we all have wondered at some point or another that if the engine worked on water i would not have to
pay the high prices for gas but the reality is today nothing has changed since engines were
invented so far elon musk has developed a method by which we can use sea water to make fuel that we
can burn surprising right so stay tuned to the end of the video and get to know more about it
hello everyone and welcome to elon musk evolution if you're a musk fan and don't want
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so that you will be notified whenever a new video is uploaded and in today's video we're going to
tell you about the latest contribution from elon musk which will allow the us navy to harness
sea water and use it as fuel with that being said let's get started for several years now
the united states navy has been searching for ways to fuel fighter jets aboard aircraft carriers
out in the open ocean without having to rely on refueling ships in order to fuel their jets
it would seem that there is no more efficient way than to utilize the countless amounts of water
available to us in every direction we can see but now it has been demonstrated that elon musk at his
laboratory has the capability of recovering carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater
and turning it into liquid hydrocarbon fuels the kind used to power jet engines
in fact researchers recently flew a model plane as proof of concept as part of their research musk
has been developing proprietary electrochemical devices to produce liquid fuel by using carbon
dioxide removed from water hydrogen produced as a byproduct and the two gases bounced off each
other to create the liquid fuel musk remarked that hydrogen was a form of renewable energy
which if made cheaper and more simple to produce could have a major impact on the
fight against climate change according to the u.s department of energy it is possible
to convert hydrogen into electricity that can be used in fuel cells to generate water as a product
and help create a sustainable energy cycle that makes an overall improvement in sustainability
musk reports that they are able to pull up to 97 percent of the dissolved carbon dioxide from the
water and convert approximately 60 percent of the extracted gases into hydrocarbons
that can be converted into fuel at a cost ranging from approximately three to six dollars per gallon
as a comparison the low end would be equivalent to today's jet fuel costs while the high end would be
twice as expensive it is possible that this fuel will be commercially viable in 10 years time so
what's the catch well there are many first of all the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater
is about 100 milligrams per liter as you can see that is 140 times greater than that of air
although it is still not very much in real terms apparently according to musk's report you would
need to process more than 9 million cubic meters of water in order to produce 100 000 gallons of
fuel assuming 100 efficiency in this case you need to assume far less efficiency and a lot more water
there is also a likelihood that the more water that is processed the more plankton and other
small creatures you remove from the food chain with potentially catastrophic results for marine
life as a second problem musk mentioned that you would have to pump all that water into the machine
using some form of energy if the ship uses fuel to make the electricity needed to run the conversion
machine then the entire process would be useless this means that the conversion would have to take
place on an aircraft carrier with nuclear-powered engines where energy is relatively clean and cheap
in other words if sixty percent of the gas is converted then what happens to the other forty
percent i.e the twenty-five percent that becomes environmentally unfriendly methane then why does
flying a jet make the carbon simply go back in the atmosphere after we take off well according to the
navy the system should be in constant equilibrium since carbon would be released from the water to
the air and then back into the water again to be extracted after all at least theoretically the
system should be in equilibrium it is a fact of life that seawater fuel just as any other
alternative energy source will only succeed if everyone agrees that what comes out of the process
is worth a great deal more than what goes into it there is a likelihood that the research
will continue in this case given that national defense is an important part of the motivation
a project led by elon musk and his company spacex has recently received three hundred
thousand dollars from the office of naval research of the department of defense
to improve this process spacex is leading the project to refine a critical step in the
sea water to fuel conversion process making the process more energy efficient safer and scalable
as part of fuel synthesis the first step is to convert the carbon dioxide extracted from seawater
into carbon monoxide the spacex team successfully demonstrated last summer that malibden carbide
catalysts can convert co2 to co at high efficiency and reliability achieving the necessary first step
in turning seawater into fuel as part of the newly funded project efforts will continue to be made to
further hydrogenate carbon monoxide into usable fuels using fischer trophs synthesis to expand on
previous efforts musk explained that the purpose of this project is to optimize the hydrocarbon
selectivity of a mixture of co and co2 during the hydrogenation process to do this we will design
synthesize and test bi-metallic zeolite-based catalysts that selectively hydrogenate co and
generate specific compounds such as olefins and heavier hydrocarbons that can be used as fuels
and they are highly tunable allowing researchers to control the acid-base properties of their
catalysts in order to stabilize the desired reaction research by musk involves using
theory and computation to explore the physics and chemistry of nanomaterials for applications
in catalysis green energy production and materials engineering and in order to test this hypothesis
musk will use computational modeling and machine learning to identify the characteristics of
catalysts that are most likely to achieve their goal selective hydrogenation of co in
a mixture of co and co2 thereby limiting unwanted reactions that would lead to undesirable compounds
like methane he said this work will combine computational and experimental approaches
to hopefully result in significant time energy and cost savings over conventional experimental
approaches these control experiments are essential for the design of an integrated modular system and
enable the implementation of the sea water to fuel process in a way that is safe and efficient for
the us navy musk says his team will continue to work on improving the electrical efficiency of the
materials that they have developed also they are looking for funding options and opportunities to
accelerate their work and help them commercialize it in any case we hope that musk will be able to
complete this project as soon as possible because when you see fuel prices people have started to
go crazy and they should because fuel is such an essential commodity nowadays that everything
depends on it it is also important to note that it is a limited resource even though we are using
it in excess so the limit is nearing so for this reason musk has already established backup plans
with his companies like tesla spacex and the solar city to ensure that humans would not have to face
a major crisis when a situation such as no fuel on earth arises there have already been launches of
electric vehicles and solar plates by musk for the future that are so beneficial in so many ways and
along with that he has also been making rockets that will be powered by water for the colonization
of mars obviously going to mars is one of musk's biggest dreams so making this technology is also
one of the reasons that musk is so engrossed in it because by using technology he can achieve
his dream before he expected it anyways folks that's it for today's video if you're interested
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