SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Methanol—a colorless liquid that can be made from agricultural waste—has long been touted as a green alternative to fossil fuels. But it’s toxic and only has half the energy as the same volume of gasoline. Now, researchers report they’ve created a potentially cheap way to use sunlight to convert methanol to ethanol, a more popular alternative fuel that’s less harmful and carries more energy.
The new report is “great work” says Zhongmin Liu, a chemist at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China who was not involved with the research. If the process can be optimized and scaled up, he says, “It has the potential to change the world.”
The notion of converting methanol to ethanol isn’t new. Companies already have a trio of chemical processes that do so. But these require adding heat, pressure, and toxic additives, such as carbon monoxide. Companies can also make ethanol directly by fermenting corn kernels or sugarcane. But growing those crops requires precious farmland that could otherwise grow food. Researchers and companies have also come up with ways to convert agricultural wastes into ethanol. So far, however, these have proved too costly to be competitive.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 22 2019, @04:36PM (1 child)
The obvious application for this is to build solar power plants, preferably concentrating solar (mirrors and salt tank) and then construct some sort of value-adding facility right next to it to take advantage of the power. Desalinization, or this methanol to ethanol conversion plant, maybe even some sort of clean industrial incinerator.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday February 23 2019, @02:08PM
In the long term maybe.
In the medium term its another pathway in the methanol economy.
Most methanol comes from extensive processing of natgas today, although in theory its an option for coal to liquid via making "towne gas" as an intermediary.
methanol is a horrible general public joe6pack fuel, very toxic, etc. Cheap conversion to ethanol makes it useful, or more useful, as a general public fuel.
You can do a lot of cool chemical plant stuff with methanol as a feedstock; its also a pretty good liquid fuel for electrical fuel cells.
We've "always" had a cheap and easy methanol to diesel-alike, its some ester I forget, but diesel cars not so cool outside Europe (and especially post-VW psuedo-scandal)
So... "MeOH to EtOH cheap and easy" is kinda a plug to connect the current and proposed methanol economy to very realistic general public liq fuel for vehicles and whatever.
We have plenty of interesting alternative energy transports for many decades; we've burned up the simple ones and now its a puzzler to implement the trickier ones in a form that doesn't involve moron end users killing an entire city block via misuse.
Your cogeneration plant proposal is realistic and likely, although in summary the more popular use will be as an expensive stack at a refinery that is one of the last processing steps for general purpose liq fuel production. Essentially your mass produced E15 mogas will "come from natgas" instead of "come from corn farmers". How this will impact the political landscape WRT E15 only existing as a mandated product BECAUSE of corn farmers who are soon to be cut out of the loop is interesting to consider.
I just looooove researching investing in the energy sector, its a cool and interesting corner of capitalist technology, darn near more fun than stuff closely related to EE/CS which is too much like work. F google I'm sick enough of their bullshit they cause at work; energy sector is relaxing and invigorating to invest in as a spare time hobby.