Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is distilled from any biomass (i.e. forest overgrowth that causes forest fires) or synthesized by reacting CO with H2. Unlike ethanol, methanol can be made with 100% carbon efficiency, that is 100% of the carbon captured from the atmosphere by the trees or brush goes into the methanol fuel. Whereas fermented corn ethanol has around a 20% carbon efficiency. You want that atmospheric CO2 to end up in your liquid fuel, not wasted, that's stupid.
Read the book by the Nobel Prize winning Chemist, George Olah: "Beyond Oil & Gas, The Methanol Economy". He examined all the alternatives to Oil & Gas for future energy supply and concluded methanol was the best alternative. It is widely being used in China for transport fuel, cooking fuel and home heating fuel. They make it from coal for ~13 cents/liter.
Why methanol? Serious question and I have this aversion to burning food to get from A to B.
Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is distilled from any biomass (i.e. forest overgrowth that causes forest fires) or synthesized by reacting CO with H2. Unlike ethanol, methanol can be made with 100% carbon efficiency, that is 100% of the carbon captured from the atmosphere by the trees or brush goes into the methanol fuel. Whereas fermented corn ethanol has around a 20% carbon efficiency. You want that atmospheric CO2 to end up in your liquid fuel, not wasted, that's stupid.
Read the book by the Nobel Prize winning Chemist, George Olah: "Beyond Oil & Gas, The Methanol Economy". He examined all the alternatives to Oil & Gas for future energy supply and concluded methanol was the best alternative. It is widely being used in China for transport fuel, cooking fuel and home heating fuel. They make it from coal for ~13 cents/liter.
Thanks, SmithFS