=input power. How much hydrogen is produced is unclear, but could readily be calculated. The hydrogen produced will be a fraction of the energy potential of the electrical energy input, which came from somewhere (fossil fuel or nuclear).
This is a carefully crafted message to ensure political support for NRL.
This from the Navy that refuses to provide the real cost of delivered fuel for analysis of fuel saving alternatives and instead uses ~$2.50 a gallon, clearly far less than the actual cost, and even less than we pay at a marina.
Interesting academic work, but not a game changer.

If Ragnar Danneskjöld's ship had the kind of electrostatic power plant that John Galt invented, this would let him stay out indefinitely and launch all sorts of aircraft.

But someone else here named the key concern. The cost of transport of fossil fuels makes this water-electrolysis technique worthwhile at sea. But on land it is still cheaper to drill for oil, of which we still have plenty. The author is either:

A. Looking ahead--way ahead--to the exhaustion of the last oil well, or

B. So single-tracked on how to let fossil fuels "stay in the ground" that he ignores every other consideration, including the cost.