The Methanol Alternative

The New Atlantis ^ | Summer 2006 | Robert Zubrin

[Delacon]

ny serious energy policy must deal with three critical issues. First, economic: The policy must provide an energy resource base sufficient to allow for continued worldwide economic growth for the foreseeable future. Second, environmental: The policy must be compatible with the long-term flourishing of life on Earth, including human life and civilization. And finally, strategic: The policy must ensure that control of the Earth’s energy resources, and thus its future, lies in the hands of free societies committed to human progress, and taken away from tyrannical and terrorism-promoting states.

George Olah, recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is one of the giants of twentieth-century science, and his coauthors are solid technical men. Together they have written a profoundly important book on energy policy, laying out the basis for a technically achievable approach to all three dimensions of the energy problem.

There is no shortage of energy experts with grand designs and proposals—from technophile dreams of an unworkable “hydrogen economy,” to Malthusian calls for enforced economic limits through conservation, to socialist schemes for creating massive government-subsidized synthetic-fuel industries, to the libertarian faith in the Invisible Hand. Compared to such misguided alternatives, the competence and rationality of The Methanol Economy is refreshing.

The authors begin by describing the dimensions of the worldwide energy problem: Even as our reserves of fossil fuels have grown in recent decades, the demand is growing faster, and as more of the world modernizes, a global energy “crunch” looms. From here, they turn their attention to renewable energy sources and nuclear power, and then they offer a thorough refutation of the technical feasibility of the “hydrogen economy.” This widely-touted panacea cannot work because it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than it yields, because hydrogen is an excessively low-density medium for storing chemical energy, and because an entirely new multi-billion-dollar fuel distribution infrastructure would have to be created to support hydrogen vehicles before any could be sold.

The heart of the book outlines a proposed technical solution to the energy problem. The authors don’t propose new ways of generating energy, arguing that “all feasible alternative and renewable energy sources must be considered and used,” nuclear energy “above all.” Instead, they focus on “the challenges of how to store and best use energy.”

The authors dub their proposal the “methanol economy.” Methanol is commonly known as “wood alcohol” because it can be produced from wood; it can also be made from coal, natural gas, methane hydrates, any type of biomass, or urban waste. It can be used as fuel for internal-combustion engines, and eventually in fuel-cell vehicles. It can also be used as feedstock for producing dimethyl ether, an excellent fuel for non-polluting diesel engines. In short, it is a convenient medium for storing energy and is easily transported and dispensed as a fuel.

Integrating methanol into our energy system would have numerous benefits in the not-so-distant future. As the authors point out, it would make the transportation of liquid natural gas much safer by converting it to less-hazardous liquid methanol before shipping it. Methanol could also be used to produce plastics, synthetic fabrics, and many other non-fuel products currently made from petroleum.

Importantly, methanol can also be produced (in conjunction with an auxiliary electricity source, like nuclear power) by chemically recycling carbon dioxide, which can be found naturally in the air or readily captured from atmosphere-polluting industrial emissions. The methanol produced can, in turn, be used to produce synthetic hydrocarbons and other products now obtained from fossil fuels. If successfully tapped, methanol “has the ability to liberate mankind from its dependence on fossil fuels for transportation and hydrocarbon products,” while reducing the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.

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.

So if the economic and strategic questions can be answered, that leaves the matter of methanol and the environment. The authors deal with environmental concerns in a cool, thorough, and methodical fashion. 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.”

The book’s greatest shortcoming is in its policy recommendations. It has none. While describing the technological basis for a future world of progress, freedom, economic development, and an acceptable environment, the authors offer no plan for how to make it happen. Given the highly technical and scientific orientation of the authors, this is perhaps understandable, but it is unfortunate.

Indeed, by focusing on the best technical solution without regard to policy implications, the authors sail past essential matters without stopping to seize them. This is most evident on 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.

Manufacturing a car as an FFV requires only the use of a corrosion-resistant fuel line and a change in the programming of the chip controlling the car’s electronic fuel injector. Thus FFVs can be produced—and currently are being produced in two dozen models, amounting to about 3 percent of total automobile sales in the United States—with essentially no price differential between them and comparable models that only use gasoline. As a result, there is no downside to making flex-fuel capability the standard. If it were required that all new cars sold in the United States had to be FFVs, there would be 50 million automobiles capable of burning methanol on the road in the U.S. within three years. Under such conditions, with methanol producible for a fraction of the cost of gasoline, the methanol pumps would appear soon enough, and the methanol economy envisioned by Olah and his collaborators would soon follow.

But one should not complain too much about the book’s omissions, since it maps out a viable technical approach for addressing our energy problems. They have shown us where to go; now it is time for policymakers to help get us there.

---

Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a research and development firm.

Robert Zubrin, "The Methanol Alternative," The New Atlantis, Number 13, Summer 2006, pp. 85-88.

[Paradox]

Importantly, methanol can also be produced (in conjunction with an auxiliary electricity source, like nuclear power) by chemically recycling carbon dioxide, which can be found naturally in the air or readily captured from atmosphere-polluting industrial emissions. The methanol produced can, in turn, be used to produce synthetic hydrocarbons and other products now obtained from fossil fuels. If successfully tapped, methanol “has the ability to liberate mankind from its dependence on fossil fuels for transportation and hydrocarbon products,” while reducing the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere.

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!

[Delacon]

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.

From Wiki:

 

Advantages over hydrogen

Methanol economy advantages compared to a hydrogen economy:

• efficient energy storage (by volume) and also by weight as compared with compressed hydrogen, when hydrogen pressure-confinement vessel is taken into account. The volumetric energy density of methanol is considerably higher than liquid hydrogen, in part because of the low density of liquid hydrogen of 71 grams/liter. Hence there is actually more hydrogen in a liter of methanol (99 grams/liter) than in a liter of liquid hydrogen, and methanol needs no cryogenic container maintained at a temperature of -253°C.
• required hydrogen infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive. Methanol can use existing gasoline infrastructure with only limited modifications.
• can be blended with gasoline (for example in M85, a mixture containing 85% methanol and 15% gasoline).
• user friendly. Hydrogen is volatile and requires high pressure or cryogenic system confinement.
• methanol can also serve as a raw material for the chemical industry

[Delacon]

“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.”

[bert]

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.

[antiRepublicrat]

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.

[Delacon]

“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.

[Delacon]

“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?

[antiRepublicrat]

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.

[chuckles]

I operate on the assumption that we want to migrate to something better than gasoline. His argument is that it’s bad, but not as bad as what we are using now. Methanol pollutes more than ethanol, is poisonous, and has less BTU’s than ethanol. Also, he talks about the cost is less. If we went to a LARGE use of methanol, the cost would rise just as ethanol has. There will be a spike in almost any new LARGE source of whatever fuel we choose. There isn’t enough infrastructure to provide billions of gallons in the near future. I’ve looked at this subject since Jimah Carter in the ‘70’s and have explored pretty much all the alternatives. I like ethanol. I have enough info to fill a book on all the pro’s and cons of each. Ethanol will work and Brazil has proved it. Some closed minded people have squawked about every possible objection, but most of the problems are political, not practical.

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.

[marsh2]

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.

[antiRepublicrat]

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.

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.

[Delacon]

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.

[Delacon]

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.

[Aut Pax Aut Bellum]

People seem to overlook several things. No huge kickbacks in methanol, unlike corn based products.
All these methods will take redesign of cars. It eats the seals and materials everywhere, from the fuel pump to the injectors,etc. Plus the gas pump hoses,etc. etc....

[Old Professer]

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.”

[Old Professer]

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.

[antiRepublicrat]

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.

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.

[antiRepublicrat]

I was wondering though if that method would be enough to meet all of the demand.

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.

[chuckles]

http://www.westernresearch.org/management.aspx?id=472

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.

[dangerdoc]

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.