AVGAS and Jet A economically "piggy back" on MOGAS and #2 fuel oil. If you had to drill/explore/refine crude just to make Jet A and AVGAS, the per gallon cost would be nuts.

If policy forces all electric cars and heavy duty trucks, that is the place we will be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

We've known for 80 years how to make hydrocarbons from air, water and electricity. The Germans developed and used this tech in WWII after their oil supply was impaired. They were doing coal -> oil synthesis, but with different catalysts, it works fine from CO2 -> oil.

I suspect that eventually, we'll just stop pumping fossil hydrocarbons and aviation will go synthetic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

We've known for 80 years how to make hydrocarbons from air, water and electricity. The Germans developed and used this tech in WWII after their oil supply was impaired. They were doing coal -> oil synthesis, but with different catalysts, it works fine from CO2 -> oil.

I suspect that eventually, we'll just stop pumping fossil hydrocarbons and aviation will go synthetic.

http://www.tae.com

-J

Honestly, as a long time tech person, this bit doesn't surprise me in the least. Look at the ship/break/fix/deprecate lifecycle of most software/hardware products. Microsoft are better than many but they're still on a constant cycle of shipping heavier software when a newer Intel CPU shows up. The idea of building something that needs to be serviceable 25+ years from now is wildly different.

Agree that Garmin would have been a better bet, although even they tend to end support for expensive products that sit in a lot of panels. (GNS 480 owners might agree with this.)

Somewhat amusingly, even NASA weren't immune. The ended up on eBay 20 years ago trying to find enough 8086 CPUs to keep the shuttle flying. (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/us/f ... -ebay.html)

Since these processes can use intermittent power, you can use solar, wind, tidal, hydro sources. You can even use the waste control margin power that plants dump into cooling towers or ponds.

There is plenty of ways to generate electricity, just not many good ways to do it on demand. Any process which can adjust to supply will work well. Car charging, hydrogen generation, and this process to make jet fuel could be those types of loads.

Mike C.

Hi MartIn,

There's definitely lots of deprecating going on here, and perhaps that is part of the cycle. But I suspect you meant depreciate... or, maybe not?


Paul

Hi MartIn,

There's definitely lots of deprecating going on here, and perhaps that is part of the cycle. But I suspect you meant depreciate... or, maybe not?


Paul

Stephan,

I think there's a logical fallacy there that they way refineries operate today is the way they'll operate in the future. We are already seeing that shifting, with the Phillips San Francisco Refinery, for example, no longer feeding crude oil, but instead biomass to make conventional but carbon (more) neutral product.

Mogas won't go away for another 50 years, though it will decline. There's enough jet and mogas demand to couple with the shift in feedstocks to keep the avgas coffers full... even if avgas goes from 0.15% of total gasoline to 10% in a distant future.

The crude demand will decline as well... in the end, it will all work out. If it hasn't worked out, it's not the end!

Paul