The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

The Methanol Economy

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There’s so much talk about moving toward a hydrogen economy, the presumed future of transportation being the hydrogen fuel cell, it’s easy to overlook some of the other very real possibilities. Methanol, another form of alcohol, looks very promising.

A new book, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, highlights the advantages and benefits of methanol. A lot of you already know that methanol can be used directly in internal combustion engines, the alcohol classes at the drag strip run on methanol and various other road racing machines use it, too. You can also mix it with gasoline, instead of ethanol (M85 instead of E85?), which is the alcohol getting all of the press these days. Methanol can also be used in methanol fuel cells to produce electricity, instead of using hydrogen.

This book, written by the co-inventors of the methanol fuel cell, point out some things you probably didn’t know, at least I didn’t. Methanol can be produced from natural gas which is the common method of producing it today. Natural gas is still pretty plentiful but there’s an even better way to produce it. The methanol fuel cell takes methanol and produces electricity with water and CO2 as byproducts. What’s neat is that you can reverse that process and take water and CO2 and with a bit of electricity, produce methanol.

Methanol, like ethanol, is a liquid that can be stored and transported very easily, unlike hydrogen, so it has a big advantage right there. But look again at the reverse process used to produce it, water and CO2 are the ingredients. What is a big problem today with many combustion processes? They produce CO2 which now has to be sequestered underground so it isn’t released into the atmosphere. Suppose you capture the CO2 in the flue gasses of a powerplant and make methanol, you take the waste gas and create energy. As the authors note, as the technology advances, we’ll be able to take CO2 out of the air without using high concentration sources like flue gas. The end result is creating a liquid energy carrier and getting rid of a greenhouse gas at the same time. Sounds like a winner. This might be worth a closer look.

Links: Technology Review via AutoblogGreen

Comments

  1. I like that it is a reversible reaction. and as far as natural gas is a source for hydrogen… I’m sure thats true, but why in the WORLD would someone choose to use one of the most refined natural sources of energy to power the economy? natural gas is a limited resource, the only thing it has going for it is their is an infrastructure already in place to transport it.

    if we go with methanol, my car will be competing with my soda pop for the worlds CO2 supply.

  2. Keep in mind that you “use” the molecular energy that binds the CO2 and water molecules when you use methanol. The reverse becomes true. You have to use more energy than it will return as a fuel, in order to combine the CO2 and water to form Methanol. So, even though it can be done, no matter how good a process we use (it can never be a 100% effecient process), we will use more energy to make methanol than we will be able to get from it.

    That being said, I am all for “alternative fuel solutions”…I am just not so sure that there is a ‘viable’ alternative available on the horizon. I am sure that “electric” cars aren’t it if they require a ton+ of batteries, there have been several engineering studies that seem to prove that “fuel cell” technology will use significantly more energy than it is capable of producing. Renewable resources like ethanol offer some hope, but not on the order of magnatude needed. I have not yet seen a breakdown of petroleum usage that shows the % used by vehicles verses other. Nuclear , Clean Coal, solar, wind, offer hope for fixed installations…but vehicles will need to carry their fuel with them. I don’t really want to be driving a car / motorcycle that has a 3000+ psi tank attached. Improvement of efficiencies ( like the ethanol/gasoline hybrid you linked to last week) offer our best hope in the near tearm.

    And don’t forget that not everybody believes that oil is non-renewable.
    http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml

  3. If the energy used to make the methanol is from solar or wind (or your friendly neighborhood nuke plant) then it can can be counted as “free”.

    Methanol powered laptop, anyone? (Warning: Gizmag takes for freakin’ ever to load a page, every page)http://www.gizmag.com/go/5325/

  4. “your friendly neighborhood nuke plant” – free energy and babies with 3 arms!
    Nothing is free, everything balances out so what you gain at one end you lose somewhere else.
    Another reason that oils future is probably assured has a lot less to do with oil companies being big nasty monsters who manipulate everyone/everything, but our inertia. Yes there is a distribution network in place, but a bigger obstacle is the installed base of vehicles etc using petrol fuelled IC engines. For adoption of a new fuel to be rapid and widespread it has to process transparent.
    As for methanol fuel cell powered laptops and mobile phones, nice idea but energy density is probably too low and it’ll be a problem taking hem on aircraft.

  5. Any suggestions for breaking the inertia?

    PS. The methanol laptop battery runs for two days, the Army is testing them now for their ruggedized tablets.

  6. Methanol?
    It’s a fart, a wet one…
    This way we can use them for good rather than evil.
    Then we could power everything with WIND power…

    How would the high compression turbo engine you mentioned go on methanol? Rather than running ethanol as a knock additive, just run the thing on straight methanol (Burt Munro’s Indian did)
    And as for making the stuff, surely the fuel cell guys could get together with the solar/wind guys and make a DIY plant to fill your own tank at home?

  7. The inertia behind the current fuel distribution network will only be a factor if government mandates continue to allow that. if the laws change, it could seriously updset the balance. I’ll just keep an eye on calaifornia… they seem to be the leaders of change around here.

  8. The best way to overcome the inertia is to find a clean fuel which can be used in existing motors with no, or minimal, modifcation. From that point of view the alcohols are a good bet.
    It’s not the distribution network that causes the inertia, it’s the end user installed base. It’s got to be easy, quick and cheap for people to make a change, or they will just wait until they absolutely cannot avoid it. Or until their govt. introduces some form of negative reinforcement to compel them to change.

  9. So what happens when you burn the stuff, doesn’t the CO2 just go right back into the atmosphere?

    There has to be a net loss of energy overall, nothing is free. Windpower looks good, but that entropy is a bitch! Moving parts eventually wear out, plus you have to build and maintain the network to distribute and store those electrons…

  10. Quote: guitargeek Says:
    May 12th, 2006 at 1:33 am

    “So what happens when you burn the stuff, doesn’t the CO2 just go right back into the atmosphere?

    There has to be a net loss of energy overall, nothing is free. Windpower looks good, but that entropy is a bitch! Moving parts eventually wear out, plus you have to build and maintain the network to distribute and store those electrons…”

    Well, yes, obviously. But it will only be CO2, no nasty carcinogens from burning toulene, benzine etc., and burning gasoline puts out plenty of CO2 itself. Of course it’s all so nasty the Californians came up with catalytic convertors; now we’ve all got them…

    Net loss of energy? Really? What, you mean physics works here as well?
    Let’s see, a billion years of rotting garbage makes a pool of oil.We then use massive amounts of energy to seperate it into various components. Then we put some of them into our vehicles and drive around (needlessly in a lot of cases) with efficiencies up to about 30%. Imagine if we could make all our engines 100% efficient? My SV650 would be putting out over 300 Hp, and getting 120 Mpg with no exhaust fumes. And the worlds oil would last for another 2000 years.
    Moving parts? What? Compared to a coal fired power station, or a nuclear plant, they have almost zero wear parts (I think you will find a few large bearings and a chain or belt for gearing). And isn’t the network already there? Or are you plugged into something else?
    Interesting comment I heard. It is believed that sourcing electricity from coal power indirectly kills more people each year, than nuclear accidents ever have.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love riding my bike, and I hope I can still afford dino for another few years; but it won’t last, and we have to keep working on other things… Now!

  11. Wow Dodgy, if you could get a petrol engine to run at 30% efficiency we’d already be getting about 200mpg – from Hummers! Heehee!
    Your comment about electricty produced from coal is eye opening. Another one is that all those green peeps in their Prius’ release about 2.5 times more CO2 if they recharge their car using electricity generated from coal than they would if they just used petrol. Instead of just the engine efficiency, you now have a stack – generation eff., transmission eff., charging eff.
    Food for thought.