Future fuel is methanol not hydrogen

[slowrotor]

I listened to Nobel prize winner George Olah (spelling ?) on the radio talking about his book Titled: BEYOND OIL AND GAS THE NEW METHANOL ECONOMY.

He thinks methanol will be the new motor fuel when we run out of petroleum.
He said methanol can be made by extracting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. This would help reduce global warming.
He is working on a fuel cell that will use methanol as its fuel and he also claimed the same methanol fuel cell can make methanol in a reverse process.
Methanol is easy to store compared with hydrogen and will use the existing infrastructure.
Very interesting.

slowrotor

[Flingwing207]

...but it takes about 30% more methanol vs gasoline or jet fuel to make the same amount of energy, so it won't be accepted in the aviation industry until there's no choice.

[Dave_Jackson]

It will also be interesting to see how the 'competition' between the large number of choices for future vehicle power evolves over the next decade or two.

Which will be the winner?

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Edited to remove unrelated material

[HillerBee]

It's a bit more complicated I'm afraid. So we won't be flying on methanol nor hydrogen for the first (I'd say 20-30 years) if we ever will use one of them. I consider it very unlikely.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/

Very interesting about the alternative fuels

[GoodGrief]

None of the above I am afraid

Free energy and anti-gravity are possible today. The theory of zero point energy shows that there are great fluctuations of electrical field energy embedded within the fabric of space. Example: Inventor T. Henry Moray produced a fifty-kilowatt free energy machine in 1930; The Pons/Fleischmann cold fusion experiment produced tremendous heat without fusion.

[CRAN]

Don't forget that methanol burns with a colourless flame so you can't tell when things are on fire! (Well until its too late anyway!) In addition methanol can be ingested through the skin and is extremely poisonous; attacking the central nervous system, leading to loss of feeling, paralysis and death.

:eek:

[Graviman]

The main worry here is that methanol is highly toxic! I think that ethanol stands a better chance, but you need more complicated fuel cells. Eventually fuel cells will work with longer chain hydrocarbons, like bio-diesel. The IC/FC decision will doubtless be made on cost, by the manufacturers if not the consumers.

The future of the "refining" industry will be converting atmospheric CO2 (and H2O) into long chain hydrocarbons, whatever the energy source. This then frees up the transport industry to use whatever fuel with engines or fuel cells. This needs to happen quickly to address the global warming problem.

High temp fusion is already here! We just haven't figured how to efficiently utilise the sun's energy yet. I believe low temp fusion will come, but by then it might not be helicopters that we are "flying". ;)

Mart