Methanol and the Flex-Fuel Arguement

Tis yet another story about high gas prices and how to solve the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. It is a subject that we’ll never hear the end of. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by an article in The Economist on the prospect of using methanol more widely as a fuel. Of course, there are always drawbacks that accompany the many good aspects of the idea, but it presents a pretty good argument.

First subject: ethanol and its growing (no pun intended) unpopularity. Farmers lost their tax credit on E85 in January, and there have been minimal efforts to reinstate because of the public uproar over soaring food prices resulting from ethanol use in fuels. Even bioethanol has been heavily criticized for causing more, not less, environmental damage than fossil fuels [1]. With ethanol becoming less of a player, methanol asks for a chance to get in on the game.

Thanks to the natural gas boom, methanol seems like a pretty good alternative fuel. Made from methane, the main component of natural gas, methanol is clean burning and has a spot price of about $1.10 a gallon [2]. To make it, methanol reacts with high pressure steam in the presence of a nickel catalyst to produce “syngas”, a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The second and final step involves another catalyst (usually a blend of copper, zinc oxide and alumina) to get the methanol product [1]. Though the two-step process seems simple, the first part involves taking off a hydrogen atom from the very stable methane molecule, a very energy intensive step. Modern catalysts can eliminate the intermediate syngas stage though, so we’ll see if the process can become cheaper.

One downside of methanol is its lower energy content, which is only half as much as petrol. Still, alcohols like methanol have higher octane ratings than petrol, meaning they can tolerate higher compression ratios without causing the air-fuel mixture in the cylinders to explode prematurely (also known as “knocking”) [1]. Instead, they burn smoothly. A high compression ratio means that more energy in the fuel can be converted into work, and an engine could potentially be more fuel efficient if designed to take advantage of this high octane rating.

There are other reasons to be uncomfortable with methanol; it burns with an invisible flame (dangerous), is more corrosive than ethanol (bad for aluminum, rubber, and other synthetic polymers found in motor vehicles), and causes blindness if consumed (no more siphoning gas). Though engines today are more tolerant of methanol, these are still important risks to consider.

On the other side, with the cost of converting a petrol-powered vehicle to run equally on methanol down to $100, methanol producers say they can offer the same quantity of energy found in gallon of petrol for $3 [1]. They say this estimate takes in account methanol’s lower energy content and cost of added infrastructure. Since the estimate is coming from those who sell it, it would need to be double checked. Opponents could probably come up with an entirely different conclusion, but it’s still an idea to entertain.

So, say that methanol IS the next best thing (or at least a good thing…it will not solve all of our problems), there would have to be changes in law to require new cars to be warranted to run on all-alcohol fuels (including methanol), and oil prices would have to stay constant at over $100 for at least five years instead of jumping all over the place. This way we could be confident that these alternative measures do indeed need to be taken, and people would have a reason to switch.

In regards to the political aspect above, a new argument emerges. Bills are already pending in both houses of Congress that require car makers to enable fuel competition in their own product lines. This could include adding flex-fuel, all electric, or hybrid electric vehicles [2]. The timeline for the bill requires 50% of cars to be compatible (in the above ways) by 2014, 80% by 2016, and 95% by 2017 [3]. The bill seems attractive in certain aspects: taking advantage of the abundance of natural gas by using it as fuel in a number of ways and promoting more alternative fuels. But is it too much of a push? Some think it is a little too forceful too early; there may be a time for this, but not now. There are many groups (some that have historically disagreed on many subjects) that unite in the proposition of this law. Environmentalists, automakers, United States Chamber of Commerce, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Meat Institute came together to write a letter addressed to the House and Senate majority leaders saying that consumers who wanted flex-fuel vehicles could already buy them [4].

True, the bill does seem a bit forward, but do we need this shove in order to develop and use these alternative fuels? It could just be getting a head start so that when the situation gets REALLY bad, we’ll be ready. It’s definitely the push that methanol needs to be a game player. Though it has its disadvantages, it is still a good option in the fuel mix. My guess is that if it doesn’t happen now with the help of the new Flex-Fuel Ammendment, it will probably happen later.

[1]”Difference engine: Meet the meth drinkers” http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/03/alternative-fuels

[2] “A Flex-Fuel Mandate is Pro-Market” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577251722168929822.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[3] H.R. 1687 – Open Fuel Standard Act of 2011 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1687:

[4] “Flex-Fuel Amendment Makes for Strange Bedfellows” http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/flex-fuel-amendment-makes-for-strange-bedfellows/

Newberry Volcano Project and Hydroshearing vs Hydraulic Fracturing

The Newberry Volcano Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/geothermal-newberry-volcano_n_1206867.html

I’ve kept up with a lot of the media about hydraulic fracturing, which has not been received well and continually gets bad/misinformed press (mostly from the environmental side). After taking a natural gas engineering course last semester and now starting out in a hydraulic fracturing design class, I think I could say that I have fairly good judgement on what has been blown out of proportion or presented falsely. That brings me to this article. There are a number of articles on the Newberry Volcano which are almost identical to this one, so I figured it didn’t matter too much which one I chose. The title caught my eye, and when I first started to read it, I had no idea that it was tied to hydraulic fracturing. The main thing I noticed was that the process that is used to capture this geothermal energy uses “hydroshearing” which they say is similar to hydraulic fracturing, but not the same. Some other articles go as far to say that they are completely different.

They’re not.

They are still pumping millions of gallons of water down to fracture the rock and using proppant to hold the rock open, allowing for (in this case) water vapor to escape. They say the difference between the two is that hydraulic fracturing uses “chemical-laden fluids”, which implies that  hydroshearing does not. The chemicals in the hydraulic fracturing fluids (which usually make up less than 2% of total fluid volume) are added to ensure proper distribution of fluid in the fractures and more even proppant settling. Others are added based on the type of rock that is being fractured and the potential chemical interactions between the fluid and rock. Seems to me that similar amounts of chemicals would need to be added to the water used in hydroshearing that take in account rock chemistry and that ensure proper proppant settling. But they don’t say this. They want to distance the two processes as much as possible because hydraulic fracturing has been bashed for its environmental effects. I would say that hydroshearing poses the same threats (which, to mention, is really only from damaged well casings that protect water aquifers. The same problems would exist when drilling for oil, not just natural gas and not just hydraulic fracturing). There would also be the issue of treating the flowback water before re-injection (not to mention the amount of water usage to begin with, which is another slam point for hydraulic fracturing). Still, they want to avoid the connection between hydraulic fracturing and hydroshearing because they want this new process to seem more “green” and environmentally friendly. Hence the new name.

Outside of my view on how the media presents hydroshearing vs hydraulic fracturing, I actually think that using Enhanced Geothermal Systems and tapping that source of energy is a neat idea. It’s like what Dr. Webber said though – it won’t solve our energy problems or provide enough to offset other sources of energy, but its definitely a start.