Posted on 02/03/2008 7:18:44 PM PST by Delacon
This is the key to our Nuclear Utopia. One of the criticism of Nuclear is that you cannot fuel your vehicle with it (discounting electics, which until a major breakthrough occurs, simply cannot compete with gasoline and diesel when it comes to range and convenience). I have always said that if you have enough Energy, you can convert it into whatever form you darn well please. So this is how you can do it!
Whats the friggin hold up? Various forces I think. On the one hand, you have the enviroweenies who basically want us to go back to the pre-industrial age, and on the other hand, you have corporations who are invested in other forms of energy (ADM and ethanol, oil companies), who have some sway in things.
I realize that even if the US completely got away from foreign petroleum, the mideast mullah's would still get their cash, but I'd feel alot more comfortable, from a national security point of view, it we could tell the rest of the world to stick it, because energy wise, we could take care of ourselves no matter WHAT they tried to do (embargo, etc). And as a nice bonus, you get to save the environment too!
I haven't read this yet, but too many people misconstrue hydrogen as a new energy source, but it's not designed to be that. Hydrogen is only one method of making energy portable. Any non-oil method of portable energy will reduce our reliance on foreign oil and make the air cleaner. I tend to like hydrogen because the power comes from highly-efficient power plants and not inefficient internal combustion engines. Compared to alcohol the total energy consumed should be less.
Methanol economy advantages compared to a hydrogen economy:
“Methanol is nasty. We don’t want to go there.”
From 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.”
Eastman Chemical Co operates three plants converting coal to syngas that makes methanol and other derivatives that make all kinds of downstream chemical products.
The plants were on line as far back as 1980 and have operated continuously for all that period. The enviro impact is pretty much nill.
A buck sixty a gallon seems cheap, don’t know their costs but they are the low cost producer for many of their products.
Cool. I now envision a sewage plant with absolutely huge lagoons where the sewage is pumped after solids are removed and before further treatment. For example, a square inch of duckweed will cover an acre in less than two months. Seed 1,000 acres of lagoon with just a square yard of duckweed and in two months you’ll have 1,000 acres of biomass to skim off (they don’t even have roots). Or save a hundred square yards from the last harvest and have your next harvest in no time (they double every three days, you do the math). You’ll also have treated a whole lot of sewage in that time since they suck up nitrogen and phosphorus.
Effectively running your car on what you put down the toilet. I love it.
Come to think of it, a farmer could put a lily/duckweed lagoon at the bottom of his property to catch fertilizer runoff and actually make a profit off of what was formerly a nuisance and environmental hazard.
“As for “the folks here who complain about using food to make fuel,” I wouldn’t call them idiots. I’d just say that either they are misinformed or I am. I don’t know the details, but I do know that if the demand for something goes through the roof, in a free market so does the supply.”
Increased demand is THE problem for any alternative fuel sourse be it ethanol, methanol, or some other liquid fuel. But so what, mandate all cars produced be Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) and let the various fuels fight it out at the pumps. Let the market decide.
From the article:
the subject of Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs), automobiles that can operate with gasoline and/or various mixtures of gasoline and alcohol. The most common FFVs in the United States are E85 or M85, meaning that they can function with up to 85 percent ethanol or methanol and 15 percent gasoline. On the subject of FFVs, Olah and his colleagues say:
Although the flexibility of the FFVs represent a powerful means to circumvent the fuel supply conundrum, and also a way to build up the demand for methanol, it must be borne in mind that this is only a compromise.... In the long term, the use of cars optimized to run only on methanol (M100) would be preferable, and would also greatly facilitate the transition to methanol-powered fuel cell vehicles.
Yet without the short term, there is no long term. The authors are correct that, in the abstract, “cars optimized to run only on methanol” would be preferable. But such cars would find no buyers today—because there are no pumps to fuel them, nor will there be, until millions of such cars are on the road. Thus the FFVs, which can run on a combination of gasoline, methanol, and/or ethanol, are not “only a compromise.” Rather, they are the key transitional technology that can make the methanol economy a reality.
“Effectively running your car on what you put down the toilet. I love it.”
In all honesty I have a concern about biomass fuels such as methanol produced from crops in that what about soil depletion and what to do about that problem. Any farmers or chemists out there have an answer?
The problem with methanol/ethanol is that you will lose any efficiencies gained when it’s burned in a regular internal combustion engine.
A regular 1.8l engine might produce 120hp, supercharge it and up the compression ratio and you can get double that. But the high-power engine will need high-octane gas or you will get detonation. The alcohols have even higher octanes and can therefore be used with very high compression ratios and forced induction pressures to produce even more power. You get a very thermally efficient engine with alcohol. But even with an alcohol engine you need to run at high rpm to really get the benefit. I’d expect them to come small and high-revving, like a one liter 150+ horsepower engine.
So a regular flex-fuel engine, which wasn’t very efficient with gasoline, is even less efficient with alcohol. That is a lot of waste. OTOH, an engine optimized for alcohol cannot use even premium gasoline — it could destroy the engine. A true flex-fuel would have a variable compression ratio and forced induction pressure, and would be very expensive.
So methanol and ethanol aren’t that cheap and flexible in the end if you want to use our resources efficiently.
Methanol fuel cells sound interesting though.
Right here on FR, I have talked about lighter engines with higher compression ratio's and turbo's and got piled on by the ones that said there wasn't enough BTU's to make the difference. This guy writes an article about methanol and says the same thing with a fuel with even LESS BTU's and somehow, it sounds more reasoned than using ethanol? People are angry because we use corn. If we used sugar cane, potato's, rice, or about 15 other crops, we wouldn't have the price spike in food we have now. Much of the spike is false anyway. The corn used in ethanol is also sold as a feed for animals after the ethanol is made, so there is NO shortage of food for animals. We don't use sweet corn for fuels, so dent corn is the only source we use for fuel.
Anyway, I could go on for paragraphs, but methanol isn't the answer.
Currently we have a health and safety crisis of too much forest fuels in our National Forests in the wildland urban interface near rural towns. Because there is no longer much timber harvest going on the in Pacific Northwest/California, there are no commercial activities going on where the Forest can require fuels management as a component of the sale. Because of the slopes in the west, it is twice as expensive to use taypayor money to do projects just to reduce fuels.
Currently, several of the northern Counties of California are declaring their Forests to constitute public nuisances, the problem is so dangerous.
In my county, the enviros are also working to pull out 4 dams that provide hydropower for the region. Small scale methanol plants could provide a market for fuel reduction biomass to offset the costs of removal and transport. Methanol could somewhat replace the lost clean energy being removed in the dams. It could also provide a source of clean energy.
Our county is so poor that the entire county has qualified as a distressed area for business relocation incentives under the California Enterprise Zone. A cheaper energy source would assist in rebuilding our local economy.
The genius of lilies or duckweed is that there is no soil depletion. Duckweed doesn't even have real roots, just things that hang in the water and suck up nutrients. In fact, growing it helps solve other problems like sewage treatment and fertilizer runoff, where their nutrients are our waste.
Interesting. To me though it comes down to letting the market answer all your issues about methanol v ethanol v gasoline. Mandating flex fuel automobiles will actually be a market incentive to solve our fuel needs problem. If ethanol wins out, wonderful. If methanol does, fine. Either way, if both are introduced to the market they will drive demand for gasoline down. Methanols one advantage is it doesnt need food crops. Food crop prices will continue to rise as our demand for ethanol competes with our demand for food. But who can say what inovations ethanol and methanol producers will come up with to make their product cheaper than the other once a massive demand opens up due to mandated flex fuel vehicles? Who is do say what improvements to flex fuel vehicles the auto indrustry comes up with to beat out their competitors to make the best/cheapest/most efficient one? The good news is that the middle east gets screwed in the process no matter what.
I should have pointed out that yours was a good idea to solve this problem. I was wondering though if that method would be enough to meet all of the demand. Thats why I posted what I did.
You said:
“Methanol makes sense, even if the $1.60/gallon will only get you 2/3 as far as a gallon of gasoline.”
Article said:
“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 would already be at the saturation point from hygroscopic absorbion during the in-ground storage stage unless it was purchased in production-sealed containers.
The biggest problem I see for 100% use in a car engine is getting the engine started and warmed up, especially in cold climates.
I believe they used to start Indy cars on gasoline and filed the crankcases with heated oil to ensure immediate ignition and performance.
Easy answer: Gasoline engines are about 20-25% efficient. M/ethanol has about a 15% gain over that with an alcohol-optimized engine. An alcohol engine is about efficient as a diesel, but without the pollutants and reliance on oil. Mileage should be comparable to gasoline.
A reasonably-powered (100+ hp) electric motor will be over 90% efficient, but that's of the only 50% efficient hydrogen fuel cell, giving 45% (methanol fuel cells are less efficient). But that's still more than gas, alcohol or diesel (there is one diesel that is 52% efficient, but it weighs 2,300 tons). Plus fuel cells get to be operated at their highest efficiency more, while internal combustion engines widely vary efficiency with use, especially at idle.
Methanol, ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, fuel cells, all things we should be looking into. The best one, or best combination, might win on merits if we could eliminate ADM's bribes.
I doubt it, since you are limited to nutrient-rich places like sewage plants and farm runoff unless you want to either destroy a natural lake's ecosystem or have the wildlife eat most of the crop. But because of the fast growth it should produce more per acre than any other crop. Plant one acre and you get 1024 acres back in a month, minus one acre for re-planting. The stuff's a pretty thin layer on top of the pond, but that should still produce over 150,000 cubic feet of biomass per month (assuming less than a 1/20-inch layer).
Every little bit helps.
Cut and paste this addy and you can see a company That changes coal into syngas and syngas can be changed to many different things, including ethanol. It can also use nat gas for ethanol, and various other technologies to make ethanol. They could do the same for methanol, but we're back to wanting the best end product so they concentrate on ethanol. The point is, if you can make methanol or ethanol, both with the same feedstock, why not make ethanol? This company will sell you, an individual, a converter, built on skids, for your own property. If you had access to cheap coal, you too could be in the ethanol business. It comes down to how many BTU's does it take to "cook" the coal into methane(syngas), and how many BTU's do you want to end up with? Methanol is basically liquid methane, so that would be easier, but they choose to go on to ethanol.
We now have the technology to use the feedstocks that used to be strictly for methanol into ethanol. Ergo, why make poison that has less BTU's per gallon, and you can also make ethanol from foodstocks, or even oil. We are getting to the point that ethanol can be made from grass and trash, coal, and many other sources. Many poor countries that are now getting aid from the US could get paid for growing cane or other feedstocks instead of having to buy oil only from OPEC countries. The Caribbean countries, Africa, and Central American countries could finally have a capitalist cash crop they can sell instead of socialist dictatorships. We have coal that should last a couple hundred years, we have renewables, etc, so getting off of oil is possible right NOW, not years in the future. Unless we go with butanol, or something I don't know about right now, ethanol is the best answer for liquid fuel. The hydrogen myth is still something to strive for, but the numbers just don't fly right now. Buying 100 years of technology would almost guarantee solving the crisis without breaking the country or turning us into a 3rd world cesspool. If we sign on to these Kyoto treaties and other lefty ideas, we will be on mopeds and bicycles before you can say "What happened to my RV?". I'm all for 100MPG cars and such, but in a practical world, I still want something that will pull a boat, or an RV, or haul firewood. If we don't fix this soon, we will look like Bangladesh before you know it. It's more than just a pocketbook thingy, it has to do with our whole culture.
I grow hay.
Once established, grass requires minimal chemical input,no tilling, outputs tons of bio mass and actually builds up topsoil over time.
Corn on the otherhand does deplete the soil, and requires a lot of chemical input.
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