Originally Posted by
nomorecatering
A very interesting video. I have no doubt that the future for aircraft is biofuel, not electric. However, apart from the obvious question of cost there is the problem that jet fuel is much harder to synthesise than motor fuel being a blend of many types of hydrocarbons. It ought, however be possible to synthesise each of these and then blend them. How long will it take to do this at a large scale and more important take to do it at an acceptable cost? I suspect decades. If, however, it were given the urgency of the moon programe in the 70s, well within the next decade?
I did a doodle and calculated that at a 6% conversion rate the sunlight hitting 1 sq km of land could produce around 7,000 tonnes of biomass per year. Obviously some would be lost in conversion but if we could end up with 5,000 tones / km^2 / year we could solve both our energy and greenhouse gas problems. Algae farms in the sea or in the Arabian desert?