The high proce of gasoline and the change that is upon us.

D

Dual-500

Member
#2
#2
Wonder why they chose a picture of Schumacher racing's Top Fuel dragster for use in the article - since it runs on a mix of 90% nitromethane cut with 10% methanol.
 
Beal

Beal

Member
#3
#3
There was an ethenol plant near... Shut down now. Bunch of wasted $$$.
Apparently it took more energy to produce than what it created, and it didnt help MPG...

Atleast thats what I understand.

Isnt that stuff not so good for our engines? I recall Mr. weedwacker man saying to avoid the stuff Sheetz sells ...
:shrug:
 
Oldsalt

Oldsalt

Well-Known Member
#4
#4
The fact that food prices have dramatically jumped is due in large part because the corn crop for a number of years has been artificially diverted to methanol. The program has been a bust right from the start. If there is less corn available to feed chickens and pigs and make tortillas the price jumps. This always happens in a free market system. The tree huggers have again ended up working at cross purposes. They would like food prices to be suppressed so that the 'less fortunate' [The Department of Agriculture passes out trillions in Food Stamps] can have a healthy diet. Then they want that 'pristine air' no mater what the cost or effect on everything else. Same ol' fiddling with market forces by our government that always backfires.
 
Newoldstock

Newoldstock

New Member
#5
#5
The technology is sound.

Its just a question of do we want to use natural gas for hone heating and natural gas fired power generation?
Or do we want to start looking at gas to liquid conversion technology.

My personal feeling is the large scale use4 and production pf methanol from shale gas would be a step in the right direction.

For once I agree with the oil and gas compnaies ( who are trying real hard to find ways to use all this gas we are awash in and they are loosing money because of ).

Why would I agree with them???????

Because once the methanol Genie is out of the bottle and a methanol infrastructure is built we can finlay start to wean ourselves off petroleum.....

Today we have the technology to use the FT process to make synthetic fuels from Syngas in much the same way this article proposes we make methonal. We also have the option to make gasolene from from mehanol in reforemers ( good way to use stranded natural gas....

Farther down the road is the FT process aplied to coal to manufacture both petroleum and methanol.

And the final solution leads us to completely synthetic production of liquid fuels using garbage, biomass or even directly from water and Co2 if we find a source of energy like thorium reactors (LFTR tecnology ) or fusion.

In the early 70s Dr Thomas Reed was a biig wheel in the biomass movement.
His research pointed out near the tail end of the oil crissis that we could effectively produce methanol from bio waste. But cheap oil came back nd chased his dreams away.

Maybe its time to start the whole process once again.

Before oil methanol was the liqud fuel of choice in western Eroupe where it was produced from wood not corn.....

The danger is the oil companies.
In Canada the largest producer of ethanol and methanol is Imperial oil ( Canadian EXXON )

As sugested methanol gives you only 1/2 the energy in a tank as does gasolene.
But thats with low compression flex fuel engines.
Methanol engines can deliver much more.
 
Oldsalt

Oldsalt

Well-Known Member
#7
#7
We can certainly hope that meth will some day become a viable source of energy. But there does not seem to be any sound reason to expect a break through. All the talk is not backed up with any reality....just hope.

The Methanol Genie will most likely stay in the bottle as far as being a good idea. The sad fact is that it simply takes too much fossil fuel to make the fertilizer, ship the fertilizer, and of course power the engines to apply the fertilizer to the soil. And that is just the start of the game. The power to till, plant, apply insecticides, harvest the crop, ship the harvest to destination is immense. A big whack on the head of the would-be Genie. Then there is the large amount of energy to make the stuff produce alcohol.

However, even though it is a loosing proposition it at least is capable of producing fuel that can be used to power a vehicle. That can't be said for the proposed development of Hydrogen fuel.
 
Newoldstock

Newoldstock

New Member
#9
#9
No...

No ethanol from food.

Methanol from anything that will burn!

http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/DOE/DOE_reports/60054/doe_pc_60054-t9/doe_pc_60054-t9-A.pdf

Old but the technology is currently making gasoline in South africa and Auz.

For Oldsalt who says
"We can certainly hope that meth will some day become a viable source of energy. But there does not seem to be any sound reason to expect a break through. All the talk is not backed up with any reality....just hope."

From the animation of a propsed methanol pilot
Here is the real mini plant in the Russian arctic turning otherwise useless stranded natural gas into methanol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwwcNLaBd0k&feature=channel
 
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A

Adrenaline

Member
#10
#10
since the subject is here does anyone know what distillers do with the methanol they pull out of the stills as a by product. i think it was something like 200,000 gallons of whiskey produced in the U.S. annually according to modern marvels. plus all the other distillets(did i get that right?). while thats no where near enough fuel for the country it could be put to use right? my problem with alchohol is the stoichiometric ratio screws your mileage.
 
danc9

danc9

New Member
#12
#12
"From the animation of a propsed methanol pilot
Here is the real mini plant in the Russian arctic turning otherwise useless stranded natural gas into methanol"

REALLY.....why would you take a near perfect fuel and process it into something else to burn????? I think your grasping at threads.

DAN
 
Newoldstock

Newoldstock

New Member
#13
#13
No I don't think so Dan:

Stranded natural gas never gest used to do anything significant unless its near a tar sands opperation where it can be burned to make steam up here in Canada.
You don't buy much gas from us anymore and you produce so much for now that its cheaper now than it has been in years ( with potential for more ).

Unless you want to export gas to China.....

Methanol is hard to load in a ship and export because it absorbs water.
So small plants in US states with gas in excess could convert it to liquid fuel for domestic consumption. Coal bed gas could be converted to liquid fuel and the coal too!

And in the next pahse when gas and coal start to become expensive nuclear can power the process to make it too without a fosil input and biomass can be converted to it directly through the old FT process.

Its a lot cheaper and easire to adapt our infrastructure to methanol than Compressed NG for transportation. And the possibilty in 20 years that these new gas fields will decline means you will be stuck for NG.

Best of all it means less polution and it will stick it to the tar sands since its cheaper to make methanol than cook the oil out of the dirt ( unless we go nuclear up here and use that to power the upgraders and steam injection wells. Not too many people keen on that idea right now. Maybe in 20 or 30 years when we have Thorioum reactors of something a biut safer than the existing Candu plants that are costing us a fortune ).

Anyone with the cash to build a Methanol plant with access to power and organic feedstock could get into the game. Real competion for the oil companies...

Or do nothing....
Right now the biggest alcohol produce in Canada is an oil company ( using NG by the way )
 
Oldsalt

Oldsalt

Well-Known Member
#14
#14
NOS

I believe I see what you are saying. But the hard fact is still there .... and you allude to it; All fossil fuels, including NG is going to run out someday. Not very soon, but some day.

Aint all the methanol programs just Band Aids at best? Methanol tends to almost break even, the hydrogen car fuel boondoggle [ongoing] is pure fantasy.

I really believe most folks have a fond hope, in the backs of their minds, that a super powerful Tooth Fairy will suddenly appear and provide us with a dreamy power source.

I wish all these experiments the best of luck. Still have one car in the garage that gets less than 5 MPG so any help at all in appreciated.
 
Newoldstock

Newoldstock

New Member
#16
#16
Oldsalt said:
NOS

I believe I see what you are saying. But the hard fact is still there .... and you allude to it; All fossil fuels, including NG is going to run out someday. Not very soon, but some day.

Aint all the methanol programs just Band Aids at best? Methanol tends to almost break even, the hydrogen car fuel boondoggle [ongoing] is pure fantasy.

I really believe most folks have a fond hope, in the backs of their minds, that a super powerful Tooth Fairy will suddenly appear and provide us with a dreamy power source.

I wish all these experiments the best of luck. Still have one car in the garage that gets less than 5 MPG so any help at all in appreciated.
Click to expand...
There is no magic bullet I am aware of.
But after a lot of thought I come back to the saem arguements that Thomas Reed made back in the 70s with his methanol experiements.
Its the only practical solution for long term liquid fuel transportion.

I would also like to add some causious optimistic ideas I have about methanol fuel cell technology.

IF and its a BIG one yet to actualy solve a lot of technical problems then a car like the Chevy volt would actualy be a lot more practical and efficient if fueld by a combinatyion of gride power and methanol ( I figuere by my cave man math you would only need 2 to 5 KWh of methanol to supliment he batteries in such a car for a greatly extended range ).

You said yourself Hydrogen is the greatest fuel but its impractical.
Methanol is not a bad second place.

Me I would be happy with a wood powered car....
Thats made of wood....

Then I could hug trees, and burn them at the same time......

Cars need to change too.
Why are they not carbon fiber yet?
 
Oldsalt

Oldsalt

Well-Known Member
#17
#17
An uncle that was with Patton in WWII testified to me that the Germans were using what I call 'destructive distillation' to run farm 'tractors'. A hopper is opened and a bunch of green vegetation is thrown in. A fire is set under the hopper and the contents cooked without the presence of oxygen. The gases coming off were used to run the engine. Another guy that was, a year or so later in time, with occupational troops in Japan also related to me that they were using that method.

Another way to really streamline the motor fuel situation is to use engines that will consume crude oil. No unnecessary use of energy to crack to gasoline, one fuel fits all, and lot safer because it has such a low volatility rating. But the tree huggers would have a cow due to the amount of pollution it would likely produce.

There have been such engines built and used a long time ago. The pic is a 1/4 scale model of a 1895 Mery engine that I have worked on for some time. The original burned straight crude oil. It is a 6 cycle engine, rather than the common 4 cycle, so that it can have a 'extra' exhaust stroke. It probably needed the extra stroke to get rid of the horrid gunk inside the cylinder. I'll run this model on Coleman camp stove fuel.
 
1

1funride

Member
#18
#18
After reading all this, I immediately went out to the shop and jetted all my bikes, engines, tractors, motorcycles, etc super fat. Started them all up and ran them WOT. I want to plug up the ozone so it snows less and I can ride my dirt bikes more.
 
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