You know I think I just saw that on the BBC World News too!! ;)

I'm sure they can borrow the Navy's new railgun and take it out without much trouble.

I saw an article on this as well, maybe it was Discovery TV. What I saw said that the Navy hoped to reduce its oil consumtpion by 1/2 by 2015. Anyway, here are more links:

CNN - http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/10/tech/innovation/navy-new-technology/index.html

Huffington Puffington Post - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/seawater-to-fuel-navy-vessels-_n_5113822.html

Spot on. The new tech here seems to be a process to generate C9-12 hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide and hydrogen with minimal production of unwanted shorter hydrocarbons. Generation of carbon dioxide from water containing carbonate and bicarbonate is absolutely trivial (just acidify), and the generation of hydrogen from water is equally trivial (electrolysis), it's just making hydrocarbons out of those components without turning most of it into methane that was the challenge.

However, it's important to keep in mind that this is not a process for energy generation, it's just a process for converting energy to one form (electrical) to another (chemical). It basically just allows ships with nuclear reactors to convert the electricity they're generating into jet fuel with an equivalent amount of potential energy (minus whatever is lost to inefficiencies in the process). It's potentially useful in the sense that it would no longer be necessary to haul around as much jet fuel if you can generate it on-board, but outside of situations where there are such logistical concerns it would ultimately just be a waste of energy.

Also, the original article was horrendously written, and the conclusions it draws are completely removed from the reality of the work that's been done.

I have a question:

Would it be a good Idea to either retrofit existing offshore oil rigs or design new ones with this seawater2fuel tech in mind?

I can see that would allow us to transition from "drilled" oil to this new fuel

Technically, the claim there would be that you turn an energy surplus on it, so, yeah.

I didn't bother to read the article, but if it's using a "cation exchange" that sounds like a hydrogen fuel cell. Except that rather than needing to generate a supply of protons to run through the cells, apparently there's some hokum that causes the protons to be spontaneously generated with enough frequency to power a ship.

Now, free protons do exist in water, however, not in anywhere near enough concentration to power anything of note.

The cation exchange resin sounds like it's just being used to protonate the carbonate/bicarbonate ions in the water to liberate carbon dioxide, which is then used as one of the components for generating the longer chain hydrocarbons (jet fuel). This is not a new process, and is basically just a safer and more controlled way of dumping acid into the solution. The carbon dioxide is then reacted with hydrogen to generate the jet fuel (this is what the actual new tech is). Keep in mind that this isn't generating energy- it's using energy (electricity) that the ship is producing with its nuclear reactor to generate the fuel. Overall it's a net loss of energy, due to inefficiencies in the process (and even if all inefficiencies could be eliminated it would only be energy neutral).

Nonssssence, there are no ssssuch thingsss assss reptilianssss :)

I know you are lying. How do I know? Because you are a Giant Zombie Cat. :P

Oil is such an insidious cancer on countries, you might think "lol wut" when I say that but just think about it, countries with the most oil are all dictatorships with poverty, wealth concentrated in the hands of an elite, and corruption levels high. The oil gives them great wealth, but it distorts their economy greatly, because the branches of industry associated with oil are so profitable, the vast majority of investment goes into them, leaving the country with a really unbalanced economy which is very development in some areas but utterly primitive in all others. I remember reading that Venezuela regularly has power blackouts, that's right a country with the largest oil deposits outside Saudi Arabia somehow can't even keep the lights on. Western countries in general have highest standards of living and development because investment throughout different branches of industry is more balanced. If you took away the oil the Middle-Eastern economy would be smaller than the entire economy of California, that's how distorted that shit is.

Even Australia has started to show signs of this economic distortion, but due to natural mineral exports not oil.

You have just described....Norway?

Actually i think what you describe has more to with how much the country actually controls the oil reserves by itself, how (un-)corrupted the country is and how independently foreign oil companies can operate.

So what? ;)

You may be a giant reptile zombie cat but you answer to him... Your Master!

linky
Try this. Other links included in the article are worth clicking, too - especially the official DoD press release, near the end.