Gasoline from seawater? That's the gist of the announcement by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and it's not an April Fool's joke. However, it's also not at all like the urban legend about the magic pill that turns a gallon of water into a gallon of gas. What the NRL has come up with is a process that scavenges almost a pound of carbon dioxide from each gallon of seawater. The process also extracts hydrogen, which when combined catalytically with carbon dioxide yields carbohydrate fuels such as gasoline.
Right now it's a lab demonstration. If the NRL can reduce this to something practical on board a ship (and they have a surprisingly good track record of doing that sort of thing), it raises the possibility of ships that refuel themselves from stuff found in ordinary seawater. Moreover, this would be “carbon-neutral”, making the greenies very happy. I'm sure they'll find some reason to hate it, but by their current standards they really should love it...
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