That's not speculation, though they never did complete delivery. Japan intended to drop a dirty bomb on San Francisco, but Germany surrendered while the material was in transit. Germany had the fissile material for a bomb but no heavy water. Norwegian resistance fighters destroyed their stockpile. If not for that, Europe may have been the site of the first use of a nuclear weapon. The Japanese were working on one too.
Interesting. Probably wildly inefficient given that you never get back what you put in. They don't say what it costs per gallon.
Gas out of thin air (and electricity)!
Reminds me of an episode of the IT Crowd where the CEO wistfully remarks that when he founded the company all he had was a dream...and six million Pounds.
I enjoy the idea that they claim civilian planes are dispersing chemtrails. No doubt the military (of various countries) have experimented with spraying a variety of things in the air. This is well documented. But as a secret program on civilian jets? Really? Have you seen the photo's of the "secret" equipment?
They must hide this stuff in first class, because I've flown quite a lot in cattle class and have never seen this stuff.
I wonder what the flight attendants think all this stuff is for?
Hoot, that's thin air, electricity, sodium hydroxide, water vapor, and multiple chemical processes. Including....
Using Calcium hydroxide to make calcium carbonate, then splitting the Carbon Dioxide off with electricity. ( IIRC a straight forward heating process... with electrical resistance heating? )
condensing the water vapor out of the air, and then splitting it for the Hydrogen. ( electrolysis )
THEN combining the hydrogen ( which is already fuel ) with the CO2 to make Methane....( insert chemical plant here ) ... To Methanol...( insert larger chemical plant here ) ...through the already existing process to make synfuel...
Yep. I'm too lazy to work out the numbers, but a WAG is between 200 and 4000 gallons of gas burned in a home generator to make one gallon of fuel.
Interestingly, the middle part, where you make the methane, is the process proposed for the Mars Direct Program.
The idea was to send cargo drones ahead of the humans, with supplies, a small nuclear reactor, a big tank of hydrogen, and a chemical plant. You'd send a few drones, they would land, and start sucking in the CO2 from Mar's atmosphere, combining it with the H2 brought there, and make Methane and O2.
AFTER you were sure you had multiple loads of fuel for the return trip waiting for you on Mars, you'd send the humans in a ship that didn't need to carry fuel and oxidizer for lift off, greatly increasing the useful payload, and making it practical, instead of darn iffy.
I suspect you'd use far less energy turning garbage into synfuel than the stunt of turning "air" into it.
It doesn't work but they got a guy that yells, so it sells!
This "Air to Fuel" process, is simply the "Hydrogen Economy" Plan with a new paint job and a guy that yells.
Ideally, you break sea water and burn the H2.
The methane/methanol/synfuel process is one alternative we've come up with to make car fuel without the problems of gaseous, or cryogenic storage. Also uses the existing infrastructure of gas stations and gas burning cars.
It requires, however, a way to make hydrogen. If the electricity was cheap enough, ( and a Nuclear plant could do that ) you could use electrolysis.
Maybe you can assemble genetically engineered algae that fart hydrogen? Or any number of ideas not yet practical.
The "from only Air and Electricity" bit is the guy that yells. That's the New Green Pitch.
Nifty Gimmick. Really.
So, yeah. It Works.
They just skip the hard part, and that's the actual power input to make it work.
( to break the chemical bonds to get the hydrogen... no matter the process )
A fellow at work is a conspiracy believer/buff, ( Nukes are installed in all skyscrapers... ( why, I dunno ) and THAT's what was used at the Twin Towers... We also disagree on JFK ) and he has lots of stuff on Vrill energy and the nazi Saucers.
This has zip relevance to the discussion, but it was kinda cool...
After further reflection, the Hydrogen Economy idea has a lot of merit.
Not the "air to fuel" gimmick, that's just a stunt.
But burning Hydrogen is clean, no CO2 ( not that I think that's important, but why not ) no hydrocarbons, and in a car only some oxides of nitrogen for the catalytic converter to deal with.
The problem is storage and carrying H2 around in a car. Hydrogen is a tiny molecule and diffuses through steel faster than you'd think. It's nice that it doesn't leave puddles around when ( not if ) it leaks, but it's also explosive over a wide range of concentration. But, what the heck, Acetylene is so scary that way if it wasn't a legacy fuel, it'd be illegal.
Cryogenic storage is even worse, since there are 2 versions of the molecule, ( ortho and para ) depending on spin, and one decomposes to the other spontaneously, releasing heat. Liquid H2 has also blown up several Bubble Chambers in University labs, and there's a reason it usually takes highly trained Astronauts to run Hydrogen Fuel cells running on cryogenic liquids...
The usual "solution" is a metal Hydride and I'm as fond of having a vat of that in my car as I am a liquid Sodium Battery.
Still.... great idea. Cheap electric power would make it practical.
Hydrogen has two main problems. Storage being one of them, and you have covered that.
The other is that it is nothing more than a way to store energy. In other words, it takes energy to create the hydrogen, and virtually any conversion has loses.
Could it be useful for certain things? Without a doubt. Developing an entire civilization around it is out of the question though.
I like nuclear power in concept, but it is still more expensive than hydrocarbon based power generation. It does look like the next best thing though.
IF your concern is oil imports and the wealth we give dictators and Kings, OR IF your concern is with the Global Warming Scam, ( as a true Believer, not a Denying Skeptic ) Or even if you are concerned with hydrocarbon pollution, from well to tailpipe.... then the Hydrogen Economy has real good points.
BUT you need power to make it all work.
( that is, unless there is a real breakthrough in water cracking catalysts. I know of no unclassified trends in that direction ) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/
If I "won the Lotto", I'd put money on Fusion, specifically the Bussard developments like Polywell. Dr. Bussard figured about $200 million to build a full scale test rig for Boron-Proton reactions, ( and if it fails to quite make it with B-P.... Deuterium would run fine for sure. Like building an engine strong enough to run diesel, but planning to run gasoline if you don't quite get the Compression high enough )
"We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However, we're not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide,"
That's my current understanding of the Climate. Maybe. It's full of Probably's and Perhaps's. ( a sign that its Science and not Politics. )
"We don’t know what halts Ice Ages; we do know that there was a great deal of ice and much lower seas during much of pre-history of mankind, and that the ice sheets have come and gone more than once.
We also know that it was warmer in the Viking age than it is now. We know that the seas have been rising at about a foot a century for at least 300 years, and we are fairly certain that this rate goes back a very long time (you can see the ruins of coastal cities in the Mediterranean, for example).
The problem with the cult of Global Warming is that we aren’t studying what is really happening." -Jerry Pournelle.
This months ( Jan/Feb '13 ) Analog magazine has a science fact article discussing the historical scientific feuds on the nature of the Solar System, from Sun Centered to the current theories. ( Current theories work well enough to get a probe out past Saturn. They are not yet good enough to get one to Alpha Centauri. )
And I see that the Penn State President that cleared Michael Mann of Hockey Stick fame ( global warming ) of fraud is in trouble for protecting a pedophile on the staff..... Something about decades of cover ups on the football team.... you might have heard about it?.....