[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.”

[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.