RANDY

That’s a lot of Canola oil!

Yeah, screw every effort to get us away from dependency on fossil fuels, am I right?

They’re going to install more bathrooms on the planes and serve mexican bean salsa at boarding. That way the fuel can be made in flight.

Your claimed calculation is very vague, I have to say I don’t believe for a second you actually did that and it’s laughable you’re claiming you did

When someone tells me that they’ve noticed a fundamental flaw that all the leading minds in the field have not it does not lead me to think that the field itself is flawed rather the person I’m speaking to’s understanding of it.

Of course we understand that it’s not all going to come from one source but where there are waste products like stalks and leaves left over from food production, poo, algae, and etc it makes sense to work towards using all of those so we can transition away from the extracting oil and gas.

Fun thing about calculations is that if you write them down you can pull them out and show it to people who are skeptic about your claims, like I am being right now of your claims.

I mean I’m pretty sure a water treatment center can spare some shit for this test

I mean if you can get it from actually good sources (solar, geothermal) where that type of energy is in excess then use ships powered by it to transfer it around the world is that a huge problem?

Well, I’ve always wondered what would happen after humanity burns through all fossil fuels on the planet, if flight and space flight would be impossible. So at least it seems like it’s possible with renewable resources.

It’s comforting that future generations will still be able to reach for the stars in doo doo rockets.

The energy comes from excess generation in renewables for load balancing, that base load thing people mistakenly say they can’t do.

It’s clever and simple, you put a whole load of potential generation in knowing that to meet your essential and desired demand on low generation days you’ll need excess capacity which will over produce on high generation days. You then plug that in to a system which has tanks of feedstock in this case poo and empty storage capacity so that in peek generation periods it can run at maximum, when it’s only a little over the requested load it runs at limited power and if there’s a time with no excess power it turns off for a bit.

That’s why all the carbon capture and processing facilities are focusing on modular parallel design, it’s very easy then to create scalable production tied to excess load.

Of course this is only one of the many possibilities, the nuclear lovers want to build nuclear powered sequestration and processing facilities, Iceland made one using geothermal, the American one is wind and the proposed Saudi one trailer about being solar thermal.

Oh and actually the efficiency is incredibly impressive now, with some of the active catalyst chemistry they’re developing we’re getting into heat pump style efficiency gains and it’ll looking more likely we’ll be able to go below parity in cost per gallon Vs mined hydrocarbons.

I know it feels like people never explain the complex side of things but that’s because journalists are bad at their jobs, there’s whole organisations out there dedicated to this sort of planning and a lot of the stuff they talk about and work towards ia incredibly well thought out and sensible.

Together, the research team developed a process to convert human waste into a thick, black liquid that looks like crude oil and behaves like it. Using fractional distillation, the team can then derive the fuel of interest, much like oil refineries do.

Based on the (almost no) data available here, this does seem likely to be a lot of steps and a lot of energy required just to turn the poop into the substitute for crude oil, and then do all the standard further refining of that into jet fuel. I’d be very dubious about the actual real-world value until some magical further data is shared, because this innovation surely won’t help anyone if the fuel it makes is more expensive than regular jet fuel.

It’s fine. The chemtrails will sprinkle us all with antidepressants offsetting the general state of despair.

Read about thermal depolymerization. Not only will there be no medication, there won’t be anything more complicated than some moderately long carbon chain oils. That system can even break down the prions from mad cow disease, so it’s safer than most methods for getting rid of biological waste.

You’re not going to stop people living their lives, visiting friends, family, and having meaningful life experiences. If we can make flying more ecologically sustainable than rail and boats then it would be a hugely positive thing in the fight against climate change.

A lot of the time it’s just processed in open air tanks to break it down (amoung a lot of other steps before returning it to water ways or used as fertilizer/burnt).

You need a pretty low pop density to have septics work for most people.

When poo is returned to the earth, it’s digested by insects and microbes which use it for energy, and then emit CO2. Poo in the dirt puts carbon in the air the same as poo in a jet

Have you tried grinding it into a powder and mixing it with your coffee?

if I eat the fiber heavy in flight meal, will that be knocked up to 15%?

Range extender

Yes. But the waste is likely to still produce methane that has a bigger climate warming effect that the equivalent co2 of burned but for a shorter period. The general consensus suggests it’s better to burn methane than release it into the environment.

The better solution is to fly less, or wait till flying truly green. The big issue is the incredible amount of subsidy we allow for airlines. Tax or fuel for aircraft is very low. If we cut these subsidies and starting taxing aircraft fuel at similar rates to cars electric/hydrogen aircraft would come about much sooner.

According to an article I read, the total lifecycle greenhouse emissions is 10% of fossil jet fuel.

Here’s how it works: A farmer grows crops like, say, beans, which take energy from the sun and carbon from the air, and use it to make tasty sugars and proteins. You eat the beans, and your body absorbs the easy nutrients to get. But the stuff that’s hard to get out is left in the food mass and turned into poo. You go to the toilet and your waste is collected by the sewage system. Then this company takes your poo, and uses energy from the grid to subject it to a process that makes crude oil. Then they distill jet fuel from the crude.

All of the carbon that is in the jet fuel came from those beans you ate, which got it from the air. So the jet fuel isn’t adding any new carbon to the air. There are still emissions associated with putting energy into the poo to refine it into oil, though, because it’s using energy from the grid.

Trains aren’t the solution to every problem. They are slower than planes, don’t work on water, and need infrastructure (tracks). They are great where they do work, but where electric planes work, there’s no need to put them down.

Let’s replace all intercontinental flights with high speed rail and sleeper trains, and only use planes for long haul flights over water. For those planes that do stay in the sky, let’s fuel them with renewables. Poo based jet fuel does not add carbon to the environment.