Don't get it on your skin and breathe it either. It has less BTU's per gallon( which seems to be a humongous deal if we had been discussing ethanol).
Methanol is nasty. We don't want to go there. One advantage of ethanol is it can now be made from normal methanol stocks. Ethanol can now be made from wood, oil, coal, and other plant matter and has more BTU's per gallon and isn't poisonous. The challenge is cost of conversion right now, but that is falling. We could easily get all our fuel from coal and waste products in the future. One problem we have with ethanol is corn state pols have a strangle hold on the industry. If and when we get serious about ethanol fuel you will see us drop the tax on Brazil and start making it from potato's, rice, sorghum, rotten fruit, etc. Ethanol can be made from almost anything, but for some "weird" reason, in the USA, it must be made from corn only. If we burn the Iowa congresscritters at the stake, then maybe we can move into the future. Methanol is not even a poor substitute. The only thing that may prove better than ethanol as a liquid fuel MIGHT be butanol.
“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.”
What is the procedure for producing ethanol from wood?
“Don’t get it on your skin and breathe it either.”
I have heard that as well. How does it compare to gas and ethanol in term of toxicity?
“Don’t get it on your skin and breathe it either”
You are both correct, of course. And the ethanol game is indeed a political one. Agricultural waste is a much more logical feedstock for ethanol than is corn. Using corn is STUPID. Wanna go blind...expose yourself to methanol; and there are many other serious side-effects to methanol exposure.
One of these days we should be seeing energy alternatives that do not require any of these fuels. No polution, no dollar cost for fuels. No grid. Scary for THEY. But it will happen. I have seen some of these solutions. They work.