This one slipped under the radar, the US Navy’s been developing something called Project GENESIS (aka Sea Dragon) that can literally make jet fuel out of seawater. Not “planning to someday” they’ve already done lab tests and are building a ship system to run it full-scale by 2027.
The process pulls carbon and hydrogen straight out of seawater and turns it into jet fuel using a ton of electricity. A nuclear-powered carrier could, in theory, make all the fuel it needs from the ocean around it. No tankers, no convoys, no oil market drama. Just infinite range.
And weirdly, barely anyone’s talking about it. Which is odd, because that kind of tech changes everything militarily and economically.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? Every time the world edges closer to conflict, technology suddenly sprints forward. But during “peace”, it all slows to a crawl while they sell us the same old stuff and call it innovation. If this is viable now, it’s probably been viable for years. Just… waiting for the right war to make it worth rolling out.
Anyway, here’s a deeper dive into how it actually works, chemistry, patents, the whole thing, I found it fascinating: Full Read
Posted by leemond80
3 Comments
Wait until you find out that crude oil is abundant like water…
There isn’t any carbon in sea water AFAIK.
There are a couple of major problems with using sea water in an industrial process, the first is that you have to do something with the salts it generates.
The second problem is that sea water is corrosive, and when you heat it up, it gets more corrosive.
EDIT: Link talks about sea water having more CO2 in it than air by 140 times.
CO2 makes up about 5% of air, 20 times more than that is pure CO2.
Sure, if the jet runs off of hydrogen.