No. We've been discussing this since the list was founded five years ago, but nobody's found a solution yet. Dr Tom Reed, who probably knows more about methanol than most, told me we just aren't there yet.
Tom's knowledge of the field is such that when one finds themselves in disagreement with him, they need to go back and check their records to figure out where they went wrong.
Walt Patrick of Windward posted some interesting information some time ago and said his organisation would be working on it, but we've heard nothing since. You can check it in the archives if you like.
The efficient conversion of biomass to methanol is a complex process. It's long been feasible to do at the industrial level; what we're working on is getting it viable at the community/neighborhood level.
Windward is an intentional community dedicated to modeling self-reliant systems, and that's the scale that we're focused on. Maybe it can be simplified further down to the backyard level, but that's hard to see happening. Then again, who would have thought that they come up with bread machines that can mix and bake a loaf of pretty decent bread right there on your kitchen counter?
We've been working on the ancillary processes involved such as pressure swing adsorption to provide an on-site oxygen supply for the auto-thermal steam reactor needed to convert char into syngas, the instrumentation network so that we can follow what's going on at the various stages, hydraulic compression, syngas storage, co-generation of steam to feed our 1HP steam engine to drive the generator to power the controls, pumps and so on.
The actual condensation of syngas into methanol isn't the demanding part; it's all the other stuff that has to happen first - and happen safely - that is the challenge.
Walt http://www.windward.org/ _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
