At 06:24 PM 12/1/03 +0900, Keith wrote:
>Main reason for us is that you can make
>ethanol yourself, but not methanol, or not easily anyway - not
>something a 3rd World villager can do.
Just a quick note to say that we're committed to working on that part
of
the puzzle.
Over the past decade, there have been some remarkable advances in
methanol
synthesis, and we're committed to creating micro models of those reactors
that will enable folks to covert wood and paper waste directly into
methanol for use as an automotive fuel.
One such advance is the liquid process in which the zinc oxide catalyst
is
ground into a powder and then made into a slurry with mineral oil. Syngas
(a mix of H2 and CO) is then bubbled up through the slurry, enjoying a
conversion rate of around 20% per pass, which is way up from the standard 5%.
The moment I got really excited about this was when I was reading the
details on the pilot reactor was used to generate the engineering data used
to build the first operating facility, and came across the detail that the
test reactor they used to get those numbers was a six foot length of one
inch diameter stainless steel pipe.
Bingo - a micro-methanol reactor!
Since that work was done, Dr. Mahajan ( of Brookhaven National
Laboratory
working on a DOE grant) has come up with what appears to be an even better
route that uses two catalysts and methanol itself as the working solvent.
This method not only works at room temperature (on up to about 150C) but at
a mere 100 psi instead of between 750 and 1,000 psi required by the liquid
process system.
And even better, the reactor offers a 96% conversion rate, which means
that you don't have to recycle the syngas through the reactor, and is
vastly more tolerant of CO2 in the syngas.
Another nifty patent to come down the pike involves using a 36 volt arc
to
decompose a solution of some organic in water producing syngas. Because of
the presence of a carbon material, the plasma from the arc generates not a
mix of H2 and O2, but rather H2 and CO. Whereas the former is explosive,
the latter is not and can be stored for later conversion to methanol, which
in turn can be used as an automotive fuel.
We're looking at trying to make this work with a slurry of saw dust
instead of the sugar solution mentioned in the patent.
Anyway, that's what we're up to here in the Washington woods.
Walt
http://www.windward.org/
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