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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Chemists at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute have found a new, direct way to convert gaseous methane into liquid methanol [phys.org]. This offers industry the interesting prospect of using the gas, rather than simply burning it off, as is currently the case.

Methane is an abundant and inexpensive gas. Although it would be a suitable energy source and base material for the chemical industry, huge quantities of it are simply burnt off around the world - above all at oil fields and refineries. "On satellite images of Earth at night, the Middle East is brightly illuminated. This is not because the region has an especially high number of large, brightly lit settlements, but rather because of methane flaring at the oil fields," says Jeroen van Bokhoven, Professor for Heterogeneous Catalysis at ETH Zurich and Head of the Laboratory for Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI).

Another reason for this wasteful approach to methane is that, at present, it is not sufficiently profitable to convert the gas into methanol in liquid form, which is easier to transport and more reactive. On the industrial scale, this conversion is currently performed using an indirect, elaborate and energy-intensive method that involves the production of syngas as an intermediate step.

Bah! Real men get their methane from pigs [wikia.com].

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