Willauer et al. (2012) estimated that jet fuel could be synthesized from seawater in quantities up to  per day, at a cost of three to six U.S. dollars per gallon. Willauer et al. (2014) showed that the Fischer-Tropsch catalyst could be modified to synthesize various fuels such as methanol and natural gas, as well as the olefins that can be used as the building blocks for jet fuel.
Willauer et al. calculated that about  of seawater must be driven through the process to obtain the quantities of hydrogen and CO necessary to synthesize one gallon of jet fuel.
Seawater was chosen because it contains 140 times more CO by volume than the atmosphere, and conventional water electrolysis also yields H. The equipment for processing seawater is much smaller than that for processing air. Willauer considered that seawater was the "best option" for a source of synthetic jet fuel. By April 2014, the Willauer's team had not yet made fuel to the quality standard required for military jets, but they were able in September 2013 to use the fuel to fly a radio-controlled model airplane powered by a common two-stroke internal combustion engine.
Because the process requires a considerable input of electrical energy (~ 250 MW electricity mainly for the H production by water electrolysis and also to a lesser extent for the CO recovery from seawater), it cannot be performed on a large ship, even on a nuclear aircraft-carrier. The installations processing seawater to obtain H and CO (in fact CO),  the two essential ingredients necessary for the Fischer–Tropsch process, must be constructed on-shore, close to the sea, on islands in strategic remote locations (e.g., Hawai, Guam, Diego-Garcia) and powered by a nuclear reactor, or by ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).