Posted on 02/03/2008 7:18:44 PM PST by Delacon
That sounds right
In the meantime, I'm in the market for a good donkey.
I don’t want to be a meth addict ...
One practical problem with methanol for use in internal combustion engines that I never hear mentioned is that methanol dissolves water like a shot. If you fill up a gas tank with methanol and let in set it absorbs a lot of water in a week or two.
How about nuclear power? You know, the same stuff that the greenies (now global warmers) stymied the past thirty years and, thereby, tied us into muslim oil ....
“One practical problem with methanol for use in internal combustion engines that I never hear mentioned is that methanol dissolves water like a shot. If you fill up a gas tank with methanol and let in set it absorbs a lot of water in a week or two.”
That surely doesn’t sound technologicly impossible to resolve and cheaply.
I cannot eat coal, oil, or oil shale. I can eat corn and sugar cane. At present, the world grows just enough food to feed everyone at present levels of caloric intake. Even then, some people are so poor they cannot afford enough food to satisfy their hunger.
It is worse than foolish to contort the economics of fuels so that fuels made from food is less expensive than fuel made from something we cannot eat. Sadly, in the US, the people who scold us with their heightened expressions of concern for the “poor” are in with the same crowd that prefers we allow the price of some food grains double because of their energy policies.
thanks, bfl
“How about nuclear power? You know, the same stuff that the greenies (now global warmers) stymied the past thirty years and, thereby, tied us into muslim oil ....”
Well its not real portable. Batteries and motors big enough, efficient enough and powerful enough to duplicate the performance of gasoline or methanol powered cars are not technologicly or economicly feasible. But going nuke on a massive scale will be required probably to meet the energy demand required for production of methanol in the quantities needed to replace our oil consumption.
I recommend folks read Energy Victory.
“It is worse than foolish to contort the economics of fuels so that fuels made from food is less expensive than fuel made from something we cannot eat. Sadly, in the US, the people who scold us with their heightened expressions of concern for the “poor” are in with the same crowd that prefers we allow the price of some food grains double because of their energy policies.”
Methanol production doesn’t require delving into food supplies. It can be made from methane(the current method), CO2(hello global warming greenies) or ANY KIND OF PLANT MATTER, like wood waste products. Wheat chaff. Grass. Weeds. You name any plant matter that we dont eat and it can be used to make methanol unlike ethanol.
“Isn’t methanol highly toxic?”
Jeeze guys. Read the article.
“Unlike ethanol, which is edible, methanol is toxic—but so is gasoline. However, unlike gasoline or petroleum, methanol is soluble in water and readily biodegradable by common bacteria, so spills of methanol, whether from defective pumping stations or shipwrecked tankers, would have no long-term environmental impact. Furthermore, as the authors demonstrate, the toxicity of methanol is commonly overstated. In point of fact, methanol is present naturally in fresh fruit, and so low doses of methanol have always been a normal part of the human diet. Unlike gasoline, methanol is not a carcinogen or a mutagen, and the pollutants and other emissions from methanol-powered internal combustion engines are far more benign than emissions from their gasoline-driven counterparts. (Automobile emissions could even be reduced to zero with methanol-based fuel cells.) And if methanol is produced from carbon dioxide or from biomass, its use in place of petroleum acts to counter man-made global warming as well. “Compared to gasoline or diesel fuel,” the authors conclude, “methanol is clearly environmentally much safer and less toxic.””
“Methanol makes sense, even if the $1.60/gallon will only get you 2/3 as far as a gallon of gasoline.”
From the article: “Consider ethanol as a comparison. The commercial competitiveness of ethanol is somewhat confused by the complex influences of a variety of subsidies and tariffs. By contrast, methanol is currently selling—without any subsidy—for about $0.80/gallon. Given that methanol’s energy content is about half that of gasoline, that price is the equivalent, in energy terms, of gasoline for $1.60/gallon. In other words, we can produce a useful and economically viable vehicle fuel, using a huge domestic and Western hemispheric resource base, at prices lower than gasoline.”
The only water that methanol would be sucking up in your fuel system would be whatever small amount of humidity that sneaks in during refueling. Otherwise, your fuel system should be sealed unless you’re driving something fairly old or you lost your gas cap.
Wood...Methanol can be made out of Algore?
We have untold resources in uranium; we also have several Persian Gulfs' worth of oil in the ground, not only offshore or in Alaska, but in those oil shale deposits in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and even North Dakota. All of this can be accessed with off-the-shelf technology. No science-fictional breakthroughs are necessary.
Alcohol-based electricity generation represents desperation, not advancement. It is less efficient (and dirtier, in the long run) than either nuclear or hydrocarbon-fueled electricity generation. Not to mention fuel for cars.
Don't buy into anything Sheik al-Gore is peddling. It isn't even good drugs.
Spent Liquor Gasification.
Do a search on it.
Spent Black Liquor is a byproduct of papermaking. In Escanaba Mich, they plan to build a plant that uses Spent Black Liquor to make bio fuels (synthetic gas and diesel) and that plant will produce up to 13 MILLION GALLONS of bio fuel per year using a byproduct of papermaking from ONE PAPERMILL.
Now times that by the number of papermills in the USA that could convert to making such a product.
Fact is...we dont need all that oil to drive our buggies.
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