Beyond Fossil Fuel?

[Grimweasel]

I read from a recent OPEC report that fossil fuel supplies until 2030 will be 'adequete'!
Since for example the USAF intends to keep the B52 bomber fleet until 2048 what thought has gone into aircraft engine technology beyond the use of fossil fuel.
As fuel supplies run dry then prices will rocket. The days of the jet engine will become numbered. Since we only have 30-50 years should we not look at new ways to propel aircraft in flight?

[16 blades]

Grim,

I wouldn't worry too much about this - that figure refers to 'proven' reserves, and for about the last 50 years, proven reserves have remained largely constant, ie they have ALWAYS been saying we only have 25yrs of fuel left. I suspect this is a 2-proged attack from OPEC - their appeasement to the whale-kissing lobby, AND an attempt to stabilise prices at their current, higher-than-ever levels. Although largely due to geopolitical circumstances, OPEC have been doing quite nicely thank you out of it, and are simply trying to stop prices sliding back to their histroical norms of $25-30 a barrel.

The difference here is between 'proven' reserves and 'known' reserves, in areas where oil is known to exist but drilling / exploration hasn't yet exploited it. The Alaskan peninnsular is 'known' to contain vast reserves, as are certain off-shore areas of the US, but they haven't yet been declared 'proven' or exploited, largeley as a sop to the afforementioned whale-kissers.

As for alternative power units for aircraft - well, where can we go? The only other viable means of power is nuclear-generated electricity, the equipment for which is far too heavy for aviation applications, as are fuel cells (which require vast amounts of electricity in the first place to hydrolyse water to harvest hydrogen fuel). Any suggestions? I'm sure fellow ppruners can dream up some novel solutions!

[Ginger Beer]

Hydrogen my dear boy,

The by product of hydrogen as a fuel is water and oxygen. Fuel cells are already being developed for cars/buses etc and they work using reverse electrolysis.

The only caveat is - the method of producing the hydrogen should be via sustainable means i.e. hydro (dams) etc. If the world starts producing hydrogen by normal means, we won't see a carbon dioxide emissions benefit.

Being as aviation is one of the greatest polluters, there are already some advances in the designing of hydrogen fuelled air vehicles. One of the main drawbacks so far is the safe storage of the fuel. If we safely stored the hydrogen fuel for an aircraft, it would, at the time of writing anyway, be far too heavy to be viable.

As you say, there are about 30 to 50 years of fossil fuels available however, as it becomes more scarse and therefore more expensive, it then becomes much more economically viable to scavenge the hard to get resources that we are currently leaving in the ground.

Therefore, there is probably going to be plenty of fossil fuels for the medium term, I just hope that we have the foresight to actively seek the hydrogen alternative quickly. It would take decades to realise the hydrogen dream, even if we ploughed limitless resources into the quest.

The benfit of benefits is - we would no longer need to poke our big noses into the middle east. We would be self sustaining in our enegy production, what a different view we would have of the world then?

Ginge.

[mbga9pgf]

Fusion power. New scientist last week put a 40 year date in the future for when fusion should be a reality (after all, we do know fusion is not just theory, its one of those technical/material limited problems).

With the promise of literally unlimited supplies of energy, with the only by-product being very limited low level radioactive waste, and the chief fuel lithium (enough in 1 rechargable battery to supply an americans energy demands for their whole life), the only problem currently is nations are unwilling to stump up the cash for the research. But as soon as national economies and strategy are threatened by fuel shortages, I am sure this source of energy will recieve the cash it requires. The curently envisaged research fund will require 10 Bn per nation involved in the project (6 currently) to get the prototype reactor going.

Once we have the energy, either efficient fuel cells (hydrogen fuel, storage however is an issue, the density of hydrogen being a hundredth of avtur) or synthetic ethanol (little modification required for curent engines) are viable future aviation fuels. Not that I am fussed about the fuel issues, its aircraft automation I worry about!

[propulike]

Very difficult to replace the current fuels - a high yield energy source which is fairly safe to transport. Alternatives do focus towards other liquids, such as the already mentioned ethanol or a cellulose based fuel. Problem is that all current viable alternatives need fairly exotic additives to enhance the burn properties, the by-products of which have unknown consequences on the upper atmosphere. (Kind of like the additives in F-34 / F-35.)

[I_stood_in_the_door]

Grim,

Get to Icey!!

ISITD

:8

[Navaleye]

I saw a film where our secret agent (Charles Vine) was trying to stop Britain's first nuclear powered Dakota from being stolen. Perhaps this is the way ahead? :zzz:

[Dop]

Really, really, BIG rubber bands.

[BEagle]

Memo to self:

1. Invent new non-fossil fuel.

2. Invite the mediaeval folk existing in hot sandy places to find a new use for black smelly liquid.

3. Then realise there's no-one left to have a war with - so why do we need anything mechanical using non-fossil fuel for our Armed Forces? Sharpened guava halves will do - and big sticks with pointy ends.

4. Find out where the best guavas come from and make them an offer.....

[PPRuNeUser0211]

perhaps a new backseat role: the treadmill hamster.. given the new generic backseat brevet we should all be able to cope, and no one will notice the difference!

[STANDTO]

Muppets!

Crystollic fusion is the way forward.:ok:

[Green Meat]

a) Methane. Good, stodgy, starchy food for aircrew with a little modification from Martin Baker to the mobile armchairs and hey presto! Need more juice in ACM? No probs, just let one go!

b) Hoon speeches compressed to the nth degree, then released through a small nozzle. The hot air alone should produce enough to put Rutan's frugal beast to shame!

[tony draper]

Seems that Fusion power will always be fifty years in the future, I can remember ZETA in the 1950's, twas said it was going to make power so cheap it wasn't going to be worth sending out electricity bills.oh yeh!
Didn't the cousins fly a aircraft with a reactor aboard? I think the weight of the foot thick lead cockpit wall restricted time in the air though .
:uhoh:

[Ripline]

Ooh! Ooh! I actually WORKED on ZETA!

(Sorry, just couldn't resist - one does not often get one over on Mr. Draper....)

But he's correct. "Sun in a Bottle", that was the headline at the time (1962?). It's always been 25 years in the future. The irritating thing is that it actually does work, it's just the problem of getting the scale, controllability and continuity of the process right. I don't see it happening until the oil actually shows signs of running out.

Ripline

[tony draper]

I think Zeta was a tad earlier than that Mr Ripline mid fities,one was but a snot nose in short kecks at the time, by the sixties one was a man of the world.
They thought they had cracked fusion, just a few years after they fired up Calder hall ( I can remember that as well).
Personelly I think if they been pottering about for fifty years and still not got it sussed, tiz unsussable.
I do think we should start building new nuke power stations as a matter of urgency though, it cannot be beyond our ken to build a safe Nuclear power station surerly, them buggas sandside is shure to cut off the oil again shortly.

[BEagle]

Calder Hall was principally a source of weapons grade fissile material. The fact that it manged to keep a few light bulbs illuminated was a convenient spin-off!

Plutonium for the nuclear weapons programme was produced at Windscale until 1957 and reprocessed on site before being shipped to Aldermaston. Plutonium production at Calder Hall (on the Sellafield site) for the nuclear weapons programme began in 1956, and at Chapelcross in 1958, with reprocessing at Sellafield by the same facility used to reprocess spent fuel from the civil programme, before being shipped to Aldermaston. Both Calder Hall and Chapelcross were used to produce electricity for the national grid in addition to supplying material for the defence nuclear programme. (from www.mod.uk/publications/nuclear_weapons/accounting.htm - yes, really! Honest!!)

[16 blades]

I have to agree with drapes on this - we need to start setting up more nuclear plants, as it's the only viable option. So-called 'renewable' sources simply don't have the clout, and will cause more environmental damage than fossil fuels (if fossil fuels are, in fact, causing ANY damage at all).

I suspect the powers that be have been holding back fusion development deliberately, to keep us dependent on middle east oil, as it seems to serve their purposes. So do the (purely political) objections to nuclear power.

16B

[tony draper]

Don't think its a case of holding back for some strategic reason, most developed countries have been pouring money into fusion research for half a century ,perhaps it is just undoable, every added milisecond of fusion temperature sustained and contained is reported in the scientific journals add nauseum.
I do think national energy production should be taken back under government control though, so should a few other strategic industries for that matter.
I believe one of the darlings of the green movement came out and said openly recently that we should start building fission plants toot suit as they say across the water,
Loads of dosh been spent building these gas turbine generating plants and they will have a very short lifetime, tiz either Nuke or open up the coal mines again and figuring out way of burning it clean, after all we are sitting on billions of tons of the stuff

[Stuff]

If you look here (http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/FP/projects/nucwcost/anp.htm) you'll see that our cousins across the pond have indeed flown a working nuclear reactor (although not actually powering the aircraft). If you read the article you'll note the incredible amount of radiation it produced that wasn't shielded. Perhaps now is the time to restart the research, the large number of aircrew stuck in the system could be used on a sort of disposable basis to test out the reactors.

Hey presto 2 problems solved in 1. Now... where did I leave that GEMS form?

[GeeRam]

Sadly chaps, building any new nuclear power stations even if they were given the green light by the tree hugging brigade, would now be 2-3 times the cost of the last one built (Sizewell B), because we would have to 'buy-in' the expertise to design and build...USA, France etc. In fact, that did happen somewhat with Sizewell B.

This is because 90% of the UK nuclear design and build experts has either retired or are dead now, or like me, moved into other fields, because of succesive Govts. sitting on the fence over Nuclear Power. The Institution of Civil Engineers, and the Institution of mechanical Engineers has been warning of this for years.

And even if a commitment was to be given tomorrow, the public enquiry fiasco would take the best part of 5 years probably, and then it would be at least another 10 years or maybe more after that, before the first of the new stations would be on-line.

[16 blades]

Drapes,

"I suspect the powers that be have been holding back fusion development deliberately"

I wasn't referring to the Govt, or any Govt for that matter, but the people who actually run the world. (and no, not the petrochemical industry). But that's another story altogether.

It may cost us now to kick-start a reactor-building programme again, but we'll save in the long run, as crude becomes (allegedly) more scarce and therefore expensive. Also, we'll have less need to get involved in middle eastern affairs, which can only be a bonus!

The real question (with reference to the thread title here) is whether any of the above can translate into a viable power plant for aircraft. I don't think electric motors will do it (big, heavy, expensive, massive power requirements which mean big, heavy, expensive batteries or generators or whatever). So we're looking at perhaps a Hydrogen-fuelled engine, which likely only produces enough welly burning it directly in a rocket motor. Not very practical for CivAir purposes, but I could envisage an aircraft that takes off and climbs rapidly to sub-orbital levels and glides to destination.

...or is that a space shuttle.......???

16B

[MadsDad]

16 Blades,

I agree with you we need to start building fusion reactors again (although based on the British designs not the U.S. ones - according to friends who work in the industry the AGRs are a lot safer than PWRs). However

So-called 'renewable' sources simply don't have the clout

The schemes currently being implemented don't but the scheme put forward for a tidal barrage power-generation scheme for the Severn estuary was estimated as being capable of priding 20% of the UK electricity requirements - that is quite a lot of 'clout'. And renews itself four times a day (twice in, twice out).

[tony draper]

Didn't the chaps sausageside mannage to keep a airforce in the air on fuel brewed from turnip tops and acorns for a few years?
That is something we should have seriously looked into when the oil tap was shut in the seventies, anybody remember that farce? and what did we do? we handed the negatives right back to the blackmailer, we never learn.
:(

[Grimweasel]

I did see something on Sky last year where a pulse laser was used to propel a small vessel into the air. Not much use for every day flight but useful for going up and into orbit.

Perhaps we will only use oils for a booster to get an aircraft up to Scramjet speed then inject some organic fuel such as turnip juice etc?
Reactors will no doubt have massive flight safety issues attached and all the pinko green types would be up in arms near local airports!!

I do think the time for research is now though, and if found we should switch as aircraft are often overlooked as massive CO2 etc polluters

[16 blades]

I think the CO2 emissions thing is always overstated. Burning fossil fuels simply adds to a cycle that already exists, and 95% of CO2 emissions are natural. I don't believe that a mere 5% can cause huge detriment, especially since more CO2 = more plants=more photosynthesis=CO2 levels back to 'normal' - Nature will maintain a balance no matter what we do, unless we pork it royally.

'Renewable' sources all leach energy directly from the atmosphere / sea / rivers / sun, and as such could have dire, direct and rapid consequences if used on the scale required to meet current energy needs.

'Bio' fuels are difficult to produce in large enough quantities, and burn less efficiently, making them MORE polluting. The only advantage to them is we wouldn't need to give a sh1t about the middle east anymore (not a bad thing), but any environmental argument in their favour is flawed. The 'pro' arguments are all political, IMHO.

16B

[ShyTorque]

All we need to do is harness the hot air emitted on this website. Keep us going for years.

[propulike]

6B,

Pumping oil out of the ground and burning it means the carbon stored in it is released. More CO2 = more plants is where the removal of said carbon back into a 'store' isn't happening; rainforest removal, deserts expanding, that sort of thing. Nature will make a balance, and revert to the kind of atmosphere the Earth had last time that amount of carbon was around.

Using renewable sources for current energy demands will affect local surroundings but won't have a global impact eg the Severn estuary tidal power scheme (one of only 7 identified locations globally which is suitable for such a method of power generation as it happens) will remove power from the water flow. This will affect the local area with altered tidal flow patterns but as the source of tidal power is the moon's orbit slowly decaying, something it will do anyway, using the power to produce electricity won't have global consequences.

Wind power, wave power, hydro-electric all have similar arguments, the only suspect production method is geothermal which has been accused of causing earthquakes in otherwise stable areas - such as Devon!

[mbga9pgf]

propulike, correct about severn bar one point... the increase in sea friction causes the earth to slow down, in fact the moons orbit increases diameter (odd i know!). the long term effect of sea friction is that over the last 1 bn years, a day is around 10 hours longer. The same effect is visible from looking at the moon; the moon has completely stopped! hence why the moon does not rotate.

[tony draper]

Err, one begs to differ Mr mbga, yonder moon does indeed rotate, it has a captive rotation, if it did not rotate we would see all sides from the surface of the earth,to see the rotation you would have to some distance away from the earth, many a pint can be won with this simple demonstration of the moons rotation, stand in the middle of the room and have yer observer watch from one side,then nominate someone to act as the moon,have them walk round you keeping their front toward you at all time, perhaps sidle round you would be the correct term, you will alwas see their face, the outside observer will see all sides of em, ergo yon moon does indeed rotate it trotates once in every complete orbit of the Earth.
:rolleyes:

[plebby 1st tourist]

Back to aircraft, the hot subject in car propulsion is fuel cells, with all the big companies pouring zillions into research.

These run on hydrogen, either directly or, as at the moment, by obtaining it from methanol. It's not just for cars either, you can make huge ones for power stations.

Sooo.. I think propellers will be making a comeback, attached to fuel cells. Commercially it makes sense, as I believe :confused: that a prop can go very nearly as fast as a modern airliner, so flight times and the like wouldn't be drastically affected.

The storage of the hydrogen is a prob as nobody wants to do a Hindenburg, but when I was at uni there was lots of research going on into this too, with cunning ways of trapping it in metal matrices and the like.:8

Or the aeroplane might have been rendered obsolete by teleportation:cool:

[ScienceDoc]

Pardon me,

but using hydrogen to power gas turbines is no problem at all.

Once upon a time there was even a Tupolev flying around with it. The hydrogen was stored on top of the fuselage. Airbus also considered building a similar demonstrator. It would be pretty stupid to use it in fuel cells instead of burning it.

The only problem with hydrogen is: How do you store it best?

If you want to create some on your own:

H2-Lab (http://www.h2-lab.com)

;-)

[WE Branch Fanatic]

Why not do some clever chemistry and combine it with something, to produce a more usable liquid?

[16 blades]

What, like WATER?

:-D

16B

[tony draper]

How about Conc Hydrogen Peroxide and Potasium Permanganate?, and its been done before, mind you, after some experiments with same in ones yoof, one would not like to sit next to a couple of tankfulls of that stuff.
:uhoh:
The eyebrows eventually grew back.

[adr]

There's a great story in Skunk Works, Ben Rich's fascinating account of his time at Lockheed's black projects division, of the occasion they had a fire in the hydrogen farm they were running. Inside a hangar on Burbank airport. In secret.

The fire went beyond Lockheed's internal firefighting capabilities, but the security status of the project meant they couldn't admit the fire service.

Until one of them hit on a cunning wheeze. All the H2 tanks were vented. The hangar was filled with a fog of hydrogen vapour. And the firefighters were admitted, wearing breathing apparatus, not knowing they were wading through hydrogen to reach the fire, and unable to see anything that might give a clue about Lockheed's project.

adr

[tony draper]

Read something else about the Skunk Works,the chap who filled and seviced the coffee machines did not have a security clearance, but the coffee machines were vita equipmentl, so the engineers manufaured a hard hat with a flashing blue light on top, this he had to wear when on site so everybody would stop yacking of things black when they saw a flashing blue light appear.

[BEagle]

Secret squirrel Spam place of my acquaintance used to have flashing red lights on in the corridors when allies with 'unescorted visitor status' were present.

'Goons in the block' light we called it!

[Biggus]

I must admit to not having read every reply on this thread in detail, but it would appear that nobody has mentioned the obvious solution - DILITHIUM CRYSTALS!!


P.S Sorry if the spelling is incorrect, but I am not actually a Star Trek geek!!

[BEagle]

Yes, but they're always down to Bingo 2 (Dilithium crystals) - I blame the Air Engineer's crap CRM for merely muttering "Cap'n, she canna' take it...." whilst James T gives it some at Warp Lots, instead of playing a more positive part in the team... As a result, they always have to divert to some obscure planet teeming with nasty Things - which is invariably bad news if you're a black mate in a red shirt! Always the first to go when whichever Thing living on said planet decides to get tetchy...

An Improbabilty Drive might be a Nice to Have option?

[tony draper]

Always thought it was daft that any engine trouble on a Starship and they eject the Warp Core, that would not have done at sea.
"Fire in the engine room Captin!!!?
"Quick!! throw the Boilers over the side chief"
:rolleyes:

[16 blades]

Ahh, but when boilers go up they don't take half the planet with them in a thousand-gigaton matter-antimatter annihilation!