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No Oil= No Aircraft?

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Khandro | 14:44 Tue 08th Dec 2015 | Technology
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With an estimated 50 years only of the world's oil left (BP stat.), though I can see maybe a form of alternative ground transport may be found; electric cars for example.
Nothing can surely produce the power required to fly any sort of viable aircraft and yet we seem to behave as if flight will continue forever, as we consider building and extending airports.
How could this form of transport possibly prevail?
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Surely they could power an aircraft with hydrogen, which can be obtained from water.
There is plenty of coal left and aircraft fuel can be made from coal. Alternatively hydrocarbon fuel can be made from carbon dioxide and water using electricity(solar?) as an energy source.
Biofuel has already been used for aircraft and it has been approved since 2011. So this would be one option to oil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel
So book your package holiday in 2066 with confidence, just choose which urn you prefer.
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A jumbo jet uses around 5,000 gallons (almost 19,000 liters) of fuel to take off and climb to cruising altitude.

jomifl; To borrow your phrase from another thread; "are you seriously postulating" with thousands of such flights globally taking place per day, this quantity of fuel could be produced from biofuel?
It is always being estimated that here is just x years of oil left, and then the incentive of running out spurs exploration activity and more reserves are found.

Electric cars are a mistake as we are already wondering how to find enough energy to power our existing demands without putting transport on that demand also. A few as novelty can be coped with, not mass switch-over.

Other liquid propellants can be created. Unsure in what quantity. But necessity is a great concentrator of the mind, and of science funding. Maybe we humans will all be transporting Star Trek fashion sooner than we imagine :-)
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/about.html

British engineering at its best.
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Togo; They may be efficient, but they still are using fossil fuel. it is the sheer amount of energy required to lift off that is the main factor, once the jumbo-jet (see above) gets off and to altitude it only requires about 5 gallons per mile to actually fly and even this becomes less as it becomes lighter by burning its own fuel.
when i was at school (more years go than i care to remember), there was "40 years of oil left"
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bednobs; That would have been correct given the knowledge of the time, but more sources were discovered and there may be a few more, but extracting it will become costly and difficult.
I have two teenage grandsons and it looks to me as though they will see the oil run out within their lifetimes.
The only good aspect is that those iniquitous evil-doing petrol billionaires in the middle East will be back to camel driving.
Solid propellants are either "composites" composed mostly of large, distinct macroscopic particles or single-, double-, or triple-bases (depending on the number of primary ingredients), which are homogeneous mixtures of one or more primary ingredients. Composites typically consist of a mixture of granules of solid oxidizer (examples: ammonium nitrate, ammonium perchlorate, potassium nitrate) in a polymer binder (binding agent) with flakes or powders of: energetic compounds (examples: RDX, HMX), metallic additives (examples: Aluminium, Beryllium), plasticizers, stabilizers, and/or burn rate modifiers (iron oxide, copper oxide). Single-, double-, or triple-bases are mixtures of the fuel, oxidizer, binders, and plasticizers that are macroscopically indistinguishable and often blended as liquids and cured in a single batch. Often, the ingredients of a double-base propellant have multiple roles such as RDX which is both a fuel and oxidizer or nitrocellulose which is a fuel, oxidizer, and plasticizer. Further complicating categorization, there are many propellants that contain elements of double-base and composite propellants, which often contain some amount of energetic additives homogeneously mixed into the binder. In the case of gunpowder (a pressed composite without a polymeric binder) the fuel is charcoal, the oxidizer is potassium nitrate, and sulphur serves as a catalyst. (Note: sulphur is not a true catalyst in gunpowder as it is consumed to a great extent into a variety of reaction products such as K2S.) During the 1950s and 60s researchers in the United States developed ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP). This mixture is typically 69-70% finely ground ammonium perchlorate (an oxidizer), combined with 16-20% fine aluminium powder (a fuel), held together in a base of 11-14% polybutadiene acrylonitrile (PBAN) or Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (polybutadiene rubber fuel). The mixture is formed as a thickened liquid and then cast into the correct shape and cured into a firm but flexible load-bearing solid.

Solid fuel rocket propellant?
Khandro, the reaction engines use hydrogen.
If we keep on extending the runways the plane won't have to takeoff it could just taxi to it's destination . saving hundred of gallons of fuel ;-)
Ever since I joined the oil industry in 1980, BP have been saying this - in fact back then it was 1995 to 2000......
Apart from reserves being found, you have to factor in new emerging technologies such as the use of microwaves downhole that can increase the percentage recoverable from 30 - 33% by 5%.....35 - 38%. Secondly, shale resources, thirdly black oil - and there's oceans of that.
Khandro, I don't believe that I mentioned biofuel but it would be one of the options available.
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jomifl; Yes you did and I answered it 15:57 Tues. Do you have anything to add?
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Extending this topic further, a group outside the Paris climate conference protest by throwing fake oil around and demand a "Fossil Fuel Free Culture".
How do they think this will work ? With the oil and gas gone within some of their lifetimes, not only will there be no air transport or plastics, there will be only coal or nuclear as an option, both of which they abhor.
Why is nobody talking about the future, this seems to me to be the most important issue facing humanity?
Khandro, I do have something to add, which is that the only time that I mentioned biofuel was when I said that I hadn't mentioned it, which I hadn't. Perhaps if you hadn't been so profligate with your foreign travels there would be a few drops of oil left for your offspring to enjoy. :-(

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