Sunday, August 16, 2009

random thought (n)

Motor fuel has been on my mind.
Bio-fuel has dropped from the news for the moment. The world is in trouble and the Arabs want to sell gas.

When bio-fuel was in the news it was ethanol and fryer oil. Not good policy. Ethanol is food or food derived. Used fryer oil is rather limited as fuel for the truck fleet. Both receive big support from the agribusiness lobby.

Methanol is simple, easy, toxic and can be made from any carbon feedstock. There is no constituency for it

I looked up manufacture. It is catalytic processing of water gas. Electrically heated carbon is treated with steam. the resulting hydrogen and carbon monoxide are reacted in the presence of a copper catalyst. Methanol. Tough on fuel injectors but no worse than ethanol. High compression returns. The energy density is not great but what we want is miles per buck.

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