Interesting, I wonder if there's anything to this?

Quote:Université Laval researchers have developed a highly effective method for converting CO2 into methanol, which can be used as a low-emissions fuel for vehicles. The team led by Professor Frédéric-Georges Fontaine presents the details of this discovery in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2013/...cdQyfnVCSo

As long as Natural Gas is cheap, forget it.

Guess we should start burning more fossil fuels. Don't want to run out of CO2.

Yea cause taking CO2 out of the atmosphere will probably have no effect....

Seriously though if its cheaply scalable then awesome but if it costs a ton more than natural gas it's just a gimmick right now.

(06-23-2013 03:13 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  As long as Natural Gas is cheap, forget it.

natural gas won't always be this cheap, and technology becomes cheaper as it is improved. At some point in the future, alternatives will become competitive with fossil fuels.

(06-23-2013 05:49 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 03:13 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  As long as Natural Gas is cheap, forget it.

natural gas won't always be this cheap, and technology becomes cheaper as it is improved. At some point in the future, alternatives will become competitive with fossil fuels.

USGS says there is 7 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas under North and South Dakota that are commercially recoverable using present technology

I'll use whatever is cheapest.

Most people share my view.

(06-23-2013 06:45 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 05:49 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 03:13 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  As long as Natural Gas is cheap, forget it.

natural gas won't always be this cheap, and technology becomes cheaper as it is improved. At some point in the future, alternatives will become competitive with fossil fuels.

USGS says there is 7 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas under North and South Dakota that are commercially recoverable using present technology

That's not really as much as it may sounds like. That's equivalent to about 1.2 billion barrels of oil (1 BBL=6000 cu.ft.). At our current usage rate of 20 million barrels a day, that's about 600 days worth of our current oil usage equivalence. Our gas reserves sound bigger than they are for a couple of reasons. One, the units of measure are such that the number gets big in a hurry. Two, when expressed in terms of number of years, that's calculated as the value of a fraction where the numerator is total recoverable reserves and the denominator is current consumption. Because of Jimmy Carter, we have underutilized natural gas for a generation, so that denominator is pretty small. If some of these natural gas uses come to fruition, that denominator gets a lot bigger in a hurry, and that life number goes down fast.

Of course, USGS estimates vastly understate what's most likely to be there, because of the methodology used.

(06-23-2013 10:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 06:45 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 05:49 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 03:13 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  As long as Natural Gas is cheap, forget it.

natural gas won't always be this cheap, and technology becomes cheaper as it is improved. At some point in the future, alternatives will become competitive with fossil fuels.

USGS says there is 7 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas under North and South Dakota that are commercially recoverable using present technology

That's not really as much as it may sounds like. That's equivalent to about 1.2 billion barrels of oil (1 BBL=6000 cu.ft.). At our current usage rate of 20 million barrels a day, that's about 600 days worth of our current oil usage equivalence. Our gas reserves sound bigger than they are for a couple of reasons. One, the units of measure are such that the number gets big in a hurry. Two, when expressed in terms of number of years, that's calculated as the value of a fraction where the numerator is total recoverable reserves and the denominator is current consumption. Because of Jimmy Carter, we have underutilized natural gas for a generation, so that denominator is pretty small. If some of these natural gas uses come to fruition, that denominator gets a lot bigger in a hurry, and that life number goes down fast.

Of course, USGS estimates vastly understate what's most likely to be there, because of the methodology used.

Which leads to an ever increasing price.

Thought the Obama administration under their Green Program was in favor of using basically renewable energy sources
and preserving the non-renewable sources for the future. Otherwise use wind, solar, tidal, even nuclear but preserve oil , coal and natural gas. Even though that doesn't seem to be what they are doing.

Non-factor in the energy debate. It's not suitable for current internal combustion engines, its poisonous (even absorbed through the skin), and pure methanol is hard to see when it is ignited (invisible fire!!!). In the future it may be more usable, but for now why abandon the ethanol fuels (largely a waste of money already in my mind), and invest in methanol? It may sound good to environmentalists, but what are the practical applications that current MeOH production can't sustain? As far as domestic use, CO2 is already heavily regulated. I could see this as more practical in China where their CO2 emissions are the highest and environmental regulations are lower.

Sure it's used for several different purposes already, but is converting CO2 to MeOH cost effective? I don't know really.

(06-24-2013 10:05 AM)200yrs2late Wrote:  Non-factor in the energy debate. It's not suitable for current internal combustion engines, its poisonous (even absorbed through the skin), and pure methanol is hard to see when it is ignited (invisible fire!!!). In the future it may be more usable, but for now why abandon the ethanol fuels (largely a waste of money already in my mind), and invest in methanol? It may sound good to environmentalists, but what are the practical applications that current MeOH production can't sustain? As far as domestic use, CO2 is already heavily regulated. I could see this as more practical in China where their CO2 emissions are the highest and environmental regulations are lower.
Sure it's used for several different purposes already, but is converting CO2 to MeOH cost effective? I don't know really.

Still an avenue worth pursuing--as are all. Just coming up with a way to get rid of CO2 could be huge. For one thing, that would open the way to coal liquefaction/gasification, which facilitates use of a huge domestic energy source. And while methanol makes little sense in internal combustion applications, there may be other places where it can be used extensively, like closed-loop systems.

We need to pursue every promising alternative as vigorously as possible. At the same time we need to be realize that few, if any, offer any realistic chance of replacing a significant amount of oil any time soon--like in the next 10-25 years, minimum. Until we have an energy policy that reflects both those points, Paris Hilton still has a better plan.

(06-23-2013 02:51 PM)dmacfour Wrote:  Interesting, I wonder if there's anything to this?

Quote:Université Laval researchers have developed a highly effective method for converting CO2 into methanol, which can be used as a low-emissions fuel for vehicles. The team led by Professor Frédéric-Georges Fontaine presents the details of this discovery in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Sure there's probably something to this.

Problem is, it consumes more energy than it provides...so where are you going to get that energy?

Oh and there's this:

Quote:"Unlike most catalysts developed thus far to convert CO2 into methanol, ours contains no metal, which reduces both the costs and toxic hazard of the catalyst,"

Cost decrease? Sure.

Toxicity?
I wouldn't assume that. Go look up the formulas for VX or tabun.