Turning seawater into jet fuel: How the US Navy aims to fuel its aircraft from the ocean itself
October 6, 2025
Even the most powerful aircraft carriers have a critical weakness: their aircraft. A Nimitz-class ship can sail for decades on nuclear power, but its fighters burn thousands of gallons of fuel every hour.
Tankers and replenishment ships keep the air wing flying, yet they are slow, exposed and vulnerable. Disrupt that chain, and the carrier’s entire strike capability falters.
Now the US Navy is testing a technology that could make those ships almost entirely self-sufficient — by drawing jet fuel straight from the surrounding sea.
US Navy and Sea Dragon Energy develop ‘Project Genesis’ seawater-to-jet fuel system
San Diego-based Sea Dragon Energy Inc. (SDEI) has been contracted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to demonstrate how seawater can be transformed into JP-5 jet fuel.
On 21 August 2025, ONR awarded the company a $9.5 million contract for the second-phase demonstration of its Seawater to Jet Fuel programme. That follows an earlier $19.2 million ONR contract in 2024, which funded development of a pilot “Seawater to Jet Fuel Demonstration Unit”.
Sea Dragon calls the initiative Project Genesis — a self-contained, ship-mounted system designed to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater, then recombine them into hydrocarbons using Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, a century-old industrial process.
“It’s a major step towards truly sustainable aviation fuel for both government and commercial use,” said John Kohut, Sea Dragon’s chairman and CEO.
Texas congressman John Carter, who represents the company’s home district, described the work as “a lasting contribution to our warfighters and to the commercial sector”.
Sea Dragon’s research and development team in California aims to deliver a deployable demonstration system by 2027 — one that could operate aboard aircraft carriers or offshore platforms.
How the US Navy plans to turn seawater into JP-5 jet fuel
Seawater contains both dissolved carbon dioxide and hydrogen, the basic ingredients of hydrocarbons. The process begins by extracting these gases using electrolysis and advanced membranes.
The US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) holds patents for an electrolytic cation exchange module (E-CEM) that can simultaneously capture both elements. These gases are then fed into a Fischer–Tropsch reactor, where carbon and hydrogen atoms are assembled into JP-5-grade fuel.
In 2014, NRL scientists used this method to power a scale model aircraft entirely with fuel synthesised from seawater, proving the chemistry could work. The challenge since then has been scaling production to levels that could sustain an aircraft carrier’s operations.
Early estimates suggest that, with around 200 megawatts of nuclear power, a carrier could theoretically produce up to 82,000 gallons of jet fuel per day, enough to keep multiple aircraft continuously airborne.
Advanced catalysts and AI research boost seawater fuel efficiency
The biggest technical barrier is catalysis, making the conversion process efficient and cost-effective.
Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Pittsburgh, supported by ONR, are developing zeolite-based bimetallic catalysts that avoid rare metals and can be tuned to produce precisely the right hydrocarbon chain lengths for jet fuel.
“Our goal is to tune hydrocarbon selectivity so we produce exactly what we need — jet fuel, not methane,” explained Professor Marc Porosoff, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Rochester. Machine-learning models are now being used to predict catalyst performance, potentially cutting years off laboratory testing.
Sea Dragon has also partnered with Emerging Fuels Technology (EFT) to integrate a pilot-scale conversion module capable of producing aviation-grade e-fuel that meets ASTM and DoD specifications.
Strategic impact: seawater-to-fuel technology could make US carriers self-sufficient
Producing jet fuel at sea could remove one of the US Navy’s most significant operational constraints. Carriers rely on long, predictable supply chains that are increasingly vulnerable to precision-strike threats.
If a carrier could synthesise its own fuel using onboard nuclear power, it would be able to operate for months or even years without resupply, effectively becoming a self-contained energy ecosystem.
Strategists say such a capability would revolutionise naval logistics. Instead of defending slow-moving fuel convoys, fleets could operate independently, drastically reducing risk in contested environments like the South China Sea or Arctic.
Technical challenges and energy limits of seawater jet fuel production
Still, the challenges are formidable. The process is energy-intensive, demanding massive electrical input and careful heat management. Materials must withstand corrosion, salt fouling and vibration in a shipboard environment.
Scaling up from laboratory reactors to a 100,000-gallon-per-day system means overcoming efficiency losses, waste-heat dissipation and reactor lifespan issues. Integration with carrier systems, fuel storage, and safety certification will all require extensive testing.
Even with nuclear energy as the power source, the economics of producing fuel at sea are uncertain. Analysts caution that Project Genesis may serve initially as a strategic resilience tool, not a wholesale replacement for tanker fleets.
Civil aviation and shipping could benefit from seawater-derived fuel
If the technology can be refined, it could also benefit civil aviation and shipping, two of the world’s hardest-to-decarbonise sectors. Synthetic fuel derived from seawater and renewable power could provide a closed-carbon-cycle alternative to fossil jet fuel.
Sea Dragon highlights fuel security, predictable costs and lower carbon impact as key advantages. In theory, any port or offshore facility with access to seawater and clean electricity could generate its own fuel, making the ocean a limitless energy resource.
By 2027, Sea Dragon hopes to demonstrate a working shipboard unit capable of producing JP-5 fuel continuously from seawater. If successful, it would mark one of the most radical advances in naval logistics since the introduction of nuclear propulsion.
For now, the idea remains a hybrid of science and ambition — but one that could, in time, let naval aviators take off knowing the ocean below can refuel them when they return.
