Posted on 07/30/2006 10:04:42 PM PDT by GeronL
This week we’re going to refine the argument for natural gas as a comprehensive solution to high energy prices, energy pollution, and energy dependence upon foreign producers outlined in What Bush Can Do To Get Cheaper Gas. To summarize: the solution is for Bush to allow oil & gas companies to extract the vast amounts of NG we have within American boundaries, cut state residents in on the royalties, provide tax credits for folks to run NG in their cars, and before his presidency is over the equivalent cost of driving a car will be less than $1 a gallon.Now for the refinement — of the argument, not NG, which unlike crude oil requires no refining. Seen those full page newspaper ads placed by Chevron trying to frighten you with the claim that the US only has three measly percent of the world’s natural gas supply? Whatever the Chevron’s agenda is, it’s not about telling you the truth.
The SEC makes it a federal felony for an energy company to claim gas reserves as assets if they’re not determined by obsolete technology, i.e., you have to drill a hole. Modern 3D seismic methods get a far better picture of an NG reservoir — but since you don't have to drill a hole, whatever reserves are found by 3DS, the SEC won’t allow it.
The government screws things up more — much more — by not allowing gas exploration companies to survey the offshore continental shelf of over 90 per cent of the US coastline excluding Alaska. They can survey along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana — but not Washington, Oregon, California, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and New England.
There’s likely as much gas off the mouth of the Columbia River as the Mississippi, possibly the same with Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River. The gas companies know there are fantastic amounts of gas off California, Florida, and much of the eastern seaboard — but the government won’t let them have it.
Gas exploration is not allowed on much of federal land — and one third of the US is owned by the Feds. On what little land they can explore, with 3DS they are discovering huge amounts in “low-permeability reservoirs” — some 460 tcf (trillion cubic feet), tripling alone current US gas reserves.
Put this all together and you have US gas reserves ten to twenty times as greater as the 150 tcf or “3 percent” of world reserves. This is enough to last the US for decades to come, even if we double or triple NG use (which we will with the Natural Gas Solution — the US currently uses some 22 tcf a year).
It's also enough to provide a lot of mailbox money for residents of states producing NG on federal land or offshore. A one-third cut of all federal royalties will overcome state residents' NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) objections (1/3 to Feds, 1/3 to states/ 1/3 to state residents).
What NG we produce, we consume. Crude oil is different. However much more we produce, it will bid for by the world market, such as China and India, because oil is cheaply shipped by ocean tanker. (Japan buys a lot of our Alaska oil, for example).
NG has to liquefied to be shipped over oceans, a costly and dangerous procedure. The only cost-effective way to transport NG is by pipeline. NG extracted offshore just needs a few miles of pipe laid on fairly level ocean floor to hook it up to the existing pipeline network in any US coastal state. Neither the Chinese nor Indians nor other global folks will bid against it. NG is the way to achieve American energy independence.
And do so as an environmentalist’s dream, for NG burns so cleanly, reducing both CO2 emissions and air pollution. That’s because NG is 80 percent hydrogen. There are 4 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in NG. There are only 2 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in regular gas. Thus NG emits much less carbon in the atmosphere.
There’s a lot of futuristic talk about the “hydrogen economy,” hydrogen as an ultimate energy source. Given the same size/weight of the pressure tank, NG delivers far more energy than hydrogen: 16 pounds of NG take up the same space as 2 pounds of hydrogen. Your car's trunk isn’t big enough to handle a hydrogen tank capable of driving a few hundred miles — but it can do so with an NG tank.
What really nixes hydrogen is a feature called “embrittlement.” Hydrogen atoms ooze their way into grains of steel and make it as brittle as glass. So you need special high-nickel steel pressure tanks and pipelines. You can’t transport hydrogen in existing NG pipelines — you’d have to build an impossibly costly additional pipeline system, or lug it in special trucks and railroad tank cars like ethanol.
Which brings me to the ludicrous rip-off of ethanol. Ethanol is carcinogenic (cancer-producing). It releases known carcinogens into the atmosphere: acetyl-eldehyde, and peroxy-acetyl-nitrate/nitrite/nitrile, three powerful eye and lung irritants.
Ethanol has only 2/3 the energy of regular gas, so you get 1/3 less energy per gallon, which means it adds 33 percent to the gas-per-mile cost of driving. But there’s also the cost of ethanol transport, which is by truckload or railroad, much higher than by oil pipeline (which ethanol can’t use because it can’t handle any water seepage like oil can).
The argument that ethanol reduces emissions is a fraud. With a modern car engine’s oxygen sensors and computer-controlled fuel injection, there’s no difference in CO (carbon monoxide) coming out your tailpipe with regular gas or ethanol.
(Ever see the 1960s anti-war movie On The Beach? Remember when Fred Astaire kills himself by breathing the fumes of his prized sports car in his closed garage? A modern car doesn't emit enough CO for this to work anymore.)
The reason I’m discussing the ethanol fraud is that Archer-Daniels-Midland and the corn farmer lobby will go nuts in objecting to the Natural Gas Solution. Hell hath no fury than folks threatened with the elimination of their government subsidy. The question to ask the corn farmers is: if ethanol is so great, how come you don’t run your tractors with it and use (far more economical) diesel instead?
This sounds a bit more like Smokey Yunick's "Hot Air Engine", which was turbocharged. Exhaust heat is the only reasonable method of accomplishing this, and with that much heat, much of the legendary detonation resistance of methanol and thus most of its benefits will be lost. The most influential factor on preignition/detonation is the temperature of the intake air, not the fuel or compression ratio.
The corrosiveness of the methanol will only be accelerated at higher temperatures.
To get that kind of reactivity, you've got to heat the methanol a lot hotter than the vaporization point. Methanol boils at 65 degrees C. I am certain that a heater/vaporizer using exhaust heat can be designed that will get the methanol (plus whatever water is "tagging along" with it) into the vapor phase, but well below any "pre-ignition/detonation" point.
"The corrosiveness of the methanol will only be accelerated at higher temperatures."
WRONG. You keep talking like methanol was some kind of horrifically corrosive chemical--it isn't. Water is FAR more corrosive than methanol (and in fact, it is probably the condensing water that is doing most, if not all, of the damage, anyway). As long as the methanol and water are in the vapor phase, NO corrosion will occur. You've got to have a LIQUID phase to get corrosion, because the corrosion is fundamentally an electrochemical process--and that requires a liquid capable of ionic conductivity.
I have enjoyed keeping this thread alive, and we've had an excellent conversation after we overcame insulting each others' experience and intelligence. However, it's time for you to get into the garage and try some of your theories with equipment designed to your specs. So far this year, "we" have put over 1,500 miles on a car that only uses a squirt of gasoline for cold starts under both racing and low speed track packing conditions, which are very similar to city driving. The carburetor has lasted for three seasons with simple gasket/diaphragm/power valve replacement at the beginning. (This is absolutely NOT possible if running a zinc/brass carburetor such as a Holley, regardless of the coating, and there is no way on this earth to cram enough fuel through a single float carb like a Quadrajet(junk), but I digress.) We redo the fuel pump at the beginning of the season and....well....right about now. It has been almost two seasons since it leaned out (poo occurs after all) and tossed a few titanium exhaust valves into the headers in the form of molten blobs, and almost ten years since "we" torched a block or head between the cylinders.
Switching to a Ford with fewer head bolts than a Chevy along with eliminating the paired exhausts in the center of the head helps the head gasket to blow before a piston, head or block melts. On gasoline, five percent lean makes it splutter or ping while five percent rich kills about 20% of the power. On methanol, five percent rich makes it run a bit too cold but does not hurt power, while five percent lean is a good way to make a self propelled fireworks display. Back in the day, "we" detonated a methanol engine so badly that we found pieces of cylinder wall laying up in the plenum of the intake manifold.
Getting a bit into your field, the molecular structure of methanol is NOT really ideal for burning under pressure due to its rather long structure and that Hydroxide stuck up in the middle of it. None of what "we" do every weekend would be possible if it were not for the latent heat of vaporization pulling heat from the inlet stream. Adiabatic flame temperatures are down a bit due to the mass of fuel required for stoichometric mixtures, but that is akin to a band aid on a limb amputation.
I think we would all appreciate someone with your education and experience applying their abilities to figuring out how to produce CLEAN methanol via a catylitic reaction using biomass as a feedstock with minimal external energy input, much different from heat distillation of wood chips. Figure out how to get it delivered to the corner gas station at thirty cents a gallon, and then it will be economically feasible to achieve full employment for grease monkeys and parts changers who think they are mechanics while reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
BUMP to a great article
I thought it was good, a little weird on some details (like sucking exhaust fumes) but pretty good.
This is the article I was looking for!!!
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BTTT
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