Carbon Neutral Gasoline

[Don P]

More methanol fun;
Pump The Movie Methanol Clip - YouTube
A grain of salt there, methanol can eat aluminum and seals. My truck has different injectors, tank, lines, software and a blend percent/temp sensor than a non flex and they deleted the knock sensor, which it misses! Hardware wise, dialing it in for straight alcohol a person wouldn't go wrong increasing compression, turbo and play with the cam. As top alcohol racing shows, a flex is not tapping into/ or its leaving another handful of hp on the table.


Back to the op, this one also came up ;
Haru Oni hydrogen plant | 2022 | Siemens Energy Global (siemens-energy.com)

[KEC]

In my area they like to blame farmers for nitrogen runoff and algae blooms. If you look at all the high rent homes and summer homes around the lakes and their green lawns that they fertilize, it seems like that's where the fertilizer should be reduced.

[Southside]

As tight as the margins are and as high as the risks are I don't know a single farmer who would put an ounce of fertilizer down he didn't use.  Golf courses, manicured lawns, etc - that's a different story. 

[Don P]

The house we were warming up yesterday, friends from FL were driving up for the holidays. They left there at 40° and arrived here 14 hrs later it was around 10°. It did take 3 extra stops and about 3 more hours in the Tesla than a trip at reasonable temperatures. It has a healthy number of miles on it, the batteries are showing some loss but I thought that was pretty impressive. A lot more impressive than babysitting their little woodstove at 10 degrees  :D.

[Don P]

I've been curious about the old way of making methanol, wood alcohol. The Egyptians were distilling it to make mummies 4,000 years ago, how hard can it be.

Pretty easy. This guy does a great demo and explanation;
1710 Making Methanol From Dry Distillation - YouTube

Hmm, I'm just up from planing WO and leyland cypress  :D

[realzed]

M My truck has different injectors, tank, lines, software and a blend percent/temp sensor than a non flex and they deleted the knock sensor, which it misses! Hardware wise, dialing it in for straight alcohol a person wouldn't go wrong increasing compression, turbo and play with the cam. As top alcohol racing shows, a flex is not tapping into/ or its leaving another handful of hp on the table.

What make, model, and year of truck is it that you have that you are referring to?
You have me wondering as mine, is a Flex Fuel RAM Crew Cab V6 - and although I haven't had to be faced with using gasoline with a high Methanol content for far - I purchased it figuring it would come to that point somewhere in the future..
I does however manage to get excellent mileage on the highway - between 26 and 29 mpg in measured instances using 87 octane with probably a smidge of Methanol in the mix (you can't get completely away from it in regular grade gasolines here) although I'm told the mileage would begin to drop significantly if I was faced with using M85.
Biggest problem with the addition of Methanol are the factors it brings with it being hydroscopic and the corrosion problems created in the fuel delivery areas in non-Flex types.
But as much as many pi** all over trucks as being gas guzzling monsters - it pretty much easily defies that argument I'm happy to report..   

[Don P]

Mine is a 99 3.0 Ranger 4x4. I bought it with a thrown pushrod, and it has a remanufactured flex engine in it now, just stock.
Nationwide we're mostly running on 10% Ethanol, grain alcohol.
The original intent and engineering was on Methanol, wood alcohol.
They have very similar fuel characteristics. You would have to go back to the Reagan era, sugar prices, the high fructose corn lobby for the machinations of the switch. As an aside, yes wood alcohol does require more care than grain but I've looked, every death I've found worldwide was unsuspecting people drinking it. The rest of the scary stuff you'll read is leftovers from that lobbying to switch to burning corn.

I'd say my truck was intended to run on high proof not on 10%, everything about the way they set it up is towards alcohol and gas is the compromise. The A/F mix is closer to 6.5:1 instead of 14:1 and it takes a lot more advance. I can't prove it but I think I'm running on computer tables rather than completely on sensor inputs on gas... and I think the truck in the tables was a grocery flatlander.

When I say the truck misses its knock sensor, they deleted that sensor on the flex engines. I imagine it took too wide a range on high proof. I'm not anywhere near as good as a sensor but I can hear preignition apparently before any of my deafer friends. They don't hear it but this thing is going to throw another pushrod, on a mountain, running on gas. If I put E85 in it, the rattle stops, the nozzles open up and flow correctly instead of spitting a pittance of gas, the head chambers fill and the engine gets its throat. Basically it was built to light early, burn long, and stretch its legs out. At that point, on the same winding roads I was backing out of the inclines trying not to ping, I can hit at wide open throttle and I cannot make it ping. Manually I would keep advancing, I wonder where that point is. Anyway, the truck sounds like it'll beat this engine to death on gas and I believe it would run long and strong on alcohol.

Racers run lean and advanced, hot. It is cooler burning, don't run lean. Part of what drives me nuts is the computer between me and the engine. I don't know if you caught the comment in the one video that Chevy detunes when the flex sensor is on high proof. You need to be a computer tuner to play very much with it. I believe there is great potential there but they didn't do more than the minimum of putting the motors out there for the counts they needed. I had no idea when I bought this truck.

From what this last video was showing it looks like you could make methanol as a byproduct while running say a stationary generator on wood gas. Or, in a carbon sequestration mode do the dry distillation of methanol from plant matter and bury the charcoal.

[Don P]

Deeper down the rabbit hole as the shop is warming up... from the wayback machine. This is an article from Science magazine in 1973 discussing the merits of using methanol. Start with the summary at the end and see if it is up your alley,
Wayback Machine (archive.org)

The reactor they have sketched converting municipal waste to methanol is just an updraft gasifier. That is a neat airlock fuel hopper/loading door setup for woodgas, charcoal, whatever.

[Don P]

per unit volume, methanol contains 40% more hydrogen than liquid hydrogen (LH2), without the issues of required energy input for storage, which are severe for molecular hydrogen as discussed by the US Department of Energy (DoE) [40]. Since liquid hydrogen has about twice the density as 700 bar hydrogen, these observations also apply to that alternative storage method.

To liquify hydrogen it is compressed then cooled to -250°F Alternatively most proposals mention some high level of compressed room temperature gas as the best compromise for using hydrogen as a vehicle fuel. 700 bar is ~10,000psi. Not something I'd want under me in traffic. For what sounds like a range under 100 miles. To put it in the tank at 700 bar it has to be pumped at 880 bar and cooled to -40°C. Hydrogen fueled cars ain't happening. Methanol is already liquid at room temperature and pressure and has 40% more H per volume than straight hydrogen gas. That's how to haul and burn H   

[Ianab]

Racers run lean and advanced, hot. It is cooler burning, don't run lean. Part of what drives me nuts is the computer between me and the engine. I don't know if you caught the comment in the one video that Chevy detunes when the flex sensor is on high proof. You need to be a computer tuner to play very much with it. I believe there is great potential there but they didn't do more than the minimum of putting the motors out there for the counts they needed. I had no idea when I bought this truck.

There is an Aussie Youtube channel call Might Car Mods, which is a couple of Aussies putzing around with varies cars, performance and otherwise. Their "Go to" is switching to pump E90, and swapping out the ECU for a Haltech programmable unit. They they get "Dyno Yoda" to custom tune to match the exact engine characteristics on a dyno, and wind up the turbo boost. Then they usually blow the gearbox or something... :D

But I get your point, running cars on alcohol is a solved problem, existing models can be modified to use it properly, and the distribution network is basically the same. 

The interesting part of the original article was the next step, to regular gasoline. Another process, and less efficient, but you then have a fuel for the existing 90% of the car fleet, without mods. Gas cars aren't going away any time soon, and there are now cars that are over 100 years old, and still operate. Lots more than 50 years. So in another 50 years there will still be "some" demand for gasoline, even if it's the vintage car guys, with their classic 2023 Mustang. ;)

NZ and Aus don't have emissions testing, so you can play with the ECU's, although any serious modification would need to certified to be road legal. 

[Don P]

Thanks Ian, I've about blown thru my data watching them, broccoli chips  :D. 

The Haltech would be the ticket, it would take the E2500 in a 6 cylinder on methanol, ~$2k + another grand for the display. Out of my league but it would be capable.  

One interesting thing I keep coming across in various ways... methanol is the same simple molecule every time, its alcohol. Gasoline is a blend of many things, which can vary.  Gasoline's pollution solution is a tougher tuning problem, get rid of the junk by blending and burning it in the backwoods.

Thinking about fuel transport. If the proposed fuel is less energy dense, you are running more haulers to do the same work, plus the haulers are burning less dense fuel. That is a real problem. If the fuel is not liquid the hauler is also having to maintain temps and pressures, forgetaboutit. For real work in "remote" places it takes liquid fuel. Alcohol looks like an easy fit. From my understanding, we could convert it to a long chain hydrocarbon, burn that and then clean up the unburned parts  ???  or just burn the methanol straight and have no soot.