Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is unfortunately a necessity. Even if a feasible energy substitute was found for aviation today the fleet would take 30-40 years to change over. What we need is a drop in substitute until a solution is found.
Right now, there's SAF made mostly by fermentation of organic cellulosic waste (corn stalks, etc) as it's easier than making hydrogen, trapping CO2, then using more energy to combine them. The trouble is, of course, that there's nowhere near enough organic waste to make enough SAF. From a carbon budget perspective, it's far better to use carbon that's already in the carbon cycle than to add more carbon to the system from fossil fuels.
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Indeed.
Even if you take gasoline out of the energy mix entirely, there is just a huge amount of heat going into the production of other material goods like chemicals production and aviation fuel that will be required long into the future.
Carbon capture, sequestration and reformulation should become big business, and will be a massive new energy load on the system.
SAF and other synthesized products seem like the only way anyone will be able to figure out how to make carbon capture a revenue creating activity. As it stands right now, penalty avoidance has not been sufficient to change behaviours.
Here's a cool paper that breaks it down, albeit from a "nuclear can supply the heat" perspective. Focus is meant to be placed on the overall market opportunities and the relevant temperatures of the thermal demands by end use. Electrification, renewables, using less don't offer credible substitutions for these things and fossil fuels are losing their ability to sustain these activities as well.
https://www.radiantval.com/nuclear-heat-power