>Have it your way. Just don't drink the stuff. > >EB Hm. No, Ed, I don't think Greg should have it his way. He's definitely underplaying the dangers of methanol. I don't think it's going to do anyone any good for D-I-Y biofuel neophytes to get the impression that methanol is nice, cosy stuff like the wood it's named for, only slightly less hazardous than the jolly old booze you buy in a supermarket next to the food shelves and drink with your dinner. Let's get it straight:
METHANOL IS DEADLY! METHANOL KILLS LOADS OF PEOPLE ALL THE TIME! Aha, but so does ethanol? Indeed it does, but you're comparing a few grams downed in a second with TONNES of booze consumed by alcoholics over decades. Sure, if you sit down and drink a couple of bottles of whisky it'll probably kill you, and it happens, but it's not exactly common. Methanol deaths are common. Read any newspaper any day from South Asia or Southeast Asia or Africa or anywhere in the Third World and you'll see the mass wipeouts from illicit local brewers that got it wrong and ended up with a little methanol in their hooch - 12 dead, 25 dead, half a village dead. They often don't even bother to report it it's so common. And not just in the Third World. So, please, folks, treat methanol with great respect and caution. As Ed said, "A few teaspoons of methanol can cause blindness and a few tablespoons can be fatal, if the exposure is not treated." Treatment will have to be fast, and it's no guarantee at all - you might survive intact, more likely you won't. Most don't. Also, methanol can enter the body through the skin, so WEAR PROTECTIVE GLOVES, and DON'T BREATHE THE FUMES. Methanol boils at about 63 deg C and we heat our BD brews to 50 deg C or more, so it fumes a lot. Also it burns very well and with an invisible flame - don't use naked flame near methanol. Mixing methanol with lye when you make biodiesel creates sodium methoxide, which is fearsome stuff, even more deadly. Sure, as we all say, it's easy to make biodiesel in your kitchen - but we all also plaster the how-to's with deadly warnings and precautions. PLEASE take them seriously, don't start taking this stuff for granted and being casual about it. All it needs is just one little accident - the media will jump on it, and us, and that'll set the whole biofuels movement back years, which will do the whole damned planet a lot of harm. > > From: Greg and April <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Reply-To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com >Ethanol 7; Methanol 9; Gasoline 10; Salt 15; Benzene 55; Aflatoxin 1,000; >Dioxin 250,000 > > > Methanol if ingested will kill you or at least blind you > >Ethanol is toxic when it is ingested as well. Why do you think that people >react it it the way they do? Your numbers may be clinically correct, but in practice there's no comparison. Medical science now accepts that small regular doses of ethanol are good for you, but they accept no such thing about methanol - no amount of methanol is good for you. >It is not the methanol its self that is toxic, it is the by products from >the liver breaking it down that is toxic. Which won't leave you any the less dead, or blind. A substance which generates toxic breakdown products is to be regarded as toxic. >(and in fact is > > what is used to 'denature' the ethanol, hence the British term "methylated > > spirits" or "meths"). > >It is one of the ingreaents that may be used, but, not by its self. It may indeed be used by itself, and was indeed the original denaturant: "add 5% methanol". >And it is usually made from natural gas these days, > > not "wood" and not air and water! > >If you will check, the American term for methanol is wood alcohol, because >it was first produced from wood. Then coal and now natural gas. I think we all know that, but commercially supplied methanol which most of us have access to is very unlikely to be made of wood. Brazil might be an exception, but almost all methanol is currently derived from fossil-fuel sources. We know about this work with methanol here Greg, it's been discussed before. Tom Reed did a lot of work with methanol fuel in the 70s (now he works with woodgas stoves, and was also very early on the scene with making biodiesel from waste cooking oil). There's been quite a lot of discussion here on and off about producing your own methanol from biomass. There was also a how-to article in HomePower magazine a few years back. However, despite lots of enthusiasm, nobody's managed to produce any results so far. Check out the list archives, I'm sure you'll find some interesting information there. But don't let me discourage you - please, go ahead, and good luck! I'm glad you've revived the issue. We'd all love to know about an effective backyard methanol production technique. Using dino-source methanol spoils it for many of us - it means our beautiful clean biodiesel isn't quite as clean as we'd like, and using ethanol instead has its problems. D-I-Y bio-methanol would be excellent. >I sugest that you read the following books to learn how methanol is made, or >can be made. >I bought all of them off the net. > >1) Methanol: Bridge to a Renewable Energy Future By: John H. Perry Jr. and >Cristiana Perry > >2) Methanol Production And Use Edited by: Wu-Hsun Cheng and Harold H. >Kung > >3) Proceedings of the Biomass-to-Methanol Specialists' Workshop Edited >by: Thomas B Reed and Michael Graboski > >You will learn how methanol can be made from "air and water". To sum it up, >CO2 is recovered from air, H2 is recovered from water, and recombined to >make CH3OH (methanol). CO2 + 3H2 -------> CH3OH + H2O > >And yes, wood to can be gassified to make CO + CO2+ H2O which when you use >steam reforming, gives you CO + H2 > > > Ethanol is 'grain alcohol' (corn, wheat, etc.), and thus renewable as well > > as considerably less toxic. > >So methanol is ' wood alcohol '. >If you will check out the Biomass to Methanol book, you will find out that >methanol is indeed renewable. It can be renewable, but only a very tiny amount is not derived from fossil fuels and therefore it is generally not renewable. >As far as "considerably less toxic", try >reading the books I mentioned. Don't kid yourself. > >Efforts are ongoing here in BC to establish an > > "ethanol-from-wood waste" production base, whcih has been previously > > discussed. > >Limited comerical production of methanol from biomass is all ready underway >in the US of A. Commercial production of methanol from biomass is well-established in Brazil and elsewhere, and is nothing new. Ethanol-from-wood waste is also nothing new, but the established methods are dirty, and not very viable. The BC initiative and others offer new technologies that are highly promising. See the "Ethanol from cellulose" links at the Journey to Forever Biofuels pages. Ethanol is a more desirable end-product than methanol for many reasons (the relative toxicity issue being one of them). Not shade-tree stuff though, by the looks of it. >If you are going to argue the point, please first check your facts. There's always more to it than facts Greg. You have facts, but your overall picture is not factual. Best wishes Keith Addison Journey to Forever Handmade Projects Tokyo http://journeytoforever.org/ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
