Posted on 08/01/2011 2:23:33 PM PDT by neverdem
All true, but that doesn't generate LIQUID fuels, which are the most viable form for transportation usage. BUT, it is even easier to produce methanol from coal than it is methane. So everybody wins.
You been told wrong.
-——but that doesn’t generate LIQUID fuels——
Of course it does. The down stream has several processes to produce more than one product. Methanol is one. The plant could be operated to produce all methanol if desired. Computers, valves , pumps you know. It’s just a matter of selecting the desired chemistry
Methanal is toxic, if you drink it, you will die or go blind. However, the antidote to Methanol poisioning, is drinking Ethanol.
Or we could build coal gasification plants that would convert our coal to diesel/gasoline/other light oils.
And since we have some of the world’s largest deposits of coal... coupled with the fact that coal gasification is a proven technology (Germany in WWII, South Africa in the 80’s), there won’t be any need to ‘develop’ it before implementation.
Plus, all the output is diesel, gasoline, oil... so it feeds into the already existing infrastructure, as opposed to needing to build an all new one.
I call Urban Legend!
for forty years the anti-American left has complained that Americans use 25% of the world's petroleum production. Imagine that. For 40 years, it hasn't moved to 24% or 26%, no, they tell us it always remains precisely constant, year after year after year. China now makes more cars than the US but it hasn't affected the number by a single barrel.
Bunk.
We cut down our trees for fuel?
Brilliant!
Methanol is another pipe dream that won’t work in the end. The best bet is Fischer-Tropsch synfuel from coal and natural gas. Can do it right now, and the fuel is clean, loaded with energy, and doesn’t eat up the fuel systems of today’s vehicles. BTW, according to the US geological survey, we have 462 billion tons of recoverable coal. Our gas reserves number in the trillions of cubic feet. Add in our oil shale and that of our neighbors to the north, and no ships bearing foreign oil or fuels need dock at any US port for the next few hundred years.
For the green-nuts among us, if they would put the climate change hoax behind them, there is a bit of good news. People have scoffed at algae oil or algenol, but I believe it is viable of you can pump enough sunlight and CO2 into it. Fischer-Tropsch produces lots of CO2, which could be utilized in algae beds or other growing operations. But that will require certain brainwashed individuals to quit thinking of CO2 as a pollutant. In any case, algae is more sensible than corn-based ethanol, which was been shown to be a net energy drag.
What we need is an act of congress that turns our federally owned fossil fuel reserves over to social security lien holders (those who have contributed). Any taxes or fees collected on fuels or raw materials extracted or mined from federally owned lands would be the property of individual account owners. Think of it as the same system that Alaska has, but the money from the sale of resources goes into privatized social security accounts.
A big added bonus of this domestic energy plan is thousands of new high-paying mining jobs.
But leave the blasted government out of it.
Just another bunch trying to get into the tax payers pocket.
Wouldn’t methane make more sense than methanol?
There are no combustion byproducts of methanol, because it is one of the simplest molecules possible. Combustion, by definition, is the addition of oxygen. Methanol consists of only two non-proton atoms, carbon and oxygen. Since it has one oxygen already, the only way it can gain an oxygen is to become CO2. When this happens, there are no electrons left over to react with anything*.
When you have long chains of carbons, you can create wierd chemicals by forming multiple bonds between carbons (”unsaturation”), forming weird substitutions and chemical side groups, etc. That’s why burning complex oils can create “byproducts.”
(* Technically, it is possible for the CO2, in turn, to react with something. But CO2 is a very stable chemical. Also, other reactions besides combustion are possible.)
I stopped right there.
This country could do all sorts of great things again were it not for the communist politicians trying to destroy it. Remove the Liberals from power and this country can rebound.
Why methanol? Why not diesel? Coal to liquid fuel is a proven technology.
But due to the nature of any alcohol, it's much more difficult to store and ship than gasoline. And as reported, it only has about 1/2 the energy of gasoline, so you need to burn about twice as much to get the same work, i.e. you will get about 1/2 the mileage out of a tank of gas.
Mark
And if it catches on fire, it's nearly impossible to see in daylight. People involved in racing have been known to walk directly into pools of burning alcohol without realizing it.
Mark
Nope. The "direct to methanol" process with coal feedstock is far more efficient and less complex than one which goes thru methane first. BTW, I'm a chemist, so I have "some" clues about "selecting the desired chemistry". Unfortunately, methanol isn't currently as valuable as the products of the "thru methane" approach.
See post #39. And I think one of the major points of the article is that "today's" vehicles are largely compatible with methanol. The bigger problem is that OLDER vehicles are not, and the effort to make them compatible is more difficult.
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