Nice figure with artificial cerosine: how much wind is needed to fill a plane full?

It must have been the tourists who came to the drugs and stroopwafels. On the early Friday evening for Pentecost, an endless procession of low -flying aircraft pulled over Amsterdam, each folded out with the nose wheel. Sometimes you counted six or seven every ten minutes. Forty per hour? Something like that. There is a limit on what a runway can process because planes are not allowed to fly through each other’s wake.

How many aircraft would Schiphol process on average per day? The outsider comes with his wet finger on about 400 departing machines, after all it is not always rush hour and there would be minimal at night, but the Dutch total appears to be 1,400. It will be on the Zestienhoven and Beek airports.

How much kerosene would all those aircraft take per year? You can also make a blow to that. For example, assume a weighted average of fuel capacity for the four Most used aircraft. That is 18,200 kg. Assume that the aircraft always top up their tanks before the departure of Schiphol, you will come to 4.65 megaton kerosene per year. Statistics Netherlands knows what it really is: 3.8 megaton in the last pre-corona year, so apparently the aircraft refuel a little less. Today it is about the pleasure of figure.

3,8 megaton kerosene per year: that is enough for an emission of 12 megaton co₂ And so it’s a great happiness that we don’t have to count it from the IPCC. Together with the heavy oil of shipping, we would otherwise have been excited for 47 Megaton Co₂-s equivalents, about a third of the emissions that we do include (144 megaton equivalents in 2024). But the needs Not from the IPCC.

Compulsory

It will all be fine because ‘Europe’ has Member States required durable Kerosene by mixing the fossil fuel. In 2034, 6 percent ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ (SAF) must go through, 2039 in 2039 and so on. The Netherlands itself wants even faster.

With a little luck in Rotterdam even two companies will make SAF: Neste wants to use finished frying oil for it and Power2X and Advario assume that methanol is supplied from elsewhere. There are Ten different ways To make SAF but the Methanol route is currently preferred. The intention is to make methanol from a reaction between electrolytically produced (‘green’) hydrogen and co₂ It was isolated from industrial flue gases. In a second step, the methanol then needs to grow into a series of reactions where some hydrogen is also absorbed into the long hydrocarbon chains that are characteristic of kerosene. In addition, a surprising amount of water is created.

Suppose we have all the aircraft fuel, so the entire 3.8 megaton kerosene, from co₂ And would want to make green hydrogen, how much electric current and how much square kilometer wind farm would you need? That is also nice to calculate. There is enough literature that describes the different roads to SAF, often on the basis of simulations, and from it the home calcator easily gathered the data he needs. And he hopes that he uses the right sources.

Two articles were chosen from the offer that brought up the Google Scholar algorithm: one German simulation from 2024 that mainly investigates the course of ‘methanol-to-cerosene’ (MTK) an Italian from 2023 that the prior formation of methanol from co₂ And simulates hydrogen. It is most convenient to work forward from behind. The German research quantified the course of hydrogen and carbon (on a molar basis) through the MTK installation. For the preparation of 3.8 Megaton SAF (present for the occasion as the straight hydrocarbon chain C₁₂H₂₆) In the second step, only 0.045 megaton hydrogen appears. A problem is that only three -quarters (76 percent) of the methanol are converted into kerosene, the rest ends up in short or too long hydrocarbon chains. It means that 11.3 megaton methanol is needed for the formation of 3.8 megaton SAF.

Favorite installations

From a summary table (no.7) in the Italian study it can be deduced that for the formation of that 11.3 Megaton methanol from the reaction between hydrogen and co₂ A total of 2.35 megaton hydrogen is required. That brings the total to 2.4 megaton hydrogen.

In the currently favorite electrolysis installations of The type is for the time being at least 50 kWh electrical energy required for the production of 1 kilogram of hydrogen. What is and is not counted here is not always clear, for example, water must also be purified. The Italians count with 56 kWh per kg H₂. Those who do that also come to a need for electrical energy of 134.4 TWH (134,400 GWh).

Now we go to the North Sea, to the Windparken Borssele 1 and 2 To be precise. They serve today as a reference. On an effective surface of 112 km² the two together come to an average annual production of 3,210 GWH, which is 28.7 GWh per km². Given the transport and transformer losses, we can finish that to 28 GWh per km with impunity².

Cold -blooded, we note that there are 4,800 km² North Sea surface is needed for all SAF. Or, no, we make 5,000 km² From, the surface of Brabant, because the SAF factories also use a lot of electricity for pumping and compressing intermediates. Outside the calculation, the hydrogen that the factories may use instead of natural gas remains to heat their boilers and columns. After all this you would almost forget that the carbon in the artificial cerosine is of course just old -fashioned fossil.

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