This could be really big, the US Navy has devised a way to refine seawater into a usable fuel.
According to the Daily Mail, the Navy's process extracts carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater like this:
As seawater passes through a specially built cell, it is subjected to a small electric current. This causes the seawater to exchange hydrogen ions produced at the anode with sodium ions. As a result, the seawater is acidified.
Meanwhile, at the cathode, the water is reduced to hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide is formed. The end product is hydrogen and carbon dioxide gas, and the sodium hydroxide is added to the leftover seawater to neutralize its acidity.
In the next step, the hydrogen and carbon dioxide are passed into a heated reaction chamber with an iron catalyst. The gases combine and form long-chained unsaturated hydrocarbons with methane as a by-product.
The unsaturated hydrocarbons are then made to form longer hydrocarbon molecules containing six to nine carbon atoms. Using a nickel-supported catalyst, these are then converted into jet fuel.
I'm no chemist, and this process seems complicated and expensive, but those who are estimate that this fuel can be produced at a cost of $3 to $6 a gallon.
Quotes from real people working on this, below.
Vice Admiral Philip Cullom:
It's a huge milestone for us.
We are in very challenging times where we really do have to think in pretty innovative ways to look at how we create energy, how we value energy and how we consume it.
We need to challenge the results of the assumptions that are the result of the last six decades of constant access to cheap, unlimited amounts of fuel. Basically, we've treated energy like air, something that's always there and that we don't worry about too much.
But the reality is that we do have to worry about it.
Dr. Heather Willauer, a Navy research chemist who's been working on this for years:
For the first time we've been able to develop a technology to get CO2 and hydrogen from seawater simultaneously, that's a big breakthrough.
We've demonstrated the feasibility, we want to improve the process efficiency.
The feasibility was demonstrated recently by flying a radio-controlled airplane powered by this fuel, a baby step compared to powering a car or a ship, but breakthroughs always start small.
The Navy wants to do this at sea, but it would surely be more efficient at large refineries on land, which could also provide substantial fuel for nonmilitary purposes.
It's early yet for fuel from seawater, but if it can work at a large scale, not just for ships at sea, it will be a major energy game-changer.