Nuclear synthi-jetfuel plants wanted for US Afghan bases In a potentially controversial move, US military tech chiefs have decided to investigate the idea of using mobile nuclear reactors to provide power and synthetic jet fuel at forward bases overseas. In a request for information issued yesterday, Pentagon scientists say they would like to hear proposals for "deployable nuclear …
Pas air through potassium hydroxide and the CO2 reacts to form something whose name escapes me but turned the flask milky white in the school chemistry experiment. Add hydrogen (produced by cracking water with lekky from the reactor) and you reform the potassium hydroxide and produce methanol.
Distill out the methanol and you have a liquid that can be used in spark ignition engines with almost no modifications - make sure the seals are suitable, and ECU software is flex fuel so it can handle any mix of petrol, ethanol, and methanol.
Methanol can be used as a feedstock to produce heavier things - like petrol, diesel, and plastics.
Bury plastics when whatever you make with it is end of life, and you have a carbon negative cycle !
it seems to me
1 the methane rather than simply being burnt could drive a turbine to produce more electricity to power the conversion - thus lessening the load generally
2 as an alternative, I've seen propane fridges, I dare say a methane 'fridge' would be simple to build, thus could assist in the cooling
3 it looks as though darpa's brief was specifically to improve generation of J-8 jetfuel - possibly mainly algal generation see for instance http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=346 , http://www.darpa.mil/sto/solicitations/BioFuels/ hence the focus that apparently overlooks some parallel technologies - that may be less cost-effective in fact;
so, in summary, let's look forward to less global warming hype, less pointless conflicts in ungrateful regions, relatively lower fuel prices :-)
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