U.S. Navy successfully used seawater as fuel
Whenever the subject of using water to power vehicles is sprung up, whether aerial or land vehicles, almost all the people of this funny little country Pakistan has united in an unprecedented way to mock the person who came up with the idea. Water powered vehicle is blasphemy in this country where ideas are worthless, but, the largest and most powerful Navy in the world is open to such an idea and after working years and years to reduce their dependent on oil and be able to put a pipe in the vast ocean wherever they are to create fuel is welcomed, and they have successfully flew a model airplane which had a 2-stroke engine powered by a fuel which was created using seawater.
The infamous Pakistani engineer who claimed to run the car on hydrogen by extracting it from water, is similar to what the US Navy is doing. Water is H2O, the U.S. Navy is basically extracting CO2 and Hydrogen from the sea water and then they recombine it to form hydrocarbon chains, and then use a metal catalyst to liquify it into synthetic fuel, whose different variations can be made including jet fuel and petroleum type fuels was something that the little model airplane flew on. While Jalopnik has an interesting piece on how the same fuel could run your normal gasoline car with minimal to no modification.
You can read U.S. Navy’s brief process of how they do it here.
Many people are arguing that the energy produced is far less than this sea-water-fuel will be able to produce, the energy that is powering the process has to come from somewhere but then even oil has to go through refineries, etc. However, such a process to use seawater as fuel is witnessing its birth and may advance to come into common usage because, US Navy loses a lot of time and money having to come to ports to refuel and this process may help reduce reliance on oil and nuclear fuels and utilize a resource which is abundant.
I am not a expert on this matter, but if you’re willing to shed light then do write to us at editorial@pakeventures.com