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Posted on Jul. 16, 2009

Methanol: The Wrong Flex Fuel

Ed. Note: This article first appeared on Geoffrey Styles' blog, Energy Outlook.

An article in Monday's Wall St. Journal highlighted another of the more obscure provisions of the mammoth climate bill recently passed by the House of Representatives. The section in question relates to the "Open Fuel Standard", which would authorize the Secretary of Transportation to require auto makers in the US to build a specified proportion of "fuel choice-enabling automobiles", including flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) that can run on fuel blends containing a high percentage of methanol, as well as the more common E85 ethanol blend. This harkens back to previous efforts to launch methanol as a consumer fuel. Fortunately, those failed to gain traction, and we should hope that continues to be the case. Methanol makes a fine racing fuel but is entirely unsuited for mass market application.

I'm perplexed why one member of Congress would be quoted as saying he wouldn't have supported the Waxman-Markey bill without its methanol provision. A simpler alcohol than ethanol, methanol is produced mainly from natural gas, rather than from biomass, and it is a common industrial chemical. Because its economics depend on low-priced sources of natural gas, much of the world's methanol is produced in the Middle East, and some plants in North America have closed. It's not clear that increased US methanol demand would be met by either domestic or non-hydrocarbon sources, so its efficacy in addressing either energy security or climate change looks questionable. That's just as well, because methanol offers an inferior way to deliver energy to vehicles, even compared to ethanol, and its toxicity makes it a poor choice for a consumer fuel.

Start with the energy side of these drawbacks. Turning natural gas into methanol consumes around 1/3 of the energy content of the gas, similar to producing hydrogen from natural gas. As with H2, there's no way to recover those losses when burning methanol in an internal combustion engine, so while direct emissions might be lower, indirect emissions negate most of that benefit. We'd be much better off just putting the natural gas directly into cars. Then there's fuel economy. Even after you modify a car to run on a 50% (M50) or 85% blend (M85) of methanol and gasoline, you can't compensate for its lower energy content without precluding operation on ordinary gasoline. While a car running on E85 typically uses 40% more fuel per mile than on gasoline, you'd need 75% more M85 to go the same distance, because methanol's energy content is 25% less than ethanol's and less than half that of petroleum gasoline. So a Ford Fusion FFV that gets a combined 21 city/highway mpg on gasoline and 15 mpg on E85 would deliver a paltry 12 mpg on M85. Even with the car's generous 17.5 gallon fuel tank, its range on M85 would be barely 200 miles.

As if these practical considerations weren't a sufficient disqualification, methanol's handling risks ought to put it out of the running for our future fuel mix. The basic problem is that, unlike gasoline or ethanol, methanol is a neurotoxin. Ingesting even a small quantity can lead to blindness or death, as described in the Material Safety Data Sheet from Methanex, one the world's largest methanol producers. Its vapors aren't much safer, and it can even be absorbed though the skin. These properties create serious concerns for both bulk handling and at the point of sale. Gasoline is hardly as safe as water, but at least if you spill some on your hand, you don't need to be hospitalized. While methanol can be handled safely by trained personnel in industrial facilities and storage terminals, that doesn't extend to the gas station forecourt, where it would pose a hazard to both customers and employees.

Consumers have rejected methanol fuel before, and I am pretty confident they'll do so again, but possibly not before the government imposes another expensive mandate on an automobile industry that surely doesn't need such distractions. The inclusion of this half-baked idea in the House climate bill is a further indictment of its managers' approach of garnering votes one special interest at a time. The Senate has an opportunity to avoid this trap by stripping out all these extraneous provisions and sending a bill to the eventual House/Senate conference committee that focuses squarely on reducing emissions without making concessions to every member's pet idea.

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Article Comments:
Article Ignores Other Studies
Posted: 07/16/2009 09:13 PM by Will Leggett

The article ignores 2 other studies that conclude that methanol is a good substitute for oil and gas. George Olah's book "Beyond Oil and Gas" does an exhaustive study which concludes that methanol is an ideal and cost effective substitute. After the gas crunch in the 70's the US Synthetic Fuels Program also concluded that methanol is a good substitute and the manager of the program ,Peter Vandervee said that "We have minimal technological, environmental and infrastructure conversion cost risks in converting our cars from burning gasoline to methanol" ("Yogi and Gasoline" Institute for Analysis of Global Security March 2005 http://www.iags.org/n032805t1.htm).

In addition, although mileage is lower due to the amount of energy in methanol, this can eventually be addressed by converting to high compression cars designed to burn methanol instead of gasoline. In this case the mileage obtained is virtually the same as gasoline powered engines. Also, methanol is now the preferred fuel source for fuel cells, which hopefully will be powering our cars in the future. In addition, when methanol is derived from biomass instead of coal or natural gas it is completely CO2 neutral, and the raw material can be even cheaper than coal or natural gas.  
 

Methanol a practical fuel from coal or solar
Posted: 07/16/2009 02:08 PM by David Hagen

Methanol is one of the most likely fuels to replace declining light oil. The US DOE projects methanol can be made for US$0.50/gallon, equivalent to $1/gallon. With its focus on pragmatic economics, China is rapidly developing coal to methanol plants for liquid fuel to replace oil. With over 1.5 billion mouths to feed, China has sensibly banned making ethanol from grain.

Ensuring vehicles can run off of either methanol or ethanol is extremely important from a national strategic energy viewpoint. Methanol is likely to be much cheaper than ethanol in the long run. It is already in very high volume production internationally, and could rapidly be scaled up to global fuel production requirements.

Methanol can also be made from solar hydrogen. Thermochemical solar hydrogen promises to be the most cost effective source of hydrogen in the long term.

Geoffrey Styles' gives a very short sighted view. He erroneously compares travel per volume instead of travel per energy input. Using natural gas directly would be more efficient than converting to methanol. However, to use coal or solar energy to drive today’s vehicles, methanol provides a practical fuel that can be rapidly scaled up.  
 

  
 
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