Former US Navy fuel systems engineer here. Well done, this is a fairly comprehensive look at jet fuel production, constraints, and alternatives. I would like to add that the Navy did evaluate a 100% biofuel version of JP-5 back in 2016. Performance-wise it was nearly identical to traditional JP-5, but as you observed, the problem with all biofuels is the cost of production. Edit based on some of the responses: The Navy's main motivation for investigating biofuels is more to do with diversity of fuel sources (i.e. less dependence on the Middle East) than it is to do with saving the planet. That would be a nice side-benefit, though.
I definitely care more about the planet than going on holiday so I am probably bias, but I think that a higher cost is worth it. There are other problems of course but I don't think cost should be the thing that stops us using it.
@@AndenMowe-hh5qk Take a train. Its not that you can't travel around the world. I can walk 10 minutes to the train station and be in Paris today. Then all of Europe opens up. Also most people are not traveling around the world to learn everyone different culture and ways of thinking, that's just bullshit. People are going to sit at a resort at the beach and drink (usually on the same continent that they are already on).
On the freezing point of jet fuel: It's really cold at cruising altitude everywhere in the world. What matters more is the duration of the flight. The fuel takes some time to cool, simply because there is so much of it compared to the fuel tank surface area. Long flights require more careful management of fuel temperature.
@@Yonatan24 I think it shouldn’t be a problem to redirect some of the turbines’ heat back to the fuel tanks, whether with oil or other means. I believe that even a primitive electric heating system could solve the issue.
@@andreirachko thats basically already being done. Although heating the fuel tanks is the least priority of that system. The primary uses (AFAIK) is to heat the leading edges of the wing and the ailerons and other aerodynamical devices to prevent ice growth, and then it also heats up the cabin, and then parts of the fuel system if at all
14:40 Something went wrong here, the chart is showing cold hydrogen having a much _lower_ density than room-temperature hydrogen, which is obvious nonsense. Are the labels accidently swapped?
I remember noticing that, too. I commented this: "14:40 I think this graph is wrong. Why is hydrogen less dense when it's colder? Is the 19°C one actually Kerosene? I really doubt it if the number you gave immediately afterwards was right."
Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever see excess energy 'flood the market'. Every time we figure out how to produce more power, esp if it brings the price down, demand goes up. Multiple times over the last hundred years or so people proclaimed that soon power would be too cheap to meter and the market always re-scales to make it expensive again.
The thing about E-fuels as well is that it apparently works with existing ICEs in cars as well, there have been some tests here in Europe. It could be mixed with normal gasoline in that case as well, so I hope it will catch on in which case there might be more of a chance of it becoming cheaper (?)
E-Fuels only make sense if there is an abundance of electricity available, that is cheap and not harmful to the environment. Renewables are often limited by the grid they operate on and fission nuclear plants are mostly used for base loads (and you are also dependant on imports of fissile materials depending on where you live). It is gonna be tough to justify their use.
E-fuels will be powering the next gen Formula 1 cars in 2026, so that should also allow car manufacturers to start experimenting with them soon. Porsche is currently making E-fuels in Chile using the abundance of wind power on the Chilean coast. As mentioned in the video though, scaling this for air travel will need way more excess renewable fuel than we currently have. It's going to take some time until it's feasible.
The swedes were at it for years. Their e85 and m85 fuel, containing 85% metanol or etanol 'suffers' from extra horsepower, not really needed in turboSAABS and Volvo's, due to higher octane content......
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 A mechanical engineering degree goes a LONG way toward making you marketable in ANY industry. Tack on a 2 year master's in aeronautical engineering and you'll have companies beating down your door to hire you.
@@kpp28 I don't see a downside. I get all my education from TH-cam. Thinking of furthering my education. I think that means I need to subscribe to Curiosity Stream and Nebula. :-)
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 Both. I was educated in the 1970's (UK) and did a "sandwich degree" which combined a degree with an EITB apprenticeship - REPEAT: 6 months at the Poly, six months in industry UNTIL 4 years done. Result, I could at age 22 sit down and design complex electronic systems with confidence. Of course this was all scrapped during the Thatcher dictatorship in the 1980's. A great pity and loss. Before then, from 1824 until 1979 the UK led the world and our engineers were in great demand all over the world, with a "brain drain".
@A Z so what you're saying is we have to find the one multilingual person who has the right to correct people's mistakes because somehow Americans don't have that right... OP made a mistake and was fairly corrected with no hint of disrespect for the betterment of his spelling and everyone who reads it. You are the one who needs to move on.
@A Z When I learning English, some people were too polite to correct me even when I was wrong. As a result, it took much longer for me to learn English properly. They were doing me a disservice.
What I like about your climate change related content is that it is well researched and carefully thought through. In this video for example you're carefully analyzing the feasibility of a renewable aviation industry, rather than just complaining that we should or shouldn't have it. There are people who make off climate change as a non-issue and there are others who drive up fear without making rational arguments or reasonable demands. You are neither of those and I like that.
he doesn't factor in anything to do with how we incinerate spent and toxic fuels and oils that get used in the shipping industry. getting rid of the mass co2 to increase toxic dioxins and toxic vapours and fumes into the atmosphere is considered better, perhaps better but absolutely and certainly not clean.
True! Since you're talking about fear, here's a question: If you want lower carbon emission, what do you think about nuclear power? (Sorry in advance, a pet peeve of mine, still I'm interested in the response)
@@thibauthanson7670 It's practical for large installations, but it's too heavy for aviation, or ground-based transportation, but that shouldn't stop us from using it responsibly for what we can use it for. Full disclosure, Three Mile Island melted down on my birthday, only a few years after I moved away from the area. It released radioactive fallout into the atmosphere before the accident was even reported.
Between 1950 and 2018 the efficiency per passenger grew from .4 to 8.2 (a 20+x improvement) RPK per Kg of CO2. The question is what RPK curve was used for the 2050 projection. While I appreciate all the work put into this video it would have even more impact if more time was spent reviewing the study assumption upfront.
3:44 "Longer chain hydrocarbons liquify... thanks to their lower boiling point"? A lower boiling would mean that the substance is more likely to stay in gaseous form. Longer carbon chains should have higher boiling points no?
Longer chain hydrocarbons (have greater strength of IMF) have a high boiling point so are more likely to be liquid at room temperature. You are damn right, what he said is wrong. :D
One of the big issues with the Blended Wing Body design is with safety. There would need to be a new way to escape the central sections of the airplane, so hopefully that will be addressed if you make a video on that design.
@@Attaxalotl more like the container in Thunderbirds 2. Just drop the entire container where people are in. the only people left then are the flight deck crew.
Great video, thanks for posting. I should comment on the hydrogen element since I work in the field researching it, and there are a couple of points I might add. LH2 is volumetrically poor compared to the incumbent, no doubt about it. But what people often don't realise is the immense thermal opportunities it potentially offers, thermal management and advanced engine cycles in particular. Aircraft designs traditionally have been weight constrained, hence the emphasis on MTOW as a fundamental limitation, however with LH2, the challenge shifts as you've rightly identified to a volume constraint. That implies increased drag (larger fuselages to accommodate the fuel for example). What this means is that designs have to change in terms of priority, so blended wing designs, longer fuselages, and potentially drag reduction measures such as boundary layer ingestion become more interesting. Since weight isn't as concerning, engines can become more elaborate too, with the advantages gained being used to mitigate the drag impact.
@@625shapiro the main problem with ammonia is that it’s extremely poisonous. Also, it requires hydrogen to make so you might as well use hydrogen for as many applications as possible for energy efficiency.
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@@MadMadCommando Rockets are much, much less efficient than air breathing engines. Getting your oxygen for free from the atmosphere is just so much simpler and lighter than bringing your own LOX.
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@@MadMadCommando Amonia is easier to store than hydrogen. Though you mind want to use methane, not amonia or hydrogen anyway. That's what they want to use in rockets now at SpaceX for example.
Thanks for pointing out that palm oil is a direct result of deforestation. I feel like nobody knows this, and it's in almost all of the food you buy in the supermarket if you look at the labels. I even remember seeing it in all of the "natural earth friendly" soaps at the coop 10 years ago. It should be avoided like the plague but I know that won't happen because people will always buy what is cheapest and palm oil is the cheapest. Similarly how almost everything you buy these days is made in China and they have the worst polluting factories with no environmental regulations. And yet people can't stop buying stuff from them because it's so cheap!
Its absolutely infuriating! You would think that some of these companies would pay attention to the bottom line of where these things are coming from. So many cases of alternative energy that ends up being less carbon neutral than other energy sources... I often bring up China's pollution as a reason to purchase American or European products wherever possible, regardless of political motives, its imperative that we start purchasing local products.
IT is always like this to the point that most people can't even see it happening. 90% of all North American indigenous forests have been removed due to man and "zombie" like green areas have popped up in their place. We cut the largest trees ever known to man to build LA. These green areas that are logged and disturbed never look like or act like indigenous forests ever again missing many important species needed. My grandpa told stories of squirrels climbing from Cincinnati to Apalachicola on the tops of chestnut and ash trees and never touching the ground, now there are zero chestnut and ash trees. We clear cut all the forests down to dead dirt because it's much cheaper to build on empty ground than to integrate homes into wooded areas. But no it's ok these worry about 2-3% of all carbon burnt. What are we even trying to protect?
You've got to be careful though! It's not all about the type of oil, it's where and how it's grown. If we ditch palm but do nothing to address the economics of deforestation in poorer countries it'll just make the issue worse as even more forest will be cut down to compensate for lower yields.
It's probably the least worst of the alternatives at the moment. Coconut oil has a lower yield, there isn't enough supply of cocoa or shea butter, and butter or lard is a problem for vegans. That said, it's probably best it's used only where it's needed, mainly as a saturated fat in foods.
Developed nations should be sanctioning CCP due to the genocide treaties we've signed anyway, its disgusting that our governments don't have more pride
21:28 Nice to have a video that's both enthusiastic towards technological solutions, yet acknowledges that some unsustainable practices should probably cost more. It's refreshing to see both approaches combined rather than opposed, kudos for that! And excellent video as usual.
"Something wierd is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control, people are acting wierdsaying it feel like the room is spinning .... I'm not sure what goes on here, but I don't like it" Am'i the only one worried by this note ? at 10:00
It must have taken weeks to create that scene anyway, even without editing it at the end, so to still find the time to add a few hidden messages; big up!
I love in the description if you scroll to the references you'll find this. "i can't be arse to find a reference. I have a master degree in aeuronautical engineering , just trust me"
3:45. Longer chain hydrocarbons have higher boiling points, not lower. Thats what causes them to liquefy sooner. A lower boiling point would mean they stay gaseous for longer as the temp cools down.
@@whatelseison8970 yeah people are making things difficult for us engineers. Given that only 11% of people in the world use air travel, them getting infertile would only help control the world population. But we need not be sad about the deaths of mutated babies because an increase in mutation at birth may someday give us a super-powered human species capable of withstanding nuclear radiation !!!
Actually, land-based nuclear power plans could provide the kind of power needed to make those fuels clean, and the fuel industry could serve as balancing for the difference in demand for every hour of the day (google "duck curve" for energy production and energy consumption curves and when they overlay). In other words, while the humans need power, they use it, when the humans don't need power, it's used to create fuel, so the nuclear reactor can be kept running at optimal settings.
I was involved in the testing of 50% Biofuels in F-22's. It works, but it is expensive (and it smells bad). One other thing to consider is that to replace all of the power from Automotive/Truck Engines by 2050 with electricity we need to be adding 1 GW of Carbon Free power every 6 days!! Maybe we should bump that up to every 5 days to account for air travel?
Roger Pelke published an article back in Sept/2019 that showed for the world to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 would require 3 nuclear power plants being brought online every 2 days. That would be starting the day after the article was published until 2050. Along with that, fossil fuelled power plants would have to be decommissioned at roughly the same pace. Or 1500 wind turbines every day until 2050. It’s interesting to see China leads the world by a substantial amount when it comes to renewable energy but on the other hand they also burn more coal than the rest of the world combined and will do so for quite some time.
@@illuminatus1 I meant within the context of using it as a fuel. Unlike in the Hindenburg, an aircraft fuel tank isn't gonna be pumped up with enormous quantities of pure hydrogen. Of course pure hydrogen in high concentration is going to be much more flammable.
Hindenburg was a disaster in that it ended hydrogen airships. They make a huge amount of sense. Think about it, why are you happy to travel on a big bag of highly inflammable kerosene, or a big bag of hydrogen, much safer. Hydrogen lifts itself into the air, kerosene has to use lots of fuel to do so.
As someone that works with hydrogen, the Hindenburg's event was more to do with having flammable things entrapping hydrogen than hydrogen itself. Hydrogen is explosive with oxygen nearby, but due to how light it is, generally it'll escape right away. Hindenburg was designed to essentially trap the hydrogen and oxygen inside the balloon. And also the fabric was highly flammable to begin with. It also didn't help people were allowed to smoke near the hydrogen tanks also.
If we really are to transition to electric cars/trucks/ships, sustainable meat production and renewable energy production - this would significantly reduce the pressure on the airline industry to change. the changes mentioned above alone would bring us back in the green, and the remaining reserves would last the airline industry a while (with subsidies); so I hope governments don't become overzealous in their demands from airlines - because travel is just as important economically. Remember that currently it only accounts for 2-3%, it's best to prioritise the big contributors before coming down on the small ones Just my two cents anyway.
Real Engineering: "Yeah this fuel is great because energy density, flashpoint, freezepoint-" Me: "Oh cool. Then why haven't we-" Real Engineering: "*Buuuuut it destroys the space-time continuum when breathed on, making it unsuitable for jet fuel.*" Me: "...Oh."
Petition to get fast food restaurants to sell their used cooking oil to biofuel manufacturers: 1: cooking oil is already super common, and used en masse by fast food industries 2: most fast food restaurants currently just dispose of their cooking oil once used, so it's currently being wasted 3: as mentioned in the video, cooking oil is a great feedstock for biofuel production
It is predominately the result of playing statistical percentage games for the sake of false virtue. There will never be ZERO emissions, not as long as humans inhabit the planet. This video is the type of nonsense that got us to where we are today. There is nothing wrong with planes using Jet A or ships using fuel oil. The biggest problems are automobiles and power generation. You can't make anything without electrical power, including all the shit they claim represents renewable energy.
Mostly a decrease of everything else. All other sectors have some clear ways of reducing or even completely eliminating their emissions, aviation does not.
@@theprofessorfate6184 If you have a problem with automobiles, stop being a hypocrite and stop driving. Fossil Fuels are uniquely beneficial to human life and flourishing, which is more important than some random species bugs getting replaced by others.
Humans have been emitting carbon since we discovered fire. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions to a level the earth can reasonably manage without drastic changes to the climate. As such, throwing around percentages is not helpful. Aggregate numbers are what we need to track. If aviation makes up 25% of emissions, but emissions are 80% reduced overall, that’s a big win. Most energy usage by humanity can be decarbonized, some niche uses cases can’t. We need to understand if aviation can be one of those exceptions.
@@danyala.1659 well to be fair, aviation was never a great long-term idea. Planes either use too much fuel, emit too much pollution, uses too much materials to produce, and other such stuff.
I often just listen to the audio on these videos while I'm doing the dishes or other chores. It sounds like I'm going to have to block off some time to sit down and actually watch it as well.
going from 2% to 25% sounds really scary, but if the total amount goes down, obviously the ratio will shift significantly. What's the estimation of actual output in 2050, instead of ratio?
Triple, though that was pre-COVID. Who knows now. 2% underplays its impact though. Due to altitude, its impact on warming is 2-3 times more than the raw emissions. It's on a completely unsustainable trajectory, and ignoring it because it's not too big today will just land us in the same problem that ignoring global warming for the past 50 years has - it gets much harder to change an industry the bigger it is, and the less time you have to do it. Better to slowly shift aviation starting yesterday than wait for it to be huge problem before acting.
@@curium9622 eh, I'm no chemist so I dunno. But give it a google. There are companies, including Japan's TDK, persuing this right now. So I think there's probably something there.
@@curium9622 well, ammonia is already produced by combining hydrogen and nitrogen. The feedstock hydrogen still needs to be from renewable energy powered hydrolysis for it to matter. Anyway, in the aviation context, I think the idea is that they can modify existing jet engine designs to use ammonia as fuel, or even ammonia somehow blended with additional hydrogen and it wouldn't have carbon emissions. www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a33768744/ammonia-as-jet-fuel/
@@adamlytle2615 Wärtsilä is testing ammonia as marine fuel. www.wartsila.com/media/news/30-06-2020-world-s-first-full-scale-ammonia-engine-test---an-important-step-towards-carbon-free-shipping-2737809
Just thinking out loud: If the on-going installation of wind and solar farms eventually results in significant over-supply of electricity, will there not be a way of using the surplus energy to turn plastic waste into fuel?
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You can turn CO2 and water into fuel, if you have energy to spare. You can also just sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and put the carbon in the ground somewhere. It's not worth it at the moment, energy is too expensive.
@ Was meinst Du, wie die Länder, die in der Höhe Getreide anwachsen müssen, vom reduzierten cozwei Gehalt der Luft sehr leiden werden. Beispiel hier in Bolivien, wo die arme Bevölkerung auf den Altiplano leben muss, wegen geringer werdenden Lebensraum pro Bevölkerung. Gerade werden die Lebensmittel mit Lastwagen nach LaPaz und Umgebung eingeführt. Die Treibstoffkosten haben sich kürzlich fast verdoppelt, so dass eine lokale Lebens- mittelproduktion nun hier nötig wird. Dazu is die Menge vom Kohlendioxyd in der Luft zu wenig, weil sie ja mit der Luftdichte in der Höhe abnimmt, nicht die Konzentration(~0.04%), wohl verstanden. Sondern die Menge per cm³, die wesentlich ist für die Photosynthese! Was meinst Du ,bestimmt die Waldgrenze? Regen, nein, Temperatur, auch nicht, co2 absolute Menge ja! Co2 der Luft zu entnehmen ist das Schlimmste, dass die uns antun können, denk doch nach. Sequester Co2 is not just stupid but a crime towards the growing poor population living here, who cannot afford to pay for the growing fuel costs. A certain consequence of fossile fuel reduction.
there are many companies who have or are in the process of turning trash into cleaner versions of gasoline and jet fuel. i was just watching a video on it actually. look up trash gasification and see what comes up for you
Yeah, I had to pause the video and think hard to make sure I wasn't having a brain fault, which I would have been more likely than Sam making a mistake.
As a former Aerospace engineer, this is a surprisingly good video. It reminds me of my chemistry professor in the 1970's telling us that "We are dam fools for burning such a valuable non-renewable resource like oil and it should be reserved for aviation and feedstocks". We now have viable BEV's for much of ground transportation so should heed his words.
"Something weird is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control. People are acting weird, saying the room feels like it's spinning... I'm not sure what goes on here, but I don't like it."
This is an extreme technicality nit-pick, but the goal of jet fuel is not to "raise the temperature to raise the pressure". This is because as you know, the Brayton cycle operates with isobaric combustion.
So you have to understand that during the design phase of an engine, the jet fuel selected raises the isobaric pressure in the combustion chamber to a value that depends on the choice of fuel. Some type of fuel will give you a lower isobaric pressure and others will give you a higher value. But once the engine is designed and ready for flight, that fuel consideration has been settled.
@@satmohabir7175 Why do people feel the need to invent nonsense about things they have zero knowledge about? Not a single statement in this comment is correct. Combustion pressure in jets is determined by the compressor and the turbine alone. The type of fuel has no effect on this, just on how much fuel is needed to get to the desired temperature. Pressure does not increase as fuel is burned in a jet engine. It actually decrease slightly through the combustor (by 3-4%). I'm an aerospace engineer and was the TA in jet propulsion class in grad school, but if you want to check that for yourself any book on gas turbines will tell you the same.
I think instead of looking at ways of making planes greener, we should massively limit their use around the world. High speed trains can replace a lot of the shorter routes around the world, and most domestic flights should be replaced with them (especially in the us). It's the same thing over and over again, we are trying to invent new ways to fix a flawed system which will just never work out.
For the big airlines sure. Wendover did a video on how electric planes can work (th-cam.com/video/aH4b3sAs-l8/w-d-xo.html) in a way that as someone who lives in the UK never crossed my mind before. That airlines in large countries use very small aircraft to cover routes of just a couple of hundred miles or less. Not something we use in the UK but for the US, Canada, Australia etc is clearly more prevalent. Sure it looks like only a small change but I bet the environmental benefit is larger than you first think.
You seem to really like talking about biofuels and seem to take issue with how the feed stock is created. How about a video on vertical farming or hydroponics/aeroponics to explore those as alternatives for feed stock?
That could be a solution but it comes down to the fact that we are literally burning our food supply in a future where food stability is not guaranteed. I don't think biofuels are the answer
Completely infeasible without fusion power. Even then you have to find a way to deal with all the heat, which is a huge problem in urbanized areas already.
I feel like for commercial planes, volumetric energy density is much less important than energy density by unit mass The only thing they care about is to have as little weight as possible, cause it makes the flight less cost effective, they wouldn't mind filling the tank more, if the weight did not increase The only possible way volumetric energy density is important to commercial flights is the maximum range, but that's often far less relevant
There is a certain amount of carbon that the worlds ecosystem can naturally absorb without adding to climate change right? If the other industries cut back we may get to a point where the air industry can continue to use fossil fuels for awhile because it’s all offset by nature?
Theoretically anything added has some effect. Anything added will need to be offset elsewhere. It's possible the effects will become negligible at some level, but with how bad we already are, we need to hit net negative, not let planes do it because it's not that much.
Thank you! Also funnily enough if we get global warming under control after some time we will HAVE TO burn carbon to prevent the earth from freezing or atmospheric oxygen levels to get too high and make fires more frequent!( Like in the carboniferous era I think oxygen was like 30 percent)
Yet another incredibly well produced documentary. Your channel keeps hitting these home runs and I forecast thousands of people bookmarking your TH-cam channel. I've been sharing your most recent aviation videos with most of my pilot friends and the positive feedback has been significant. Keep up the good work buddy! Please look into the Embraer Praetor jet. I'm sure there's something interesting to cover in a video with that one. And your "but" is still my favorite on TH-cam! Cheers!
@@shinchan-F-urmom but would it need thrust vectoring at all? It was nearly as maneuverable as the f22, and adding thrust vectoring couldve changed its weight and flight characteristics in a negative manner.
But unlike cars or electricity as a whole, aviation can’t truly go carbon neutral unless some major leaps in battery or hydrogen fuel tech are made. So bio-ethanol isn’t _as bad_ of an idea
Sure, but that just means you have to view it as an energy storage technology, rather than an energy production one. The energy density of hydrocarbon fuels might still make it the best solution (or least-bad one) for aviation.
I absolutely do not see aviation moving to use Hydrogen as a fuel. GL airbus... although I doubt they are actually betting on it either, im fairly sure its just marketing that they said that at all. It is not just harder to store and less useful energy density than gas but it is far more complex to store and transfer. It is far more prone to failure and catastrophic failure at that too, imagine a modern plane which is built to expand contract and move, now you have cryogenic pressurized fuel on board, which is likely to be stored in the fuselage... yeah I have serious doubts. Very very unlikely to see it used widely on commercial aircraft. A couple prototypes and one-offs perhaps but not more than that.
@@sferrin2 200 mph would be more than enough. Even though trains final speed overall is slower, the have a lot of time savings in comparison to airplains.
Metal hydrides could greatly increase the volumetric energy density of hydrogen and increase safety but there might be issues with releasing the hydrogen from its bond fast enough to keep up with the engines in traditional combustion turbojets.
I love how scrupulously you alluded the challenges with different fuels, like the splitting of water molecule wherein researchers are trying to figure out ways to incorporate solar energy and replicate photosynthesis, among others. So every consumer should take the responsibility of what they are giving off because engineers are in need of cooperation.
I work in the industry on the engineering side. My money is on efuels long term with biofuels and other blends as a bridge. Ultimately, we may be lucky enough too have a world with electricity "to cheap to meter." If we get there, efuels become the obvious choice with unparalleled energy density and,nine of the land use issues. From a governance perspective, it will take carbon pricing tax policy on airline tickets to incentivise the shift away from fossil derived kerosene.
Just regulate it. Just like care fuels now need to be a percentage ethanol. Just increase the percentage yearly. And as cars move to electric, it already frees up a lot of biofuel capacity that would have gone into gasoline. You have to look at these things from a macro perspective and things look a lot more feasable.
I feel like you live in a dream world -- Air Travel isn't going somewhere unless a competing transcontinental or transoceanic rapid form of transit pops up. The Airline industry will pay whatever the cost of Jet Fuel is and that price will be passed on to its Customers -- the airline gives zero fucks about it. If the cost gets too high -- the customers will complain to their governments and either the taxation on the airline industry will be lowered or the industry as a whole may even be subsidized to compensate. So, the airlines aren't in trouble - the customers are.
There's a project planned in Iceland, where they want to put a synthetic fuels factory on top of a volcanic vent that spews out concentrated CO2 all day, every day. That would let them skip the energy intensive process of drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere, thereby reducing the cost of the fuel noticeably. It also helps that volcanic areas are chock full of free geothermal energy, of course. Not a solution that's viable at a global scale, but I found it interesting and creative nevertheless.
10:04 - “Something weird is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control. People are acting weird, saying it feels like the room is spinning… I’m not sure what is goes on here, but I don’t like it.” Nice touch, Brian!
We have a generation that was taught "green is good" and governments that will just do everything with the word "green" in it for a bump in rating. Currently to make biofuel, we would need to put in more energy compare to the amount of energy we would get from burning the final product, which translate to unsustainable. Plus it damage the environment and take up valuable water resources. Also when saying the Aviation industry CO2 emission will take up to 25% of total emission. Ok 25% of how much ? Percentages without the context are misleading and serve nothing but to push a narrative. For example, 2% of 1250 is 25 and 25% of 100 is also 25. Meaning the value doesn't change. Just saying 25% doesn't mean anything unless you are giving something compare it to. Percentages isn't a value, it is a ratio.
Percentages actually make sense here. The point is that other sources are going down in CO2 production and airplanes will become a much larger contributor. The actual numbers don’t really matter because we’re probably going to be trying to limit CO2 production for a long long time.
Using biofuels might make sense for applications where the energy density of hydrocarbons is absolutely necessary (e.g. aviation, rockets, certain heating applications,...) even if it is hugely inefficient. The question is whether the application is worth the energy cost, not whether it is absolutely efficient in terms of energy produced.
Concrete, beef, and stainless steel have much larger impacts than aviation. Having said that, it's obviously a great idea to minimise the industry's environmental woes.
I remember when I was like 10 I went to a city council meeting with my mom and they discussed how jet fuel, if released into the environment, can cause birth defects and autism in newborns due to the high lead content. Now, that was 2015, and it looks like we have improved every since then. Now, Gulf Stream just flew the g800 to Mach .96 (740 mph) using 100% sustainable fuel. That’s a big step for commercial aviation and I feel that we may use that even for fighter jets and other military aircraft.
Does this even matter. If we get it to a point it's the majority of a relatively tiny footprint, that's still fine. Translating 3% to 25% means total emissions are but an 8th of today, in 2050. That's an amazing success, not a doomsday notification
@@Gryffins90 sure, planes will hold a higher percent, but they won’t be emitting as much as cars. Also planes like trains are a lot more carbon efficient. Like busses. You would agree that 1 bus is better than 20 cars
@@TheWizardGamez Planes aren't better than cars per passenger kilometer, even if you drive solo. Flying is, of course, less energy efficient than rolling on wheels, and its emissions cause more warming due to their altitude.
@@Gryffins90 so with that being the case and cars moving to electric, the grid being largely renewable, does that matter? Until we either make renewable planes or make a conscious decision to not fly, we can either worry about it or fix everything around it to make it a problem to remain to be solved. It's become fanatical to address everything at once. Maybe this one we just accept and the rest we can currently solve we do well instead.
I do not oppose that volumetric energy density is important. However, if you are taking all your weight into the sky, specific energy density is even more important. That's why batteries can't send planes flying but hydrogen may.
Batteries can power airplanes, but probably not jetliners as we’ve known them. The ultra low cost of electrical power compared to any hydrocarbons will make battery powered planes inevitable for short haul flights on smaller aircraft, in the 20-40 passenger range. Think Denver to Cheyenne, or Phoenix to Flagstaff. Without some pretty amazing breakthroughs in battery tech I don’t see them scaling up beyond small commuter planes, but in that market they’re likely to completely replace fossil fuel powered planes.
You're right, although volumetric density is important when talking about how planes that are already used today could be retrofitted to something else. It's not that important when talking about the general ability of fuels to be used to fly; I think the alternative plane design he'll discuss in a future episode is exactly an elaboration of this principle.
Nah man, volume density is extremely important. batteries are worse in both mass and volumetric energy density than jet fuel. another reason batteries are not viable yes is because of the way turbofans and turbojets work. batteries are good for turboprops but turboprops are not good for high speeds. the low energy density(volume) means more space is needed and more space means larger planes and larger planes are bad as they are heavier and well, larger.
@@fenrir834 "batteries are good for turboprops", would you please elaborate? Is it due to preferred RPM range or power output range? Or, is it "batteries" or actually "electric motos" and why? Thanks
@@sunspot42 Batteries can power anything and they ARE powering everything right now. It's just that asking Mike Tyson to run 100 meters competing with actual Olympians is not the path on which we should put our hopes. Hope you get my idea, batteries will eat up too much weight allowance both in ground vehicles and airborne ones. Passenger planes need to leave extra in the tank as a safety guard and this just makes the range even less practical.
4:20 "by excluding the hydrocarbons with longer chains with longer chains, and therefore excludes *lower* boiling point molecules from the mix." Should this not be higher boiling point molecules which have a higher freezing point? i.e. the hydrocarbons at the bottom have a higher boiling point and higher freezing point? There are then less of these in Jet A-1 which leads it to have a lower freezing point and is better suited to colder climates?
Question, do we actually need to be carbon neutral or is it okay if we just reduce it and go below a certain percentage? And another different topic is that many of these new innovations are a massive step back in innovation and it's not even being considered. Making plane travel unavailable for a lot of people due to rising fuel cost, electric cars having a range of jackshit and abysmal charging times, while coal power plants are not being shut down, instead them being built. Sure you might think, you're willing to sacrifice some of these things, but that's just you, not the whole population. And if we need to sacrifice so much, why aren't such huge improvements being made on all sectors. It feels pretty much like governments want normal every day people to take the blame and all the consequences of THEIR bad decisions. What are we paying the ridicously high taxes for if basically nothing is being done?
I think on a channel about engineering you should be approaching problems from alternative angles instead of just bitching about how much worse the initial approach is, yeah you’re right a lot of these proposed ideas are a step back but that’s because the r&d wasn’t there in the first place, if you had prioritized any technology over another then you’ll refine it, can’t do that when the status quo stays the same in the air industry since it’s inception p much
@@Number1FanProductions As an engineer you're studying to think about every aspect. And since there's an alternative solution, it's not really complaining. Unfortunately politics come into play, or should I say lobbying, that's why things don't get done. Politics and human greed has always been the main factors why we don't advance. You think electric cars are a new thing that didn't exist before? It's been here almost as long as the ICEs. 2,500 coal power plants all over the world are responsible for 20% of the global co2 emissions, while 1,100,000,000 (1.1 billion) passenger cars are responsible for only 9% (I've read sources where it says it's even less). But politicians in the EU are more concerned about banning ICEs instead of solving the problem. Why? Because that gives them money. It's not bitching about how things are, it's about uncovering the greedy pieces of shits that we call politicians and not let them fool us. Let's imagine that you can only buy electric cars from now on. The whole grid system would probably collapse, because it couldn't handle everyone charging their cars. The infrastructure is not ready for charging electric cars right now, you need to wait for hours to charge them. Imagine what will happen when everyone is supposed to drive electric vehicles only. You won't be able to get to work. A lot of people can't even charge at home, those who live in apartment complexes for example. We need a solution quickly, not in fucking 100 years time.
We do have to be carbon neutral. The reason why improvements aren't being massively invested in is that massive oil firms and politicians are exploiting people who think like you in order to avoid having to change or shut down their massively profitable (near term) ventures, because by the time any of this became a problem for them they'd be dead anyway.
Saw a great comment below...how about efficient inter-city rail links and high-speed rail for longer trips. The US can improve and expand infrastructure that work best domestically without the need to take international travel standards into account. Airlines can collaborate with rail providers along with ride-share companies to offer a seamless experience for travellers. While a bit of premium may be involved, imagine a routine, door-to-door travel itinerary option that is far less expensive than a current First-Class ticket......Seems do-able for heavy traffic corridors on the NE Coast of the US.....(?)
People think engineering is boring, but our whole world is engineered. Think of all the engineers who needed to work for years to design each item in your house. Materials have to be specifically manufactured to purpose, then other engineers and designers use those materials to build things like microchips, batteries, etc that still OTHER engineers put into their products to sell to you. It makes you wonder how many people were at least indirectly involved in the design of things like a smartphone. All the little design features that had to be discovered over the past few centuries... from how electricity works, digital logic, the transistor, batteries and chemical properties of lithium, light emitting diodes, plastics, tempered/doped glass... hell even the aluminum in the frame wasn't discovered until 1825, and wasn't widely used until after the Hall-Héroult process was invented in 1886. The process of invention required for the things we take for granted today is... almost fractal in nature.
@@Falcrist what’s worrying is the number of people that prefer to follow the Kardashians or love island out number people that have an interest in educational content. Social influencers will inherit the earth.
So, after going around with all these new technologies we finally arrived back to the simplest and the best solution for the future planes - currently used jet fuel from the crude oil.
@@mdoerkse there processes available now that we can make crude oil from algae which depending on the variety used can grow just about anywhere with some water be it sea water, fresh water, or. sewage waste water. process it using the fuel it makes or renewable energy and its carbon neutral and can make drop in fuels on demand.
@@peteradaniel if we decarbonize every other parts of industry, the airplanes pollution will be something negligible for the planet. Even of its use tripple, it would still be a minor contribution. And current crude oil stock will last centuries
@@codeartha it’s not even that. It’s the amount society decarbonises as well. If it’s affordable for oil companies to continue searching for crude oil fields the less importance it has in transportation across society. Also the cultural impact of individual decarbonisation will put immense financial pressure on those industries which still can’t, with governments to fines people’s environmental consciousness deciding to find alternative modes of transport. Edit: his 25% estimate at the beginning is important to how the aviation industry sells itself in the future.
If airplanes are currently 2-3% of carbon emissions, making everything else carbon neutral would mean a 98-97% drop in carbon emissions. I think we can all agree that would be a great outcome and so maybe we should focus on the lower hanging fruit first.
Yep it is mostly for completionism sake (you know - at this point even carbon neutral isn’t enough - carbon negative will be needed). But you can take on other industries much stronger so that you can still afford to use fast travel options.
Seems like the easiest answer is to use biodiesel with insulated heated tanks. Probably using an inboard diesel generator to make electricity to run electric propellers rather than insulating and heating long fuel lines to several outboard engines. Would also make it easy to use diesel engine waste heat to warm the fuel too. Was sad that pre-heating the fuel before using it wasn't mentioned in the video, since this is commonly done already when burning heavy fuel oils on an commercial scale today.
Would be great with a detailed video on biofuels and biodiesels. I know there is FAME, HVO, but its hard to get a sense of the differences between them all and would appreciate to get your view on these including their full life cycle impact.
This information helped me to appreciate my Dad a bit more. He used to be a Senior Aeronautical Engineer and designed every jet cockpit and fuselage made for the Air Force from 1954-1972. I never thought about just what the fuselage did. I thought it just held the gasoline but this showed it does a lot more. Thank you.
I wouldn't gloss over the difference between military and commercial regarding energy density so easily. Especially when you don't fill your tanks and fuel is a major cost driver, you want high energy per mass, not volume. Every bit of extra weight means extra fuel means even more extra weight. On top if that, this turns the argument upside down. Long carbon chains are compact, but carbon is heavy and burns less energetic. Short chains take more volume, but have higher hydrogen content, burning hotter with less mass.
One solution you didn’t mention was to keep using jet fuel and on the other end run direct carbon capture systems to offset the emissions. Might end up being cheaper…
It isn't going to reduce the particulates which in the video have a greater impact to global warming than CO2. not to mention they decrease air quality.
@@Stefan-jk5gx Indeed, so a mixed approach with biofuels might be best. In the long long term though space elevators combined with dozens of orbital rings will provide the fastest and cheapest travel all without burning any fuel whatsoever.
Is it true that because of the tiny size of the hydrogen atom than any containment system made of larger atoms/molecules will leave gaps through which hydrogen can escape ?
Was hoping you'd talk about algal jet fuels since they're the biofuels with the best environmental footprint and actually have a chance of working someday
And fuels from waste, electrofuels, ... there are many options. Most of the government and big corporations are part of the oil cartel that Schlumberger created and have no interest in having a viable alternative. And they have a big influence on the media and people's opinions.
I suspect these (or nuclear electricity derived efuels made from carbonised hydrogen) will be the way forward for high-density fuel requirements like aircraft. Hydrogen is just too dangerous for general transportation and battery aviation will always have severaly constrained range (that's not a problem for commuter flights but a big deal for regional/longer flights)
@@miscbits6399 Like I said, what everyone is repeating barely makes sense compared to all the options that exist. Hydrogen has many ways to be carried safely, electrofuels can be produced by other viable electric sources such as high power renewable energy in microgrids or (micro)hydropower, there are other ways to power electric transportation besides low energy density batteries, second generation biofuels are viable, current engines can work with clean and/or renewable fuels...
@Vitor de Lima The only SAFE way to carry hydrogen is to tack carbon atoms onto the molecules (preferably extracted from the atmosphere). The question is how you go about that. The problem with oil as fuel isn't the oil. It's that we're putting CO2 into the atmosphere significantly faster than it can be scrubbed out again because we're burning fossil fuiels at around 120,000 times the rate they were originally created. The inevitable result of such action isn't sea level rise - that's just a minor side effect - it's an extinction level event on Permian scales when acidic rain kills off all the land vegetation and causes mass sea die offs, causing atmospheric oxygen levels to drop to around 10-12% for a few hundred thousand years
when aviation becomes 25% of the total emission, that means humanity has decreased it's total emission by around 88% to 92%, considering it's only 2% to 3% currently. I say, we've done enough by that time haha
The issue with that is that humanity as a whole is already so far behind when it comes to becoming carbon neutral. We're feeling the warming effects of the past 50 years of carbon emissions and even if we completely stopped all carbon emissions today the planet would continue to warm for another 30 years without technology actively recapturing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
@RealEngineering, please make a detailed video on "The Bouchain Power plant" - world’s most efficient combined-cycle power plant located in Bouchain, France. Also make a video on Thermal Power plants and how to increase their efficiency.
even if its 25% the total size of carbon world wide would be so much lower i dont think this would really even matter. like even in current air travel 4x's and the there are these massive cuts that lets that be 25% of total world carbon output that still means carbon is cut by more then 50% well over what anything is suggesting is required.... seems kinda pointless for the time being.
"World's carbon dioxide emissions" By that I assume you mean word's *transportation* carbon dioxide emissions and not the *total* carbon dioxide emissions?
No. Its just using extremely optimistic (that is, bullshit) estimates for all other industries going close to net 0. Obviously completely deluded, but it makes for a great headline figure.
@@aenorist2431 It's really not deluded to assume that most carbon intensive industries will have died or gone neutral by 2050. At this rate, as long as lobbyists don't siphon additional handouts to oil companies, that's quite a reasonable estimate.
@@planefan082 20% of the world's carbon emissions come from coal power plants. That's ~2TW. Replacing - and more, energy use continually goes up - 2TW of electricity production in 30 years by non-CO2 emitting solutions is the goal. Actually believing that this is what is going to happen, that's deluded. A typical nuclear power plant is 2 reactors of 1300MW each, so the best scenario is ~2600MW and a 5 year build time.
The 2% of the current emission is true, transportation is the largest emission group, larger than electricity production, around 30% of the total emission is from transportation. Planes also go far and not really ideal as transportation to begin. Add that no option to limit its emission, it is 100% hydrocarbon based. Of course there is a tricky stuff related to mineral oil usage: since we use fractional distillation to produce different parts of the crude oil, we really not in the option to not use some part of it. This is why diesel will be used until we use oil, even if it is not a great fuel, but 20%-25% of the crude oil is diesel, so not using diesel would just mean more crude oil usage and the issue of dealing with the unused diesel.
@@planefan082 Handouts? Governments already tax the fuck out of fuels and push more and more regulation thus creating " an uncertain future" and your issue is with oil companies? Funny that.
High speed rail is the answer to planes for most trips. Planes take a lot of energy to get off the ground. If you eliminate the need to fly, you can decrease energy consumption by 2/3.
Yep. That seems the really sensible solution. If all flights within continents were replaced by high speed rail and the only flights were intercontinental, would that make a big impact on emissions ?
The real problems with rail in the us is our urban layout is more diffuse, once you leave the station you still need a car to get around and the paths for rail go through existing development especially in the northeast. Europe and Asia were reduced to rubble by ww2 so it wasn't a problem to build there.
@@cpob2013 Yes but the same can be said of airports. Use electric cars for any journeys but high speed rail for very long distances if you are in a hurry instead of air travel.
"... many of them are being converted to run on bio-ethanol." Stated in context like it's a good thing after just making another video about Biofuels and their dangers.
If the goal is to be carbon-neutral, the obvious solution seems to be carbon-capture using renewable energy. It could be cost effective once at scale. And the mandate could be "you can't burn any fuel you didn't already pull out of the sky."
It could work, but aviation would have to remove 2-3x more carbon than it emits, to counteract its other emissions and the altitude it puts them at. In terms of global warming, a tonne of CO2 at sea level is not equivalent to a tonne of CO2 at aircraft cruising altitude.
@@erikpoephoofd Granted. But I think the video made some assumptions that whatever replacement method is chosen will require a few years of R&D, tons of money of investment, and a glut of cheap renewable energy. With those, carbon capture could easily become the cost effective replacement, and it wouldn't even require an overhaul of the planes and infrastructure itself, making it probably the cheaper option.
@@Android-ng1wn Wellll, very long term it would have to be something else (who knows what, maybe they'll have onboard fusion reactors by then). But in the short term if you could remove additional CO2 as compensation that would work out, because we have/will have a huge excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. "Remove more CO2 than emitted to compensate for warming from particulates" should work out fine, if the economics are least bad (they're all awful).
Former US Navy fuel systems engineer here. Well done, this is a fairly comprehensive look at jet fuel production, constraints, and alternatives. I would like to add that the Navy did evaluate a 100% biofuel version of JP-5 back in 2016. Performance-wise it was nearly identical to traditional JP-5, but as you observed, the problem with all biofuels is the cost of production.
Edit based on some of the responses: The Navy's main motivation for investigating biofuels is more to do with diversity of fuel sources (i.e. less dependence on the Middle East) than it is to do with saving the planet. That would be a nice side-benefit, though.
I definitely care more about the planet than going on holiday so I am probably bias, but I think that a higher cost is worth it. There are other problems of course but I don't think cost should be the thing that stops us using it.
Interesting name for a former US navy fuel system engineer
@@AndenMowe-hh5qk Take a train. Its not that you can't travel around the world. I can walk 10 minutes to the train station and be in Paris today. Then all of Europe opens up. Also most people are not traveling around the world to learn everyone different culture and ways of thinking, that's just bullshit. People are going to sit at a resort at the beach and drink (usually on the same continent that they are already on).
@@seanfitzpatrick7441 yea let’s built a transatlantic train... I’m sure people will love the traveling taking a week more to get there,
@@seanfitzpatrick7441 you do realize that Europe is not the entire world.
.right?
On the freezing point of jet fuel: It's really cold at cruising altitude everywhere in the world. What matters more is the duration of the flight. The fuel takes some time to cool, simply because there is so much of it compared to the fuel tank surface area. Long flights require more careful management of fuel temperature.
The engine oil goes through tubes that run inside the fuel tanks. Oil gets cooler while fuel gets hotter. So no it will not freeze.
But if you're at the end of the flight and there isn't much fuel left, that might be a problem. It could cool down faster.
@@Yonatan24 I think it shouldn’t be a problem to redirect some of the turbines’ heat back to the fuel tanks, whether with oil or other means. I believe that even a primitive electric heating system could solve the issue.
Or you just go full SR-71 and fly so fast you need to use the fuel as a heat sink instead of worrying about it freezing
@@andreirachko thats basically already being done. Although heating the fuel tanks is the least priority of that system.
The primary uses (AFAIK) is to heat the leading edges of the wing and the ailerons and other aerodynamical devices to prevent ice growth, and then it also heats up the cabin, and then parts of the fuel system if at all
14:40 Something went wrong here, the chart is showing cold hydrogen having a much _lower_ density than room-temperature hydrogen, which is obvious nonsense. Are the labels accidently swapped?
Think so
Yeah, and he still seemingly read the wrong number off the chart. I'm confused.
I remember noticing that, too. I commented this:
"14:40 I think this graph is wrong. Why is hydrogen less dense when it's colder? Is the 19°C one actually Kerosene? I really doubt it if the number you gave immediately afterwards was right."
Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever see excess energy 'flood the market'. Every time we figure out how to produce more power, esp if it brings the price down, demand goes up. Multiple times over the last hundred years or so people proclaimed that soon power would be too cheap to meter and the market always re-scales to make it expensive again.
So basically induced demand?
Also price fixing
what are you talking about, it is excessive and abundant availabe since a century at least.
Right - and manufacturing fuels will be one of those things expanding demand as energy prices drop.
Good old free market
I love how you drew the different fuels with slightly larger atoms for C and H, indicating they are closer and farther away. Such a nice touch.
Like the cows
When in the video did he do that?
Nice, too bad he ignored the one with one carbon and 4 hydrogens
@@RammusTheArmordillo 3:14
@@tesicnr methane
The thing about E-fuels as well is that it apparently works with existing ICEs in cars as well, there have been some tests here in Europe.
It could be mixed with normal gasoline in that case as well, so I hope it will catch on in which case there might be more of a chance of it becoming cheaper (?)
E-Fuels only make sense if there is an abundance of electricity available, that is cheap and not harmful to the environment. Renewables are often limited by the grid they operate on and fission nuclear plants are mostly used for base loads (and you are also dependant on imports of fissile materials depending on where you live). It is gonna be tough to justify their use.
E-fuels will be powering the next gen Formula 1 cars in 2026, so that should also allow car manufacturers to start experimenting with them soon. Porsche is currently making E-fuels in Chile using the abundance of wind power on the Chilean coast. As mentioned in the video though, scaling this for air travel will need way more excess renewable fuel than we currently have. It's going to take some time until it's feasible.
The swedes were at it for years. Their e85 and m85 fuel, containing 85% metanol or etanol 'suffers' from extra horsepower, not really needed in turboSAABS and Volvo's, due to higher octane content......
@@user-pt1ow8hx5l e85 and m85 are not e-fuels.
@@user-pt1ow8hx5lWhat about seaweed biofuels
Excellent!!
" [19] I can’t be arsed to find a reference for this one. I have a masters degree in aeronautical engineering, just trust me. "
Would you recommend a university degree or apprenticeship when pursuing a career in aironautics
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 A mechanical engineering degree goes a LONG way toward making you marketable in ANY industry. Tack on a 2 year master's in aeronautical engineering and you'll have companies beating down your door to hire you.
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 are you getting your academics career advice from a youtube comment section? Lmao
@@kpp28 I don't see a downside. I get all my education from TH-cam. Thinking of furthering my education. I think that means I need to subscribe to Curiosity Stream and Nebula. :-)
@@agravemisunderstanding9668 Both. I was educated in the 1970's (UK) and did a "sandwich degree" which combined a degree with an EITB apprenticeship - REPEAT: 6 months at the Poly, six months in industry UNTIL 4 years done. Result, I could at age 22 sit down and design complex electronic systems with confidence. Of course this was all scrapped during the Thatcher dictatorship in the 1980's. A great pity and loss. Before then, from 1824 until 1979 the UK led the world and our engineers were in great demand all over the world, with a "brain drain".
"...in this case, no."
The way he says that made me chuckle. :P
First take was. '...in this one single outlying example, a complete exception to the norm, an exceedingly rare break from insanity, no.'
I am the cool kid from Germany making videos for the USA and the rest of the world. I will make your day so don't say nay to me today, dear rus
@@AxxLAfriku stop doing crack
@@AxxLAfriku the world's most hated youtuber
That semi-disappointed "no".:)
"made by someone I actually like" LOL
I think there was a recent Wendover video where he referred to you as "that Irish engineering guy"
That wouldn’t surprise me, these two banter loads 😂
"We will explore this kind if plane in more detail in a future video" I shall wait paciently for my favorite Video
Patiently
@A Z He/she just corrected someone and you are accusing him/her of not knowing anything
@@tomatosoupwoo how bout that ?
Sometimes we just need a laugh , or at least a smile
@A Z so what you're saying is we have to find the one multilingual person who has the right to correct people's mistakes because somehow Americans don't have that right... OP made a mistake and was fairly corrected with no hint of disrespect for the betterment of his spelling and everyone who reads it. You are the one who needs to move on.
@A Z When I learning English, some people were too polite to correct me even when I was wrong. As a result, it took much longer for me to learn English properly. They were doing me a disservice.
What I like about your climate change related content is that it is well researched and carefully thought through. In this video for example you're carefully analyzing the feasibility of a renewable aviation industry, rather than just complaining that we should or shouldn't have it.
There are people who make off climate change as a non-issue and there are others who drive up fear without making rational arguments or reasonable demands. You are neither of those and I like that.
he doesn't factor in anything to do with how we incinerate spent and toxic fuels and oils that get used in the shipping industry.
getting rid of the mass co2 to increase toxic dioxins and toxic vapours and fumes into the atmosphere is considered better, perhaps better but absolutely and certainly not clean.
Real life is nuanced and gray. Children (and the internet) are all or nothing black and white.
True! Since you're talking about fear, here's a question:
If you want lower carbon emission, what do you think about nuclear power?
(Sorry in advance, a pet peeve of mine, still I'm interested in the response)
@@thibauthanson7670 It's practical for large installations, but it's too heavy for aviation, or ground-based transportation, but that shouldn't stop us from using it responsibly for what we can use it for. Full disclosure, Three Mile Island melted down on my birthday, only a few years after I moved away from the area. It released radioactive fallout into the atmosphere before the accident was even reported.
The anti aviation activists are just playing for the rich, if only they can air travel thats great for them.
Between 1950 and 2018 the efficiency per passenger grew from .4 to 8.2 (a 20+x improvement) RPK per Kg of CO2. The question is what RPK curve was used for the 2050 projection. While I appreciate all the work put into this video it would have even more impact if more time was spent reviewing the study assumption upfront.
Lies again? Serie A Leader Joma Fila
3:44 "Longer chain hydrocarbons liquify... thanks to their lower boiling point"? A lower boiling would mean that the substance is more likely to stay in gaseous form. Longer carbon chains should have higher boiling points no?
Yip 👍
I didn’t understand anything you just said.
@@brandonbowden1262 That's why you should stay in school.
Longer chain hydrocarbons (have greater strength of IMF) have a high boiling point so are more likely to be liquid at room temperature. You are damn right, what he said is wrong. :D
How dare you correctly correct an incorrection
One of the big issues with the Blended Wing Body design is with safety. There would need to be a new way to escape the central sections of the airplane, so hopefully that will be addressed if you make a video on that design.
Put a hatch in the roof, and have it board like the disney world submarine.
Or you could have the passengers near the leading edges by the emergency exits, and fill the central section with fuel tanks and luggage space.
plus the additional vomiting
@@Attaxalotl more like the container in Thunderbirds 2. Just drop the entire container where people are in. the only people left then are the flight deck crew.
Several hundred ejection seats is the clear and obvious answer. Shoot the passengers out like fireworks 🎆
Great video, thanks for posting. I should comment on the hydrogen element since I work in the field researching it, and there are a couple of points I might add. LH2 is volumetrically poor compared to the incumbent, no doubt about it. But what people often don't realise is the immense thermal opportunities it potentially offers, thermal management and advanced engine cycles in particular. Aircraft designs traditionally have been weight constrained, hence the emphasis on MTOW as a fundamental limitation, however with LH2, the challenge shifts as you've rightly identified to a volume constraint. That implies increased drag (larger fuselages to accommodate the fuel for example). What this means is that designs have to change in terms of priority, so blended wing designs, longer fuselages, and potentially drag reduction measures such as boundary layer ingestion become more interesting. Since weight isn't as concerning, engines can become more elaborate too, with the advantages gained being used to mitigate the drag impact.
Or since oxygen is made with the hydrogen in electrolysis we could propel our planes using LH2/LOX rocket engines. A guy can dream can’t he?
What about using Ammonia?
@@625shapiro the main problem with ammonia is that it’s extremely poisonous. Also, it requires hydrogen to make so you might as well use hydrogen for as many applications as possible for energy efficiency.
@@MadMadCommando Rockets are much, much less efficient than air breathing engines. Getting your oxygen for free from the atmosphere is just so much simpler and lighter than bringing your own LOX.
@@MadMadCommando Amonia is easier to store than hydrogen. Though you mind want to use methane, not amonia or hydrogen anyway. That's what they want to use in rockets now at SpaceX for example.
Thanks for pointing out that palm oil is a direct result of deforestation. I feel like nobody knows this, and it's in almost all of the food you buy in the supermarket if you look at the labels. I even remember seeing it in all of the "natural earth friendly" soaps at the coop 10 years ago. It should be avoided like the plague but I know that won't happen because people will always buy what is cheapest and palm oil is the cheapest. Similarly how almost everything you buy these days is made in China and they have the worst polluting factories with no environmental regulations. And yet people can't stop buying stuff from them because it's so cheap!
Its absolutely infuriating! You would think that some of these companies would pay attention to the bottom line of where these things are coming from. So many cases of alternative energy that ends up being less carbon neutral than other energy sources...
I often bring up China's pollution as a reason to purchase American or European products wherever possible, regardless of political motives, its imperative that we start purchasing local products.
IT is always like this to the point that most people can't even see it happening. 90% of all North American indigenous forests have been removed due to man and "zombie" like green areas have popped up in their place. We cut the largest trees ever known to man to build LA. These green areas that are logged and disturbed never look like or act like indigenous forests ever again missing many important species needed. My grandpa told stories of squirrels climbing from Cincinnati to Apalachicola on the tops of chestnut and ash trees and never touching the ground, now there are zero chestnut and ash trees. We clear cut all the forests down to dead dirt because it's much cheaper to build on empty ground than to integrate homes into wooded areas. But no it's ok these worry about 2-3% of all carbon burnt. What are we even trying to protect?
You've got to be careful though! It's not all about the type of oil, it's where and how it's grown. If we ditch palm but do nothing to address the economics of deforestation in poorer countries it'll just make the issue worse as even more forest will be cut down to compensate for lower yields.
It's probably the least worst of the alternatives at the moment. Coconut oil has a lower yield, there isn't enough supply of cocoa or shea butter, and butter or lard is a problem for vegans. That said, it's probably best it's used only where it's needed, mainly as a saturated fat in foods.
Developed nations should be sanctioning CCP due to the genocide treaties we've signed anyway, its disgusting that our governments don't have more pride
I'm hearing pam oil and I'm thinking pam spray and then he goes and shows pictures of palm trees and oh that makes more sense. Accents are fascinating
The Irish have never liked ells.
Reminds me of the formula one video where he had to say "cars" and "KERS". Yeah.
Lolol that's hilarious
Palm oil
21:28 Nice to have a video that's both enthusiastic towards technological solutions, yet acknowledges that some unsustainable practices should probably cost more. It's refreshing to see both approaches combined rather than opposed, kudos for that! And excellent video as usual.
"Something wierd is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control, people are acting wierdsaying it feel like the room is spinning .... I'm not sure what goes on here, but I don't like it"
Am'i the only one worried by this note ? at 10:00
Woah, I didn't notice that in the first watch
Exactly! WTF is going on there? And where is it, I don't wanna job there.
I think this is a joke related to "gas intoxication" where people get high on gasoline.
It must have taken weeks to create that scene anyway, even without editing it at the end, so to still find the time to add a few hidden messages; big up!
He is talking about ethanol. The joke is they are drunk
I love in the description if you scroll to the references you'll find this.
"i can't be arse to find a reference.
I have a master degree in aeuronautical engineering ,
just trust me"
A man of details I see
@@roshko321 yes indeed
3:45. Longer chain hydrocarbons have higher boiling points, not lower. Thats what causes them to liquefy sooner. A lower boiling point would mean they stay gaseous for longer as the temp cools down.
Love the "realistic" animations/renders!
Mustard channel
Mustard channel
Mustard channel
Mustard channel
Mustard channel
Clearly, nuclear powered planes are the answer! How could you have missed this, it's got incredible energy density and volume.
Oh wait.
Turns out that's a biological issue more than an engineering one. Humans just need to learn how to not be such wimps about radiation.
Imagine all the nuke fly all over US
@@whatelseison8970 well there’s also a problem if one ever gets hijacked o.O
@@whatelseison8970 yeah people are making things difficult for us engineers. Given that only 11% of people in the world use air travel, them getting infertile would only help control the world population. But we need not be sad about the deaths of mutated babies because an increase in mutation at birth may someday give us a super-powered human species capable of withstanding nuclear radiation !!!
Actually, land-based nuclear power plans could provide the kind of power needed to make those fuels clean, and the fuel industry could serve as balancing for the difference in demand for every hour of the day (google "duck curve" for energy production and energy consumption curves and when they overlay). In other words, while the humans need power, they use it, when the humans don't need power, it's used to create fuel, so the nuclear reactor can be kept running at optimal settings.
I was involved in the testing of 50% Biofuels in F-22's. It works, but it is expensive (and it smells bad). One other thing to consider is that to replace all of the power from Automotive/Truck Engines by 2050 with electricity we need to be adding 1 GW of Carbon Free power every 6 days!! Maybe we should bump that up to every 5 days to account for air travel?
Roger Pelke published an article back in Sept/2019 that showed for the world to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 would require 3 nuclear power plants being brought online every 2 days. That would be starting the day after the article was published until 2050. Along with that, fossil fuelled power plants would have to be decommissioned at roughly the same pace. Or 1500 wind turbines every day until 2050. It’s interesting to see China leads the world by a substantial amount when it comes to renewable energy but on the other hand they also burn more coal than the rest of the world combined and will do so for quite some time.
How did it take me this long to find this youtube channel??? Its so dope! Reminds me why I chose to major in engineering
We are in the end game of affordable oil
Perhaps you can solve the problem
No worries if you like walking
Welcome to the club!
Welcome
Love his channel. Very clean explanations.
Because You Tube recommendations are getting crappier everday.
"hydrogen could be a future aviation fuel"
Hindenburg 2: My time has come
It's not like jet fuel is much less flammable to be fair
@@DarkPlaysThings It is SIGNIFICANTLY less flammable.
@@illuminatus1 I meant within the context of using it as a fuel. Unlike in the Hindenburg, an aircraft fuel tank isn't gonna be pumped up with enormous quantities of pure hydrogen. Of course pure hydrogen in high concentration is going to be much more flammable.
Hindenburg was a disaster in that it ended hydrogen airships. They make a huge amount of sense.
Think about it, why are you happy to travel on a big bag of highly inflammable kerosene, or a big bag of hydrogen, much safer.
Hydrogen lifts itself into the air, kerosene has to use lots of fuel to do so.
As someone that works with hydrogen, the Hindenburg's event was more to do with having flammable things entrapping hydrogen than hydrogen itself. Hydrogen is explosive with oxygen nearby, but due to how light it is, generally it'll escape right away. Hindenburg was designed to essentially trap the hydrogen and oxygen inside the balloon. And also the fabric was highly flammable to begin with. It also didn't help people were allowed to smoke near the hydrogen tanks also.
If we really are to transition to electric cars/trucks/ships, sustainable meat production and renewable energy production - this would significantly reduce the pressure on the airline industry to change. the changes mentioned above alone would bring us back in the green, and the remaining reserves would last the airline industry a while (with subsidies); so I hope governments don't become overzealous in their demands from airlines - because travel is just as important economically. Remember that currently it only accounts for 2-3%, it's best to prioritise the big contributors before coming down on the small ones
Just my two cents anyway.
“Repeated pressure cycles can lead to rapid failure“ veery nicely said!
Yeah flying pressurised hidrogen
What could go wrong?
@@entropicprinciple9276 i think he is referring to something else. lol
He could just say fatigue :)
@@entropicprinciple9276 Hans looks like he's sweating...
Are you referring to Elon Musk’s “rapid unplanned disassembly” or to sex?
Real Engineering: "Yeah this fuel is great because energy density, flashpoint, freezepoint-"
Me: "Oh cool. Then why haven't we-"
Real Engineering: "*Buuuuut it destroys the space-time continuum when breathed on, making it unsuitable for jet fuel.*"
Me: "...Oh."
Pretty sure "but" is my most used word on this channel
Relatable
@@RealEngineering heard 'but' more times than people searching for it in porn websites
Petition to get fast food restaurants to sell their used cooking oil to biofuel manufacturers:
1: cooking oil is already super common, and used en masse by fast food industries
2: most fast food restaurants currently just dispose of their cooking oil once used, so it's currently being wasted
3: as mentioned in the video, cooking oil is a great feedstock for biofuel production
Just a quick question is the 25% of carbon emissions a result of an increase of usage, or the decrease of other sources of carbon emissions?
Both
It is predominately the result of playing statistical percentage games for the sake of false virtue. There will never be ZERO emissions, not as long as humans inhabit the planet. This video is the type of nonsense that got us to where we are today. There is nothing wrong with planes using Jet A or ships using fuel oil. The biggest problems are automobiles and power generation. You can't make anything without electrical power, including all the shit they claim represents renewable energy.
Mostly a decrease of everything else. All other sectors have some clear ways of reducing or even completely eliminating their emissions, aviation does not.
@@theprofessorfate6184 If you have a problem with automobiles, stop being a hypocrite and stop driving. Fossil Fuels are uniquely beneficial to human life and flourishing, which is more important than some random species bugs getting replaced by others.
Humans have been emitting carbon since we discovered fire. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions to a level the earth can reasonably manage without drastic changes to the climate. As such, throwing around percentages is not helpful. Aggregate numbers are what we need to track. If aviation makes up 25% of emissions, but emissions are 80% reduced overall, that’s a big win. Most energy usage by humanity can be decarbonized, some niche uses cases can’t. We need to understand if aviation can be one of those exceptions.
"The plane industry is on a brink of a crisis" *again*
My thoughts exactly. There's always a crisis in aviation.
Has there every been a time when an aviation crisis wasn't looming?
@@danyala.1659 well to be fair, aviation was never a great long-term idea.
Planes either use too much fuel, emit too much pollution, uses too much materials to produce, and other such stuff.
They deserve it.
Taxpayers should bail them out
The visuals are incredible in this video on top of the (as always) great explanation of the topic.
I often just listen to the audio on these videos while I'm doing the dishes or other chores. It sounds like I'm going to have to block off some time to sit down and actually watch it as well.
going from 2% to 25% sounds really scary, but if the total amount goes down, obviously the ratio will shift significantly. What's the estimation of actual output in 2050, instead of ratio?
Triple, though that was pre-COVID. Who knows now.
2% underplays its impact though. Due to altitude, its impact on warming is 2-3 times more than the raw emissions. It's on a completely unsustainable trajectory, and ignoring it because it's not too big today will just land us in the same problem that ignoring global warming for the past 50 years has - it gets much harder to change an industry the bigger it is, and the less time you have to do it. Better to slowly shift aviation starting yesterday than wait for it to be huge problem before acting.
@@Yaotzin86 triple also assumes the pilot shortage gets reversed big time!
One thing I've heard about is mixing hydrogen with Ammonia - would love to see more about that on this channel.
I think the only thing you would get is NH5 wich is unstable and would go back to just beeing NH3 and H2
@@curium9622 eh, I'm no chemist so I dunno. But give it a google. There are companies, including Japan's TDK, persuing this right now. So I think there's probably something there.
@@adamlytle2615 i think its about using the hydrogen from the amonia instead of generating it by electolysis
@@curium9622 well, ammonia is already produced by combining hydrogen and nitrogen. The feedstock hydrogen still needs to be from renewable energy powered hydrolysis for it to matter.
Anyway, in the aviation context, I think the idea is that they can modify existing jet engine designs to use ammonia as fuel, or even ammonia somehow blended with additional hydrogen and it wouldn't have carbon emissions.
www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a33768744/ammonia-as-jet-fuel/
@@adamlytle2615 Wärtsilä is testing ammonia as marine fuel.
www.wartsila.com/media/news/30-06-2020-world-s-first-full-scale-ammonia-engine-test---an-important-step-towards-carbon-free-shipping-2737809
Just thinking out loud: If the on-going installation of wind and solar farms eventually results in significant over-supply of electricity, will there not be a way of using the surplus energy to turn plastic waste into fuel?
You can turn CO2 and water into fuel, if you have energy to spare. You can also just sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and put the carbon in the ground somewhere.
It's not worth it at the moment, energy is too expensive.
@
Was meinst Du, wie die Länder, die in der Höhe Getreide anwachsen müssen, vom reduzierten cozwei Gehalt der Luft sehr leiden werden.
Beispiel hier in Bolivien, wo die arme Bevölkerung auf den Altiplano leben muss, wegen geringer werdenden Lebensraum pro Bevölkerung.
Gerade werden die Lebensmittel mit Lastwagen nach LaPaz und Umgebung eingeführt. Die Treibstoffkosten haben sich kürzlich fast verdoppelt, so dass eine lokale Lebens-
mittelproduktion nun hier nötig wird. Dazu is die Menge vom Kohlendioxyd in der Luft zu wenig, weil sie ja mit der Luftdichte in der Höhe abnimmt, nicht die Konzentration(~0.04%), wohl verstanden. Sondern die Menge per cm³, die wesentlich ist für die Photosynthese!
Was meinst Du ,bestimmt die Waldgrenze? Regen, nein, Temperatur, auch nicht, co2 absolute Menge ja!
Co2 der Luft zu entnehmen ist das Schlimmste, dass die uns antun können, denk doch nach.
Sequester Co2 is not just stupid but a crime towards the growing poor population living here, who cannot afford to pay for the growing fuel costs.
A certain consequence of fossile fuel reduction.
Besides co2 dissolved in deeper seawater is converted into hydromethane ice by bacteria in huge amounts along the coasts.
Depends on logistics. If the power plant is located near a city. Alot are in remote areas.
there are many companies who have or are in the process of turning trash into cleaner versions of gasoline and jet fuel. i was just watching a video on it actually. look up trash gasification and see what comes up for you
3:50 The longer chain hydrocarbons are distilled on the lower stage due to their higher boiling point, not lower..
Thanks for this. Comprehending that part, the logic made no sense.
He obviously meant to say some variant of "lower condensation point". It threw me too though, for a moment.
Yeah, I had to pause the video and think hard to make sure I wasn't having a brain fault, which I would have been more likely than Sam making a mistake.
Many of the images shown when discussing hydrogen, are actually liquid oxygen carts and tanks.
Luckily, the gas was leaking absolutely everywhere.
I doubt he could had found better footage, and well liquid oxygen does behave somewhat similarly.
Came here to say that 👍
Great eye!
As a former Aerospace engineer, this is a surprisingly good video. It reminds me of my chemistry professor in the 1970's telling us that "We are dam fools for burning such a valuable non-renewable resource like oil and it should be reserved for aviation and feedstocks". We now have viable BEV's for much of ground transportation so should heed his words.
"Something weird is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control. People are acting weird, saying the room feels like it's spinning... I'm not sure what goes on here, but I don't like it."
Sounds like a document I would find in my Control videogame.
Can we just give thanks there's no background music, so if some impatient person were to listen at 2x it didn't sound like a tweakers house party
But their literally is background music. I agree that their should be no background music.
@@davidwarford3087 its quiet
The music is quiet enough that listening at 2x speed is very pog (personal experience)
it was so inoffensive I didn't even notice
Thank you editors :D
later ur a heretic. Only 1.5x, pathetic
This is an extreme technicality nit-pick, but the goal of jet fuel is not to "raise the temperature to raise the pressure". This is because as you know, the Brayton cycle operates with isobaric combustion.
So you have to understand that during the design phase of an engine, the jet fuel selected raises the isobaric pressure in the combustion chamber to a value that depends on the choice of fuel. Some type of fuel will give you a lower isobaric pressure and others will give you a higher value. But once the engine is designed and ready for flight, that fuel consideration has been settled.
@@satmohabir7175 Why do people feel the need to invent nonsense about things they have zero knowledge about?
Not a single statement in this comment is correct.
Combustion pressure in jets is determined by the compressor and the turbine alone. The type of fuel has no effect on this, just on how much fuel is needed to get to the desired temperature. Pressure does not increase as fuel is burned in a jet engine. It actually decrease slightly through the combustor (by 3-4%).
I'm an aerospace engineer and was the TA in jet propulsion class in grad school, but if you want to check that for yourself any book on gas turbines will tell you the same.
“Wake up babe, Real Engineering just uploaded”
There is no babe, is there? 🧐
@@dannycv82 He's talking to the Tesla
2:48 no matter how correct the terminology may be, i don’t like the idea of calling frozen jet fuel “wax”
Wax is just a solid fuel.
that thought just makes me feel queasy
So? Just because you don’t like it isn’t enough to change the terminology.
I'd be pretty uneasy if solids were forming in my fuel tanks at altitude!
Candle wax is a solid fuel as well.
I think instead of looking at ways of making planes greener, we should massively limit their use around the world. High speed trains can replace a lot of the shorter routes around the world, and most domestic flights should be replaced with them (especially in the us). It's the same thing over and over again, we are trying to invent new ways to fix a flawed system which will just never work out.
All I got from this is we are staying on kerosene for a very, very long time.
For the big airlines sure. Wendover did a video on how electric planes can work (th-cam.com/video/aH4b3sAs-l8/w-d-xo.html) in a way that as someone who lives in the UK never crossed my mind before.
That airlines in large countries use very small aircraft to cover routes of just a couple of hundred miles or less.
Not something we use in the UK but for the US, Canada, Australia etc is clearly more prevalent.
Sure it looks like only a small change but I bet the environmental benefit is larger than you first think.
You seem to really like talking about biofuels and seem to take issue with how the feed stock is created. How about a video on vertical farming or hydroponics/aeroponics to explore those as alternatives for feed stock?
both of those are way, way more resource intensive
That could be a solution but it comes down to the fact that we are literally burning our food supply in a future where food stability is not guaranteed. I don't think biofuels are the answer
@@boo3427 That not entirely true. Biofuels can be made out of wasted and unused waste like corn stocks weeds, the grass you cut, and cow shit.
Completely infeasible without fusion power. Even then you have to find a way to deal with all the heat, which is a huge problem in urbanized areas already.
Producing complex e-fuels is *incredibly* efficient compared to this idea. And producing complex e-fuels is incredibly inefficient!
I'm always amazed at your skill to not talk about nuclear at all
I feel like for commercial planes, volumetric energy density is much less important than energy density by unit mass
The only thing they care about is to have as little weight as possible, cause it makes the flight less cost effective, they wouldn't mind filling the tank more, if the weight did not increase
The only possible way volumetric energy density is important to commercial flights is the maximum range, but that's often far less relevant
There is a certain amount of carbon that the worlds ecosystem can naturally absorb without adding to climate change right? If the other industries cut back we may get to a point where the air industry can continue to use fossil fuels for awhile because it’s all offset by nature?
Theoretically anything added has some effect. Anything added will need to be offset elsewhere. It's possible the effects will become negligible at some level, but with how bad we already are, we need to hit net negative, not let planes do it because it's not that much.
Thank you!
Also funnily enough if we get global warming under control after some time we will HAVE TO burn carbon to prevent the earth from freezing or atmospheric oxygen levels to get too high and make fires more frequent!( Like in the carboniferous era I think oxygen was like 30 percent)
@@entropicprinciple9276 Not really. We just need to let nature do it's thing, and let forest fires burn themselves out.
Cilmate is always changing even you put zero carbon in the atmosphere
@@Kyle-gw6qp Of course!
Who doesn't like spontaneous catastrophic almost inextinguishable fires?
Yet another incredibly well produced documentary. Your channel keeps hitting these home runs and I forecast thousands of people bookmarking your TH-cam channel. I've been sharing your most recent aviation videos with most of my pilot friends and the positive feedback has been significant.
Keep up the good work buddy!
Please look into the Embraer Praetor jet. I'm sure there's something interesting to cover in a video with that one.
And your "but" is still my favorite on TH-cam!
Cheers!
can we get a video on the YF-23
That would actually be so good. YF-23 was legendary
Yf23 with thrust vectoring
@@shinchan-F-urmom but would it need thrust vectoring at all? It was nearly as maneuverable as the f22, and adding thrust vectoring couldve changed its weight and flight characteristics in a negative manner.
Oh yeah please!!!
"Converted to run on bioethanol"
--> remembers last video mentioning the production of bioethanol to be an energy negative process
_from corn_ is the core part of that
This video did a bad job of clarifying or explaining.
But unlike cars or electricity as a whole, aviation can’t truly go carbon neutral unless some major leaps in battery or hydrogen fuel tech are made. So bio-ethanol isn’t _as bad_ of an idea
Sure, but that just means you have to view it as an energy storage technology, rather than an energy production one. The energy density of hydrocarbon fuels might still make it the best solution (or least-bad one) for aviation.
THANK YOU
I absolutely do not see aviation moving to use Hydrogen as a fuel. GL airbus... although I doubt they are actually betting on it either, im fairly sure its just marketing that they said that at all.
It is not just harder to store and less useful energy density than gas but it is far more complex to store and transfer. It is far more prone to failure and catastrophic failure at that too, imagine a modern plane which is built to expand contract and move, now you have cryogenic pressurized fuel on board, which is likely to be stored in the fuselage... yeah I have serious doubts. Very very unlikely to see it used widely on commercial aircraft. A couple prototypes and one-offs perhaps but not more than that.
The volumetric density of information in this video is awesome!
Higher than hydrogen :)
I guess it is time to build some high speed rail in the USA. That would remove quite a lot of unnecessary flights.
When you build a 600 mph train let me know.
Lots of studies on the effects of drilling tunnels under the surface of the entire country.
@@sferrin2 200 mph would be more than enough. Even though trains final speed overall is slower, the have a lot of time savings in comparison to airplains.
not when you consider that the country is 4000 km across
@@montiro8999 US is a much bigger country with it's population centres more separate from each other.
Metal hydrides could greatly increase the volumetric energy density of hydrogen and increase safety but there might be issues with releasing the hydrogen from its bond fast enough to keep up with the engines in traditional combustion turbojets.
Wait, this isn't Wendover?? Thought it would've been because of the planes hha
Wendover peaks around the corner.... "Real Engineering, why didn't you call me?"
I wish the room would stop spinning.
I'm looking forward to the blended wing episode!
I love how scrupulously you alluded the challenges with different fuels, like the splitting of water molecule wherein researchers are trying to figure out ways to incorporate solar energy and replicate photosynthesis, among others. So every consumer should take the responsibility of what they are giving off because engineers are in need of cooperation.
Or where does the energy required come from
Id assume if he went into detail about every study beeing conducted about every fuel type discussed we would be sitting here for a few days
I work in the industry on the engineering side. My money is on efuels long term with biofuels and other blends as a bridge. Ultimately, we may be lucky enough too have a world with electricity "to cheap to meter." If we get there, efuels become the obvious choice with unparalleled energy density and,nine of the land use issues. From a governance perspective, it will take carbon pricing tax policy on airline tickets to incentivise the shift away from fossil derived kerosene.
my money is on Molten Salt Reactors making the fuels(among other chemicals) from their high heat(800+) reactors unless SAFIRE takes over heh
Just regulate it. Just like care fuels now need to be a percentage ethanol.
Just increase the percentage yearly.
And as cars move to electric, it already frees up a lot of biofuel capacity that would have gone into gasoline.
You have to look at these things from a macro perspective and things look a lot more feasable.
I feel like you live in a dream world -- Air Travel isn't going somewhere unless a competing transcontinental or transoceanic rapid form of transit pops up. The Airline industry will pay whatever the cost of Jet Fuel is and that price will be passed on to its Customers -- the airline gives zero fucks about it. If the cost gets too high -- the customers will complain to their governments and either the taxation on the airline industry will be lowered or the industry as a whole may even be subsidized to compensate. So, the airlines aren't in trouble - the customers are.
There's a project planned in Iceland, where they want to put a synthetic fuels factory on top of a volcanic vent that spews out concentrated CO2 all day, every day. That would let them skip the energy intensive process of drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere, thereby reducing the cost of the fuel noticeably. It also helps that volcanic areas are chock full of free geothermal energy, of course. Not a solution that's viable at a global scale, but I found it interesting and creative nevertheless.
10:04 - “Something weird is going on in this office. The clock is going out of control. People are acting weird, saying it feels like the room is spinning… I’m not sure what is goes on here, but I don’t like it.”
Nice touch, Brian!
We have a generation that was taught "green is good" and governments that will just do everything with the word "green" in it for a bump in rating. Currently to make biofuel, we would need to put in more energy compare to the amount of energy we would get from burning the final product, which translate to unsustainable. Plus it damage the environment and take up valuable water resources.
Also when saying the Aviation industry CO2 emission will take up to 25% of total emission. Ok 25% of how much ? Percentages without the context are misleading and serve nothing but to push a narrative. For example, 2% of 1250 is 25 and 25% of 100 is also 25. Meaning the value doesn't change. Just saying 25% doesn't mean anything unless you are giving something compare it to. Percentages isn't a value, it is a ratio.
Percentages actually make sense here. The point is that other sources are going down in CO2 production and airplanes will become a much larger contributor. The actual numbers don’t really matter because we’re probably going to be trying to limit CO2 production for a long long time.
Using biofuels might make sense for applications where the energy density of hydrocarbons is absolutely necessary (e.g. aviation, rockets, certain heating applications,...) even if it is hugely inefficient. The question is whether the application is worth the energy cost, not whether it is absolutely efficient in terms of energy produced.
Concrete, beef, and stainless steel have much larger impacts than aviation. Having said that, it's obviously a great idea to minimise the industry's environmental woes.
Grass fed regenerative grazing for beef is carbon neutral.
@@RayleighCriterion what percentage of beef farming does that represent?
@@erythuria Currently very, very small, no doubt.
I remember when I was like 10 I went to a city council meeting with my mom and they discussed how jet fuel, if released into the environment, can cause birth defects and autism in newborns due to the high lead content. Now, that was 2015, and it looks like we have improved every since then.
Now, Gulf Stream just flew the g800 to Mach .96 (740 mph) using 100% sustainable fuel. That’s a big step for commercial aviation and I feel that we may use that even for fighter jets and other military aircraft.
Does this even matter.
If we get it to a point it's the majority of a relatively tiny footprint, that's still fine.
Translating 3% to 25% means total emissions are but an 8th of today, in 2050. That's an amazing success, not a doomsday notification
No it will not be an 8th of today because air traffic is increasing quickly and will be much larger in 2050.
@@Gryffins90 sure, planes will hold a higher percent, but they won’t be emitting as much as cars. Also planes like trains are a lot more carbon efficient. Like busses. You would agree that 1 bus is better than 20 cars
@@TheWizardGamez Planes aren't better than cars per passenger kilometer, even if you drive solo. Flying is, of course, less energy efficient than rolling on wheels, and its emissions cause more warming due to their altitude.
@@Gryffins90 so with that being the case and cars moving to electric, the grid being largely renewable, does that matter?
Until we either make renewable planes or make a conscious decision to not fly, we can either worry about it or fix everything around it to make it a problem to remain to be solved.
It's become fanatical to address everything at once. Maybe this one we just accept and the rest we can currently solve we do well instead.
I do not oppose that volumetric energy density is important. However, if you are taking all your weight into the sky, specific energy density is even more important. That's why batteries can't send planes flying but hydrogen may.
Batteries can power airplanes, but probably not jetliners as we’ve known them. The ultra low cost of electrical power compared to any hydrocarbons will make battery powered planes inevitable for short haul flights on smaller aircraft, in the 20-40 passenger range. Think Denver to Cheyenne, or Phoenix to Flagstaff. Without some pretty amazing breakthroughs in battery tech I don’t see them scaling up beyond small commuter planes, but in that market they’re likely to completely replace fossil fuel powered planes.
You're right, although volumetric density is important when talking about how planes that are already used today could be retrofitted to something else. It's not that important when talking about the general ability of fuels to be used to fly; I think the alternative plane design he'll discuss in a future episode is exactly an elaboration of this principle.
Nah man, volume density is extremely important. batteries are worse in both mass and volumetric energy density than jet fuel.
another reason batteries are not viable yes is because of the way turbofans and turbojets work.
batteries are good for turboprops but turboprops are not good for high speeds. the low energy density(volume)
means more space is needed and more space means larger planes and larger planes are bad as they are heavier and well, larger.
@@fenrir834 "batteries are good for turboprops", would you please elaborate? Is it due to preferred RPM range or power output range? Or, is it "batteries" or actually "electric motos" and why? Thanks
@@sunspot42 Batteries can power anything and they ARE powering everything right now. It's just that asking Mike Tyson to run 100 meters competing with actual Olympians is not the path on which we should put our hopes. Hope you get my idea, batteries will eat up too much weight allowance both in ground vehicles and airborne ones. Passenger planes need to leave extra in the tank as a safety guard and this just makes the range even less practical.
4:20 "by excluding the hydrocarbons with longer chains with longer chains, and therefore excludes *lower* boiling point molecules from the mix."
Should this not be higher boiling point molecules which have a higher freezing point? i.e. the hydrocarbons at the bottom have a higher boiling point and higher freezing point? There are then less of these in Jet A-1 which leads it to have a lower freezing point and is better suited to colder climates?
Question, do we actually need to be carbon neutral or is it okay if we just reduce it and go below a certain percentage?
And another different topic is that many of these new innovations are a massive step back in innovation and it's not even being considered. Making plane travel unavailable for a lot of people due to rising fuel cost, electric cars having a range of jackshit and abysmal charging times, while coal power plants are not being shut down, instead them being built.
Sure you might think, you're willing to sacrifice some of these things, but that's just you, not the whole population. And if we need to sacrifice so much, why aren't such huge improvements being made on all sectors. It feels pretty much like governments want normal every day people to take the blame and all the consequences of THEIR bad decisions. What are we paying the ridicously high taxes for if basically nothing is being done?
Coal plants are the worst idea. Not just for enviroment but also for our health
I think on a channel about engineering you should be approaching problems from alternative angles instead of just bitching about how much worse the initial approach is, yeah you’re right a lot of these proposed ideas are a step back but that’s because the r&d wasn’t there in the first place, if you had prioritized any technology over another then you’ll refine it, can’t do that when the status quo stays the same in the air industry since it’s inception p much
@@Number1FanProductions As an engineer you're studying to think about every aspect. And since there's an alternative solution, it's not really complaining. Unfortunately politics come into play, or should I say lobbying, that's why things don't get done. Politics and human greed has always been the main factors why we don't advance. You think electric cars are a new thing that didn't exist before? It's been here almost as long as the ICEs.
2,500 coal power plants all over the world are responsible for 20% of the global co2 emissions, while 1,100,000,000 (1.1 billion) passenger cars are responsible for only 9% (I've read sources where it says it's even less). But politicians in the EU are more concerned about banning ICEs instead of solving the problem. Why? Because that gives them money.
It's not bitching about how things are, it's about uncovering the greedy pieces of shits that we call politicians and not let them fool us.
Let's imagine that you can only buy electric cars from now on. The whole grid system would probably collapse, because it couldn't handle everyone charging their cars. The infrastructure is not ready for charging electric cars right now, you need to wait for hours to charge them. Imagine what will happen when everyone is supposed to drive electric vehicles only. You won't be able to get to work. A lot of people can't even charge at home, those who live in apartment complexes for example. We need a solution quickly, not in fucking 100 years time.
@@SgtKanyo you will just invent a new version of a virus and make everyone work from home.
We do have to be carbon neutral. The reason why improvements aren't being massively invested in is that massive oil firms and politicians are exploiting people who think like you in order to avoid having to change or shut down their massively profitable (near term) ventures, because by the time any of this became a problem for them they'd be dead anyway.
Thank god that I have the minimum requirement knowledge that made me able to understand this
Saw a great comment below...how about efficient inter-city rail links and high-speed rail for longer trips. The US can improve and expand infrastructure that work best domestically without the need to take international travel standards into account. Airlines can collaborate with rail providers along with ride-share companies to offer a seamless experience for travellers. While a bit of premium may be involved, imagine a routine, door-to-door travel itinerary option that is far less expensive than a current First-Class ticket......Seems do-able for heavy traffic corridors on the NE Coast of the US.....(?)
This stuff is still very interesting even though i'm not an engineer 😅
People think engineering is boring, but our whole world is engineered. Think of all the engineers who needed to work for years to design each item in your house. Materials have to be specifically manufactured to purpose, then other engineers and designers use those materials to build things like microchips, batteries, etc that still OTHER engineers put into their products to sell to you.
It makes you wonder how many people were at least indirectly involved in the design of things like a smartphone. All the little design features that had to be discovered over the past few centuries... from how electricity works, digital logic, the transistor, batteries and chemical properties of lithium, light emitting diodes, plastics, tempered/doped glass... hell even the aluminum in the frame wasn't discovered until 1825, and wasn't widely used until after the Hall-Héroult process was invented in 1886.
The process of invention required for the things we take for granted today is... almost fractal in nature.
@@Falcrist what’s worrying is the number of people that prefer to follow the Kardashians or love island out number people that have an interest in educational content. Social influencers will inherit the earth.
So, after going around with all these new technologies we finally arrived back to the simplest and the best solution for the future planes - currently used jet fuel from the crude oil.
Which won't last forever.
The problem isn’t that it won’t last forever, the problem is the amount of environmental destruction it’s doing.
@@mdoerkse there processes available now that we can make crude oil from algae which depending on the variety used can grow just about anywhere with some water be it sea water, fresh water, or. sewage waste water. process it using the fuel it makes or renewable energy and its carbon neutral and can make drop in fuels on demand.
@@peteradaniel if we decarbonize every other parts of industry, the airplanes pollution will be something negligible for the planet. Even of its use tripple, it would still be a minor contribution. And current crude oil stock will last centuries
@@codeartha it’s not even that. It’s the amount society decarbonises as well. If it’s affordable for oil companies to continue searching for crude oil fields the less importance it has in transportation across society. Also the cultural impact of individual decarbonisation will put immense financial pressure on those industries which still can’t, with governments to fines people’s environmental consciousness deciding to find alternative modes of transport.
Edit: his 25% estimate at the beginning is important to how the aviation industry sells itself in the future.
always love the references included. keep up the great work
If airplanes are currently 2-3% of carbon emissions, making everything else carbon neutral would mean a 98-97% drop in carbon emissions. I think we can all agree that would be a great outcome and so maybe we should focus on the lower hanging fruit first.
Yep it is mostly for completionism sake (you know - at this point even carbon neutral isn’t enough - carbon negative will be needed).
But you can take on other industries much stronger so that you can still afford to use fast travel options.
Seems like the easiest answer is to use biodiesel with insulated heated tanks. Probably using an inboard diesel generator to make electricity to run electric propellers rather than insulating and heating long fuel lines to several outboard engines. Would also make it easy to use diesel engine waste heat to warm the fuel too.
Was sad that pre-heating the fuel before using it wasn't mentioned in the video, since this is commonly done already when burning heavy fuel oils on an commercial scale today.
Wrong, the easiest answer is do nothing.
Oh my god the quality of your videos has gone up so much. My mind was blown during that chalkboard segment.
Would be great with a detailed video on biofuels and biodiesels. I know there is FAME, HVO, but its hard to get a sense of the differences between them all and would appreciate to get your view on these including their full life cycle impact.
Real Engineering already did a lazy, kindergarten level analysis on biofuels. He has no understanding of the industry or the biofuel alternatives.
This information helped me to appreciate my Dad a bit more. He used to be a Senior Aeronautical Engineer and designed every jet cockpit and fuselage made for the Air Force from 1954-1972. I never thought about just what the fuselage did. I thought it just held the gasoline but this showed it does a lot more. Thank you.
I wouldn't gloss over the difference between military and commercial regarding energy density so easily. Especially when you don't fill your tanks and fuel is a major cost driver, you want high energy per mass, not volume. Every bit of extra weight means extra fuel means even more extra weight.
On top if that, this turns the argument upside down. Long carbon chains are compact, but carbon is heavy and burns less energetic. Short chains take more volume, but have higher hydrogen content, burning hotter with less mass.
Perhaps we should bring back long distance passenger train travel.
We should be yes, very under utilized, particularly in US.
without government control Amtrak
Hyperloop
Build High Speed Rail!
@@rishavmanmohan :)))) Lol, good one!
One solution you didn’t mention was to keep using jet fuel and on the other end run direct carbon capture systems to offset the emissions. Might end up being cheaper…
yea it may work. But the problem isn't only the carbon dioxide output, there's also the problem of the finite resource of oil
It isn't going to reduce the particulates which in the video have a greater impact to global warming than CO2. not to mention they decrease air quality.
@@Stefan-jk5gx Indeed, so a mixed approach with biofuels might be best. In the long long term though space elevators combined with dozens of orbital rings will provide the fastest and cheapest travel all without burning any fuel whatsoever.
Is it true that because of the tiny size of the hydrogen atom than any containment system made of larger atoms/molecules will leave gaps through which hydrogen can escape ?
13:11
_Hydrogen cannot be used in existing planes_
*Tu-155:* Am I a joke to you?
Was hoping you'd talk about algal jet fuels since they're the biofuels with the best environmental footprint and actually have a chance of working someday
And fuels from waste, electrofuels, ... there are many options. Most of the government and big corporations are part of the oil cartel that Schlumberger created and have no interest in having a viable alternative. And they have a big influence on the media and people's opinions.
I suspect these (or nuclear electricity derived efuels made from carbonised hydrogen) will be the way forward for high-density fuel requirements like aircraft. Hydrogen is just too dangerous for general transportation and battery aviation will always have severaly constrained range (that's not a problem for commuter flights but a big deal for regional/longer flights)
@@miscbits6399 Like I said, what everyone is repeating barely makes sense compared to all the options that exist. Hydrogen has many ways to be carried safely, electrofuels can be produced by other viable electric sources such as high power renewable energy in microgrids or (micro)hydropower, there are other ways to power electric transportation besides low energy density batteries, second generation biofuels are viable, current engines can work with clean and/or renewable fuels...
@Vitor de Lima The only SAFE way to carry hydrogen is to tack carbon atoms onto the molecules (preferably extracted from the atmosphere). The question is how you go about that.
The problem with oil as fuel isn't the oil. It's that we're putting CO2 into the atmosphere significantly faster than it can be scrubbed out again because we're burning fossil fuiels at around 120,000 times the rate they were originally created. The inevitable result of such action isn't sea level rise - that's just a minor side effect - it's an extinction level event on Permian scales when acidic rain kills off all the land vegetation and causes mass sea die offs, causing atmospheric oxygen levels to drop to around 10-12% for a few hundred thousand years
@@miscbits6399 Keep repeating the same lies in a loop.
I appreciat that "bars" is being used for pressure in this video instead of those confusing units like pascal or psi
I think we should skip altogether hydrogen. Besides all of the disadvantages, I wouldn't fly with a 700bar tank near me.
Hydrogen can be stored on tape. A company called plasma kinetics invented the way to do it.
@@ramentabetai1266 dont make me laugh
when aviation becomes 25% of the total emission, that means humanity has decreased it's total emission by around 88% to 92%, considering it's only 2% to 3% currently.
I say, we've done enough by that time haha
The issue with that is that humanity as a whole is already so far behind when it comes to becoming carbon neutral. We're feeling the warming effects of the past 50 years of carbon emissions and even if we completely stopped all carbon emissions today the planet would continue to warm for another 30 years without technology actively recapturing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
@RealEngineering, please make a detailed video on "The Bouchain Power plant" - world’s most efficient combined-cycle power plant located in Bouchain, France.
Also make a video on Thermal Power plants and how to increase their efficiency.
even if its 25% the total size of carbon world wide would be so much lower i dont think this would really even matter. like even in current air travel 4x's and the there are these massive cuts that lets that be 25% of total world carbon output that still means carbon is cut by more then 50% well over what anything is suggesting is required.... seems kinda pointless for the time being.
"World's carbon dioxide emissions"
By that I assume you mean word's *transportation* carbon dioxide emissions and not the *total* carbon dioxide emissions?
No. Its just using extremely optimistic (that is, bullshit) estimates for all other industries going close to net 0.
Obviously completely deluded, but it makes for a great headline figure.
@@aenorist2431 It's really not deluded to assume that most carbon intensive industries will have died or gone neutral by 2050. At this rate, as long as lobbyists don't siphon additional handouts to oil companies, that's quite a reasonable estimate.
@@planefan082 20% of the world's carbon emissions come from coal power plants. That's ~2TW. Replacing - and more, energy use continually goes up - 2TW of electricity production in 30 years by non-CO2 emitting solutions is the goal.
Actually believing that this is what is going to happen, that's deluded.
A typical nuclear power plant is 2 reactors of 1300MW each, so the best scenario is ~2600MW and a 5 year build time.
The 2% of the current emission is true, transportation is the largest emission group, larger than electricity production, around 30% of the total emission is from transportation. Planes also go far and not really ideal as transportation to begin. Add that no option to limit its emission, it is 100% hydrocarbon based.
Of course there is a tricky stuff related to mineral oil usage: since we use fractional distillation to produce different parts of the crude oil, we really not in the option to not use some part of it. This is why diesel will be used until we use oil, even if it is not a great fuel, but 20%-25% of the crude oil is diesel, so not using diesel would just mean more crude oil usage and the issue of dealing with the unused diesel.
@@planefan082 Handouts? Governments already tax the fuck out of fuels and push more and more regulation thus creating " an uncertain future" and your issue is with oil companies? Funny that.
Another great video. I love that you look at the matter from different perspectives. Thank you so much for your videos.
High speed rail is the answer to planes for most trips.
Planes take a lot of energy to get off the ground. If you eliminate the need to fly, you can decrease energy consumption by 2/3.
Yep. That seems the really sensible solution. If all flights within continents were replaced by high speed rail and the only flights were intercontinental, would that make a big impact on emissions ?
Yo that's so communist of you to propose such a thing!
The real problems with rail in the us is our urban layout is more diffuse, once you leave the station you still need a car to get around and the paths for rail go through existing development especially in the northeast. Europe and Asia were reduced to rubble by ww2 so it wasn't a problem to build there.
*Laughs in Real Estate Prices*
@@cpob2013 Yes but the same can be said of airports. Use electric cars for any journeys but high speed rail for very long distances if you are in a hurry instead of air travel.
Trains could make a comeback. Especially high-speed ones.
But what about international travel?
@@strikereureka5081 Time to bring back the ocean liners xd.
@@aristotelisentertainment279 WAY too long
Your videos are completely enlightening. Thanks for them. I will look at your application to which you refer.
"... many of them are being converted to run on bio-ethanol." Stated in context like it's a good thing after just making another video about Biofuels and their dangers.
u should differentiate between corn and sugarcane ethanol
There are also waste generated biofuels
In that video, I believe that a jet fuel replacement was mentioned as one of the few legitimate uses for biofuels.
I'm guessing you stopped the video in a rage and didn't watch the rest, because it was addressed...
@@bimblinghill Rage? No. Though when he said that line I'll admit I lost all interest, left a comment, and moved onto something else.
If the goal is to be carbon-neutral, the obvious solution seems to be carbon-capture using renewable energy. It could be cost effective once at scale. And the mandate could be "you can't burn any fuel you didn't already pull out of the sky."
Unfortunately, the tech is not ready yet. That's why Elon Musk put price money up for the person who invents a better carbon sequestration method
It could work, but aviation would have to remove 2-3x more carbon than it emits, to counteract its other emissions and the altitude it puts them at. In terms of global warming, a tonne of CO2 at sea level is not equivalent to a tonne of CO2 at aircraft cruising altitude.
@@erikpoephoofd Granted. But I think the video made some assumptions that whatever replacement method is chosen will require a few years of R&D, tons of money of investment, and a glut of cheap renewable energy. With those, carbon capture could easily become the cost effective replacement, and it wouldn't even require an overhaul of the planes and infrastructure itself, making it probably the cheaper option.
@@Android-ng1wn Wellll, very long term it would have to be something else (who knows what, maybe they'll have onboard fusion reactors by then). But in the short term if you could remove additional CO2 as compensation that would work out, because we have/will have a huge excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. "Remove more CO2 than emitted to compensate for warming from particulates" should work out fine, if the economics are least bad (they're all awful).