Synthetic Kerosene

[Grey Havoc]

Germany Unveils World's First Commercial Plant For Making Synthetic Kerosene - Slashdot

German officials on Monday unveiled what they said is the world's first commercial plant for making synthetic kerosene, touted as a climate-friendly fuel of the future. The Associated Press reports: The facility in Werlte, near Germany's northwestern border with the Netherlands, will use water...

news.slashdot.org

 

[Dagger]

As that website already says: it's a century old process. Nothing to get excited about.
Just old wine kerosene in new bags.

It is similar to what Nazi Germany did during WW2 and South Africa during apartheid regime when they could not obtain crude oil.

Nowadays it can only survive with big subsidies, or as Atmosfair hopes: by big CO2 taxes on fossil kerosene.

 

[muttly]

Your tax dollars I mean subsidies at work

 

[stealthflanker]

It's actually good for independence. Like imagine if you have war with one that provide you oil. One's war effort then can only last as long as the fuel (and means to deliver them) is available.

One intriguing proposal i heard was to use nuclear power onboard CVN to produce aviation fuel from sea water.

They are more expensive perhaps than the crude oil but if the purpose is to cut dependence on imported oil.. then synthetic fuel is the way to go.

 

[steelpillow]

Not sure I'd call this a "commercial" plant. It is a pilot for a commercial process (subject to high enough carbon taxes) and is not in itself expected to make money. As the article says, "Atmosfair, a German non-profit group behind the project, says its purpose is to show that the process is technologically feasible and -- once it is scaled up and with sufficient demand -- economically viable." and "Atsmofair is banking on carbon taxes driving up the price of fossil fuels."

If you include land use in the calculations, I wonder how its carbon footprint compares with bio-derived hydrocarbons such as biodiesel?

 

[Dagger]

One intriguing proposal i heard was to use nuclear power onboard CVN to produce aviation fuel from sea water.

That is the same as what Atmosfair is doing: produce H2 by electrolysis of (sea)water, capture CO2 from the atmosphere, react them together to produce synthetic crude oil, crack and refine that to produce kerosene.
There is already a topic about that on this forum.

That would require that each carrier operates a sort of refinery on/in it. You can guess my opinion about that.
Besides: aircraft carriers will be the dinosaurs in the next major war.

 

[Grey Havoc]

You could use a CVN hull design as the basis for a dedicated factory ship or similar though.