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[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 92 points 8 months ago

Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what's proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can't

[-] UsernameHere@lemmy.world 68 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

We aren’t consuming batteries anywhere near the rate we consume oil and coal. Hydrogen even less than batteries.

So the amount of ships needed would still be a fraction of what we use now.

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 8 months ago

not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it'd be used plenty. same with batteries

[-] SkyeStarfall 3 points 8 months ago

While true, it's very unlikely we'll use hydrogen. It's very impractical for this use compared to alternatives

[-] DogWater@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

If you have water you have hydrogen.

there's no reason to transport hydrogen if they build infrastructure to use it as a fuel they will build a process to make it on site

[-] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 9 points 8 months ago

That is true, but part of improving our environmental impact will be decreasing that transport of raw materials, localizing chemical industries near the sources of their raw materials.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

And oil for Styrofoam. And met coal for steel.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

There's alternative processes, and if you avoid burning oil and coal for fuel you can basically do all that with the amount of oil that's in easy reach instead of using tar sands or drilling into even more difficult to reach places.

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[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works

file styrofoam under plastics

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[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Fun fact: through the 1800s coal-powered steamships mostly replaced sailing vessels for the transportation of people and time-sensitive cargo around the world. But steamships were highly inefficient and required frequent re-coaling, and locally available coal was dirtier and contained less thermal energy than the good stuff that Britain (who was doing by far most of the shipping) got from Wales and other places on their island. Because steamships could not efficiently and cheaply haul the coal that they needed around the world to restock the coaling stations, this was done instead by an enormous fleet of sailing colliers. So the "steam revolution" of the 1800s was actually a steam/wind-power hybrid. It wasn't until the advent of triple- and quadruple-expansion steam engines, turbines, and greatly improved boilers in the early 1900s that steam-powered vessels could efficiently and economically haul their own fuel. And even with that, wind-powered cargo vessels remained economically viable and operating in significant numbers right up until the start of WWII (that's II, not I).

A great read is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, about his time as a sailor aboard Moshulu (a large steel sail-powered cargo ship) in 1938-1939. Moshulu went on to star in The Godfather Part II as the ship which brings young Vito Corleone to New York, and is now weirdly enough a floating restaurant in my city of Philadelphia (I've never eaten there but I want to).

[-] roguetrick@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

These chairs they have inside it would make me not want to eat there.

[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 33 points 8 months ago

Won't someone think of the seamen?

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 8 months ago

I'm constantly thinking of seamen

[-] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Capt'n Pugwash and Seaman Stains will both be out of jobs.

[-] tomatolung@sopuli.xyz 18 points 8 months ago

Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?

[-] iSeth@lemmy.ml 11 points 8 months ago
[-] tilefan@lemm.ee 15 points 8 months ago

correct me if I'm wrong, but the United States doesn't even have oil refineries that are capable of making gasoline out of American oil? like we need the type of oil that the middle East has, so we're constantly trading oil back and forth even though we have plenty of it

I think I've heard this is true. something about politicians wanting to look environmentalist and therefore preventing the building of any more refineries

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 6 points 8 months ago

Offhand I believe we have a few that can do light oil, but most of ours wouldn’t want to change over even if offered to do so for free. Rather the reason is the US has a lot of chemical engineers and capital and so is good at refining the more challenging to deal with and cheaper to get heavy oils while selling the easy to refine and therefore more valuable light oil we dig up down in Texas to places that have more primitive refineries.

While we could retrofit all of our our refining capacity to use our oil, it doesn’t make financial sense because your spending a lot of money to switch to an more expensive input, so companies arn’t going to want to do it unless the government forces them to, and the government would only force them to if it wanted to spite everyone else and raise domestic gas prices.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

it's also to do with prices. There is a certain amount of this that is true, but the primary reason is oil prices.

[-] tilefan@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

yeah from what people are telling me, we have the capability of processing lower quality crude oil so it makes more sense to export our high quality stuff, then buy the cheap stuff since we can already refine it.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago

yeah thats pretty much the TL;DR here. It's complicated since oil is complicated and there isn't really a "insert oil" oil to talk about, there are a lot of variations of it, and a lot of ways to refine it, and a lot of different resultant products from it as well.

The fact that the modern petro industry even works is kind of insane.

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[-] seeyouatthepartyrichter@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

So what you’re saying is the companies that own those boats will lobby the government so that this never happens? Sweet.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

actually, it's already happening, why do you think LNG is such a massive export from the US right now?

[-] M600@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Now I’m waiting for the news report,

“Green Energy will cost jobs!”

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

yeah, free market economies baby, making everything more efficient!

[-] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Ships need gas inside to keep the dihydrogen monoxide at safe levels

[-] Redex68@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah but if I'm not mistaken, emissions from shipping are quite low anyways. It's something like 2-5℅ of all our emissions, so it's pretty low priority.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

all freight traffic is a pretty significant dent, i think the net total for all of transport is something like 15-20% of total emissions, so.

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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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