So this is pretty cool
The US Navy is testing ways to turn sea water into fuel. This is in no way a new concept or idea, but they're actually having some successful trial runs, albeit on a small scale (they flew a scale model WWII plane on their converted fuel). This could be exciting for a number of important reasons. Not only would such a process lessen our dependency on oil (wooo), but it would be really, really good for the ocean. Really good.
With all our problems with climate change and those pesky greenhouse gases, not a lot of people know that the ocean actually absorbs carbon dioxide like a sponge (pun fully intended). In fact, research now shows that our planet's oceans now contain HALF of all man-made carbon dioxide. At the rate we've produced carbon dioxide, or CO2, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, science tells us that the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere should be much, much higher than they actually are. Currently, our atmosphere contains about half the carbon dioxide it should. So where is that missing carbon? (For those unaware, CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps solar heat in the Earth's atmosphere, thus increasing planet-wide temperatures, which is where the term "global warming" comes from. We now know that the effects are far more wide-reaching than simply the temperature, and thus the term most used today is 'climate change.')
A comprehensive study of all the Earth's oceans throughout the 1990s shows where the gas went: into the oceans. For years, scientists focused on the benefits involved with the removal of CO2 from our atmosphere; it slowed down the process of global warming, after all, which is really great for, you know, all land-dwelling creatures on Earth. Yay! But more recently, scientists are beginning to focus on the problems involved with what is called Ocean Acidification, which is basically exactly what it sounds like. As the oceans absorb more and more CO2 they become more acidic and it becomes harder for those organisms at the bottom of the marine food chain to survive, coral in particular.
Man-made CO2 emissions currently equal about 22 million tons a day. The oceans absorb about a third of that everyday. That's a lot of carbon dioxide. Not only is it negatively effecting the food chain, another serious problem is that the more CO2 the oceans absorb, the less they'll be able to absorb as we continue to produce more and more carbon. Until now the oceans have been greatly slowing down the process of global climate change, but when they become no longer able to, the results could prove disastrous.
So how can the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's new fuel help? It's simple, really. The process that converts seawater into usable fuel pulls carbon dioxide from the seawater while simultaneously producing hydrogen, and then converts the gasses into hydrocarbon liquid fuel. With the success or their test runs, they think they could have this type of fuel commercially available in less than ten years. Right now it's just jet fuel that they are creating, but with refining it could extend to other areas, and even just having a process to pull carbon out of our oceans to help sustain them is a great, great thing. If the entire U.S. military, as well as others once we share our research, begins to use this hydrocarbon fuel instead of current jet fuel produced from natural gas, that would mean a lot of carbon removed from the ocean. It would be a win/win for the oceans and for us.
