The US Navy is big.
Like, really big.
It's got some 290 ships, thousands of aircraft and probably tens of thousands of small boats
and launches.
And apart from a few nuclear powered carriers and submarines, all need fuel - either from
a fleet of 15 so-called oilers or fuel ships, or from bases dotted around the world.
But the Navy has just announced a technology which is pretty much the holy grail for any
global taskforce.
It's managed to perfect the creation of fuel, which is something they need, from seawater.
Which is something they have no shortage of at all.
What's even better from a military perspective is that it doesn't require any modification
of the ships engines - you aren't getting a liquid hydrogen fuel out of the mix that
needs a fuel cell to operate, you're getting a highly efficient hydrocarbon based fuel,
like gasoline, that can power both ships and aircraft.
Although so far the only plane it's powered is this model one at the US Naval Research
Laboratory.
Small steps though eh?
Here's the science bit - saltwater is passed through an electrically charged cell, which
causes the seawater to swap hydrogen ions produced at the anode with sodium ions.
At the Cathode, the water is reduced to hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide.
The end result is CO2 gas and hydrogen, which are then passed through a heated chamber with
an iron catalyst in it, which causes them to combine into long chained hydrocarbons
- that is, fuel - and methane gas, which can be siphoned off and used elsewhere.
The fuel is then refined into jet fuel if needed in another nickel-based catalyst.
It's predicted to cost around $3-$6 a gallon to produce, that's about as much as fuel costs
at the pump in the US right now, and whilst installing distillation equipment on hundreds
of US ships might be expensive, the savings from not having to operate the oiler fleet
or get fuel to bases around the world, or from fluctuating prices, will likely run into
the billions every year.
So what's the downside?
Well it's not the most eco friendly solution.
Methane is a useful fuel but a potent greenhouse gas if it's not completely burnt, and even
if it is burnt, the whole lot will produce CO2 just like burning any other liquid or
gas fuel does.
But that's not a new problem, nor is saving the environment the navy's task.
They prefer to save people from it.
Or sometimes destroy it with bombs.
At any rate, there are an estimated 80-100,000 ships in the world, and over quarter of a
million planes.
So the Navy's emissions are a bit of a drop in the ocean, pardon the pun.
The military is already working with a number of partners on commercialising the tech, and
it's estimated it'll be finding it's way onto US warships within
a decade.