I think you"re high on the transmission an distribution losses. They are typically around 7% of the actual transmission load, or about 5% of the initial energy content of the fuel. You're about right on the power plant efficiency, though. So with 70% power plant efficiency and 5% transmission losses, that leaves 65% efficiency at the plug in your wall. Then you have to subtract the inefficiency of the battery charging/discharging and the inefficiency of the electric motor that drives the wheels. I would guess you lose another 25% (of the vehicle load, not the original energy in the power plant fuel) there, so the ultimate fuel efficiency of a battery-electric vehicle might be about 45-50%. To be fair you would have to compare this number not just to the fuel efficiency of an internal combustion engine, but also to the efficiency of the fuel delivery system (refining, piping, trucking).
Hydrogen Hoax and real Alternative Fuels for cars
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I think you"re high on the transmission an distribution losses. They are typically around 7% of the actual transmission load, or about 5% of the initial energy content of the fuel. You're about right on the power plant efficiency, though. So with 70% power plant efficiency and 5% transmission losses, that leaves 65% efficiency at the plug in your wall. Then you have to subtract the inefficiency of the battery charging/discharging and the inefficiency of the electric motor that drives the wheels. I would guess you lose another 25% (of the vehicle load, not the original energy in the power plant fuel) there, so the ultimate fuel efficiency of a battery-electric vehicle might be about 45-50%. To be fair you would have to compare this number not just to the fuel efficiency of an internal combustion engine, but also to the efficiency of the fuel delivery system (refining, piping, trucking).
scrinch said:
Good points.
A well referenced white paper on just that subject can be found at http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf.
The power plant efficiency is based on a natural gas power plant. I am guessing coal is less efficient?
With a number of comparisons, the Tesla Roadster is about twice as efficient (well to wheel) as a Toyota Prius. Using electricity from natural gas it burns about 1/3 the co2. But more importantly, it uses no oil
MikeD
Full time employment: Posting here.
Ed_The_Gypsy said:
Okey dokey.
Mike D.
PS - I think it's cool how much other people know about stuff I am ignorant about. I am surprised on a daily basis by people on message boards.
TromboneAl
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I'll admit I don't know much about this, but I see things that suggest it's not a free market, such as record profits from Exxon, and gas prices that don't seem to drop as oil prices do.
Advances in alternative fuels live or die based on the cost of oil. I'd think that if OPEC felt threatened, it could squelch alternative fuel enthusiasm with a dramatic drop in prices.
TromboneAl
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Is there any scientific commission, analogous to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that is looking into solutions to the energy problem?
Ed_The_Gypsy
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ERD50 said:
Maybe I didn't clarify the right things, ERD (may I call you ERD? ). Natural gas is mostly methane, CH4, plus a few odds and ends that leak past the clean-up plant. Methane can be made into methanol, CH3OH, the lightest of the alcohols.
(Lecture continues. Plug iPod into ears. Select brew of choice.)
Making methanol from methane (AKA natural gas)--the movie:
Natural gas is heated up under pressure with steam, really hot. The mix is passed over a nickel-based catalyst inside a number of large (40 ft long x 6 or 8 inches diameter with a tube wall about half an inch or so thick), basically Ni-Chrome (metal similar to the wires in electric heaters) tubes that look like long cannons. These tubes are hanging straight down in rows in a huge insulated box filled with fire. When I was still in the business, I helped design a single such furnace that burned 1.2 billion BTUs per hour of mostly natural gas for fuel alone--the biggest in the world at that time. (We didn't tell the customer that. He would have panicked.) (As I recall, there were 770 tubes in that furnace. A real forest!)
Inside the tubes, the gases are heated much hotter and the steam reacts with the methane to form hydrogen and carbon monoxide: H2O + CH4 = 3 H2 + CO. We need extra water to push things along (which doesn't react, it just passes through) and we don't convert all the hydrocarbon (methane) to syngas, but that is the basic idea. This reaction absorbs heat, which is being supplied by the furnace-side of the tubes.
We capture all the heat in the flue gas and the hot syngas by making high pressure steam with it. (At about 1,500 psi. Very big medicine.) The steam drives steam turbines which drive big (the main one is ~ 50,000 HP) compressors.
The cold syngas is compressed by our big momma compressor up to around 100 atmospheres of pressure (and this is the modern LOW pressure process!). The syngas (= the make-up gas) is warmed up and passed through a large bed of a different catalyst (copper on zink oxide pellets). Here, the hydrogen and carbon monoxide react to make methanol, a reaction that gives off heat: 2 X H2 + CO = CH3OH. (Maybe you noticed that we only used two of the three hydrogen molecules. The excess H2 is eventually burned in the furnace, unless someone recovers it for some other use.) Only part of the CO is reacted each pass over the catalyst, maybe 4%, because of equilibrium. The effluent from the reactor is cooled until the methanol condenses out of the gases and is drained out of the 'loop' (as we call it). The unreacted gases go through a small compressor to make up for all the pressure drop in the loop and sent back to the reactor, together with the make-up gas.
The crude methanol (this process makes some 'cats and dogs' along with the good stuff) has to be distilled to remove the odds and ends and become pure enough to sell.
Oddly enough, all the monkey-motion is in balance. All of the waste heat is recovered so that generally, no extra fuel need be imported.
A hydrogen plant has the same front end, but the syngas is processed a little differently. Hydrogen plants generally export steam. There is more excess heat than we can use.
Methane is easy to use for feedstock. Other hydrocarbons up through gasoline can be made into syngas basically the same way. Anything heavier, up through coal, has to be gasified. This means partially burning it at high pressure in a bottle with steam and oxygen. The downstream stuff and the loop are the same as above.
End of lecture. Test at 11:00.
Professor Gypsy
Maybe I didn't clarify the right things, ERD (may I call you ERD?
). Natural gas is mostly methane, CH4, plus a few odds and ends that leak past the clean-up plant. Methane can be made into methanol, CH3OH, the lightest of the alcohols. (Lecture continues. Plug iPod into ears. Select brew of choice.)
Making methanol from methane (AKA natural gas)--the movie:
Natural gas is heated up under pressure with steam, really hot. The mix is passed over a nickel-based catalyst inside a number of large (40 ft long x 6 or 8 inches diameter with a tube wall about half an inch or so thick), basically Ni-Chrome (metal similar to the wires in electric heaters) tubes that look like long cannons. These tubes are hanging straight down in rows in a huge insulated box filled with fire. When I was still in the business, I helped design a single such furnace that burned 1.2 billion BTUs per hour of mostly natural gas for fuel alone--the biggest in the world at that time. (We didn't tell the customer that. He would have panicked.) (As I recall, there were 770 tubes in that furnace. A real forest!)
Inside the tubes, the gases are heated much hotter and the steam reacts with the methane to form hydrogen and carbon monoxide: H2O + CH4 = 3 H2 + CO. We need extra water to push things along (which doesn't react, it just passes through) and we don't convert all the hydrocarbon (methane) to syngas, but that is the basic idea. This reaction absorbs heat, which is being supplied by the furnace-side of the tubes.
We capture all the heat in the flue gas and the hot syngas by making high pressure steam with it. (At about 1,500 psi. Very big medicine.) The steam drives steam turbines which drive big (the main one is ~ 50,000 HP) compressors.
The cold syngas is compressed by our big momma compressor up to around 100 atmospheres of pressure (and this is the modern LOW pressure process!). The syngas (= the make-up gas) is warmed up and passed through a large bed of a different catalyst (copper on zink oxide pellets). Here, the hydrogen and carbon monoxide react to make methanol, a reaction that gives off heat: 2 X H2 + CO = CH3OH. (Maybe you noticed that we only used two of the three hydrogen molecules. The excess H2 is eventually burned in the furnace, unless someone recovers it for some other use.) Only part of the CO is reacted each pass over the catalyst, maybe 4%, because of equilibrium. The effluent from the reactor is cooled until the methanol condenses out of the gases and is drained out of the 'loop' (as we call it). The unreacted gases go through a small compressor to make up for all the pressure drop in the loop and sent back to the reactor, together with the make-up gas.
The crude methanol (this process makes some 'cats and dogs' along with the good stuff) has to be distilled to remove the odds and ends and become pure enough to sell.
Oddly enough, all the monkey-motion is in balance. All of the waste heat is recovered so that generally, no extra fuel need be imported.
A hydrogen plant has the same front end, but the syngas is processed a little differently. Hydrogen plants generally export steam. There is more excess heat than we can use.
Methane is easy to use for feedstock. Other hydrocarbons up through gasoline can be made into syngas basically the same way. Anything heavier, up through coal, has to be gasified. This means partially burning it at high pressure in a bottle with steam and oxygen. The downstream stuff and the loop are the same as above.
End of lecture. Test at 11:00.
Professor Gypsy
Ed_The_Gypsy
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I agree with this.
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
ERD50 quoth thusly:
There is a lot of natural gas in the world, but most of it is in places where it is hard to collect to be able to send somewhere else. That is why LNG (liquified natural gas) is becoming popular. Natural gas is liquified at VERY low temperatures and shipped as a liquid in big white spheres on ships. The natural gas market used to be all local because we couldn't ship it across the sea. We could only move it as far as the pipelines would take it. Now, it is becoming a world market.
There is a lot of natural gas associated with many crude oil deposits which comes up with the oil (surprise!--it is called 'associated gas'). If the oil well is at sea (off-shore platforms), it used to be simply flared (burned for no good reason except to get rid of it). The astronauts could see the flares in the Middle East from space. People are working very hard to capture this natural gas so it is not wasted. Some countries have rules that an oil company must do something useful with the associated gas or they can't produce the oil. (I once designed a floating methanol plant intended to make it possible for a big oil company to get oil out of the sea in the far east. I think they eventually decided that it couldn't be large enough, so they went with making LNG. LNG plants can be quite large relative to methanol plants as far as processing a given amount of natural gas.)
There is an enormous amount of natural gas tied up at the bottom of the ocean as something called 'hydrates'. At very low temperatures and at high pressures, natural gas forms a crystal with water. People are trying to figure out what to do with this stuff.
There is also a lot of natural gas dissolved in water very deep underground.
I don't think there will be any long-term shortages of natural gas.
[edited by the author becuz he cain't spel.]
There is a lot of natural gas in the world, but most of it is in places where it is hard to collect to be able to send somewhere else. That is why LNG (liquified natural gas) is becoming popular. Natural gas is liquified at VERY low temperatures and shipped as a liquid in big white spheres on ships. The natural gas market used to be all local because we couldn't ship it across the sea. We could only move it as far as the pipelines would take it. Now, it is becoming a world market.
There is a lot of natural gas associated with many crude oil deposits which comes up with the oil (surprise!--it is called 'associated gas'). If the oil well is at sea (off-shore platforms), it used to be simply flared (burned for no good reason except to get rid of it). The astronauts could see the flares in the Middle East from space. People are working very hard to capture this natural gas so it is not wasted. Some countries have rules that an oil company must do something useful with the associated gas or they can't produce the oil. (I once designed a floating methanol plant intended to make it possible for a big oil company to get oil out of the sea in the far east. I think they eventually decided that it couldn't be large enough, so they went with making LNG. LNG plants can be quite large relative to methanol plants as far as processing a given amount of natural gas.)
There is an enormous amount of natural gas tied up at the bottom of the ocean as something called 'hydrates'. At very low temperatures and at high pressures, natural gas forms a crystal with water. People are trying to figure out what to do with this stuff.
There is also a lot of natural gas dissolved in water very deep underground.
I don't think there will be any long-term shortages of natural gas.
[edited by the author becuz he cain't spel.]
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
My pleasure, Laurence.
It is quite a firebox.
A fellow once told me a story about when he was starting up a similar plant in India. The operators would buy caged birds at the market. They would then have a little wager. They would open a view port in the wall of this furnace and release the birds into the furnace. They would bet on how many tubes a bird could fly past before getting fried.
Cheers,
Gypsy
It is quite a firebox.
A fellow once told me a story about when he was starting up a similar plant in India. The operators would buy caged birds at the market. They would then have a little wager. They would open a view port in the wall of this furnace and release the birds into the furnace. They would bet on how many tubes a bird could fly past before getting fried.
Cheers,
Gypsy
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Yeah. Ugh.
MasterBlaster
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Ed_The_Gypsy said:
They do the same thing with new hires here at MegaCorp. They bring em in all enthusiastic and work em until the life is sucked right outta them.
We sometimes make bets on how long it takes before they flame out. We call it the caged bird in the furnace syndrome
ERD50
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TromboneAl said:
RE: record profits from Exxon - When you are a big company and you sell a product that is in limited supply and high demand, you have an opportunity to make a nice profit. But, if you think it is out of line, better to attack Microsoft and Google first, and Starbucks is close behind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Mobil
ExxonMobil's $36 billion in profits came on top of $370.6 billion in revenue, for a profit margin of 9.7%. In other words, Exxon netted 9.7 cents on each dollar of revenue it brought in. By contrast, Microsoft earned 30.8 cents for each dollar of revenue, and Google earned 23.9 cents for each dollar of revenue. Starbucks' profit margin was slightly lower than ExxonMobil's, at 7.8 cents for each dollar of revenue
RE: gas prices that don't seem to drop as oil prices do. - I remember gasoline over $3/gallon around me (northern IL) last summer. It is around $2.15 now. Tracking oil prices fairly well. There are other factors, refineries, seasonal formulation and distribution changes, but it tracks reasonable well, as far as I can see.
more from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_price_increases_of_2004
-ERD50
We don't have a truly free market.
The oil companies recieve both government subsidies as well as huge tax breaks. While some alternative energy is given small tax breaks, they are nothing compared to the ones big oil get.
If there were no subsidies/tax breaks for any energy sources, alternative fuels would get more attention. The exception to this is, in my opinion, solar. The cost of solar is prohibitive without tax incentives. I would guess solar would be less prevalent, however research in it would probably be greater as the potential is huge.
The oil companies recieve both government subsidies as well as huge tax breaks. While some alternative energy is given small tax breaks, they are nothing compared to the ones big oil get.
If there were no subsidies/tax breaks for any energy sources, alternative fuels would get more attention. The exception to this is, in my opinion, solar. The cost of solar is prohibitive without tax incentives. I would guess solar would be less prevalent, however research in it would probably be greater as the potential is huge.
Ed,
Thanks very much for the view from the inside. Now, can a dull student wander up to the lectern after class and ask a few questions?
1) Natural gas vs gasoline vs methanol: In this string of posts, we have said at various points that:
a) Today, methanol is less expensive than gasoline
b) Most methanol is produced from natural gas, which is the least expensive way to make it
c) That the conversion from natural gas to methanol costs energy
d) That one route for a fuel to get into general public use is to start with fleet sales (where the distribution can be centralized), then the low costs will eventually spur wider retail availability and sales
If these statements are true, then (by a, b, and c): Natural gas should be a less expensive motor fuel (per unit of energy available) than gasoline (barring some type of NG logistics/handling issue that makes it much more expensive to distribute than gasoline).
If (by the above logic) natural gas is a less expensive motor fuel, why hasn't it (under antecedent "d" above) come into widepsread use at the retail level? I know it is popular in some fleet uses (esp natural gas company service trucks--go figure), and I have heard of some folks converting their cars to run on it, but it has never taken off.
One advantage of mandating that new (liquid fuel) cars be flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) is that this makes the retail sales of alternative fuels much easier (facilitating antecedent "d" above). If a system other than liquid fuels (compressed gases, electric charging stations, etc) is needed, then there is a huge hinderance to eventual widescale acceptance.
2) Prof, while I've got your ear--do you have a guess on the cost of methanol production using various feed stocks (agricultural feedstocks/plant waste vs natural gas vs coal?) The last two materials have other uses in our energy stream, and burning them increases atmospheric CO2. Plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce O2, and virtually all the carbon in them came from the atmosphere originally, so using them to produce methanol will not increase atmospheric CO2 overall. I think this is a big plus.
Thanks very much for the view from the inside. Now, can a dull student wander up to the lectern after class and ask a few questions?
1) Natural gas vs gasoline vs methanol: In this string of posts, we have said at various points that:
a) Today, methanol is less expensive than gasoline
b) Most methanol is produced from natural gas, which is the least expensive way to make it
c) That the conversion from natural gas to methanol costs energy
d) That one route for a fuel to get into general public use is to start with fleet sales (where the distribution can be centralized), then the low costs will eventually spur wider retail availability and sales
If these statements are true, then (by a, b, and c): Natural gas should be a less expensive motor fuel (per unit of energy available) than gasoline (barring some type of NG logistics/handling issue that makes it much more expensive to distribute than gasoline).
If (by the above logic) natural gas is a less expensive motor fuel, why hasn't it (under antecedent "d" above) come into widepsread use at the retail level? I know it is popular in some fleet uses (esp natural gas company service trucks--go figure), and I have heard of some folks converting their cars to run on it, but it has never taken off.
One advantage of mandating that new (liquid fuel) cars be flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) is that this makes the retail sales of alternative fuels much easier (facilitating antecedent "d" above). If a system other than liquid fuels (compressed gases, electric charging stations, etc) is needed, then there is a huge hinderance to eventual widescale acceptance.
2) Prof, while I've got your ear--do you have a guess on the cost of methanol production using various feed stocks (agricultural feedstocks/plant waste vs natural gas vs coal?) The last two materials have other uses in our energy stream, and burning them increases atmospheric CO2. Plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and produce O2, and virtually all the carbon in them came from the atmosphere originally, so using them to produce methanol will not increase atmospheric CO2 overall. I think this is a big plus.
ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Zathras said:
True, the govt always manages to complicate things don't they? I'm not in favor of tax breaks or subsidies to the oil companies, I'd prefer to see the free market work w/o interference. The ironic thing is though, that many of the people that I talk to that object to the tax breaks to oil producers also complain about the cost of gasoline. Well, theoretically at least, most of those tax breaks are geared towards further exploration of oil, so that helps to lower the price of gasoline. They want their cake and eat it too.
The one area that I would say (and said earlier) that govt interference is OK, is if we agree we want to reduce greenhouse gas, then tax greenhouse gas. That is, in effect, a subsidy to alternative energy - but one we may need to get the results we may want.
-ERD50
cute fuzzy bunny
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Everyone notices Exxons record profits. Not many remember the really, really lousy profit years they've totaled up not that long ago.
FinanceDude
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Cute Fuzzy Bunny said:
True............I wonder HOW GM was able to put hybrid Chevy Suburbans out there that get 25% better gas mileage...............right under Exxon's nose!!! I bet there will be a BIG SURGE in insider stock options being cashed in..........
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Hi, samclem,
I'll try.
1) a) By the way, about half the price of gasoline at the pump is road taxes. All road fuels should be taxed the same. 'Price' is not the same as 'cost'.
Yup.
The retail distribution system is set up for liquid fuels. It is ideal for fleet use, as you say. The State of Oregon tried out fleet use of natural gas fuel many years ago but gave it up.
I am guessing that for the same engine displacement, natural gas fuel gives significantly less power than gasoline. The difference is the density of gasoline sprayed into an air stream vs. a light gas being put into the air stream. Natural gas for vehicles will be delivered as a compressed gas and used as a gas. Turbocharging will increase the density of the charge to the engine, but liquid fuels still have the advantage. The energy content of hydrocarbon fuels (including natural gas/methane) is about the same on a weight basis, so lower density means less power.
Yup.
Solid carbonaceous feedstocks will always cost a lot more to process into syngas than natural gas. I haven't run the numbers for many years, but it used to cost twice as much. What is the dollar number? My cost info is much too out of date. I would have to spend some time to re-calculate it and the relative number would still be high.
True. This would help everything by not putting any more new CO2 into the atmosphere. But there are difficulties: Beside the high capital and operating costs to replace a barrel of gasoline with an equivalent energy amount of alternative liquid fuels, the total quantity required is HUGE! Bigger than big. The only place this could be done is in some little country like Denmark that is small enough to convert the whole country and Green enough to try, but even the Danes aren't that crazy.
OK. Time for my nap.
I'll try.
1) a) By the way, about half the price of gasoline at the pump is road taxes. All road fuels should be taxed the same. 'Price' is not the same as 'cost'.
Yup.
The retail distribution system is set up for liquid fuels. It is ideal for fleet use, as you say. The State of Oregon tried out fleet use of natural gas fuel many years ago but gave it up.
I am guessing that for the same engine displacement, natural gas fuel gives significantly less power than gasoline. The difference is the density of gasoline sprayed into an air stream vs. a light gas being put into the air stream. Natural gas for vehicles will be delivered as a compressed gas and used as a gas. Turbocharging will increase the density of the charge to the engine, but liquid fuels still have the advantage. The energy content of hydrocarbon fuels (including natural gas/methane) is about the same on a weight basis, so lower density means less power.
Yup.
Solid carbonaceous feedstocks will always cost a lot more to process into syngas than natural gas. I haven't run the numbers for many years, but it used to cost twice as much. What is the dollar number? My cost info is much too out of date. I would have to spend some time to re-calculate it and the relative number would still be high.
True. This would help everything by not putting any more new CO2 into the atmosphere. But there are difficulties: Beside the high capital and operating costs to replace a barrel of gasoline with an equivalent energy amount of alternative liquid fuels, the total quantity required is HUGE! Bigger than big. The only place this could be done is in some little country like Denmark that is small enough to convert the whole country and Green enough to try, but even the Danes aren't that crazy.
OK. Time for my nap.
CCdaCE
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Ed_The_Gypsy said:Hi, samclem,
I'll try.
1) a) By the way, about half the price of gasoline at the pump is road taxes. All road fuels should be taxed the same. 'Price' is not the same as 'cost'.
Not true.
Federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents/gal. National avg. of state gas tax is 21.6 cents/gal. So, at $2.40 a gal, 16% of that price is tax. Or, at $2/gal for gas, 20% is added for tax.
Diesel is 24.4 fed. and state avg. is 22.6 cents/gal. For a total of 47 cents/gal avg.
-CC
Ed (AKA Professor)
For extra credit, I researched the cost of methanol produced from various sources. It looks like methanol made from natural gas might be made for about 1/2 the price of gasoline (per unit energy) and that it might be made from biomass for somewhere near the price of gasoline, if we can efficiently gather the biomass (the issue you previously identified).
Direct costs FUEL EUR/GJ
(Estimated production cost 2001)
Gasoline (RFG, 10% MTBE) 9.8
MeOH from natural gas 4.7
MeOH from biomass, Finland 16.4
MeOH from biomass, Far East 9.6
Electricity, Finland average 7.0
Maybe produce it cheaply from NG at first, and get widespread acceptance due to the low price and let it displace gasoline in the marketplace. When we get serious about conserving NG or reducing CO2 emissions, then we'll have the option to produce methanol using biomass.
CO2 emmissions:
Here's a chart showing the amount of CO2 produced per km of travel for methanol produced in/used in a number of ways. I would think the 185 g/km figure for gasoline with MTBR additive is fairly close to what conventional cars produce today.
Process g CO2 (eq)/km
Methanol produced from natural gas 117
Methanol produced from biomass 6
Reformulated gasoline including MTBE from biomass 185
Reformulated diesel from crude oil 111
Hybrid vehicles – 85% methanol 117
biomass blended with 15% gasoline
Hybrid vehicles – 85% methanol from 145
natural gas blended with 15% gasoline
http://www.iforest.com/docs/FactSheetMethanol_Final.pdf
By the way, methanol turns out to be a very good fuel for fuel cells. There's still the problem with the cost of fuel cells (expensive catalysts, etc).
For extra credit, I researched the cost of methanol produced from various sources. It looks like methanol made from natural gas might be made for about 1/2 the price of gasoline (per unit energy) and that it might be made from biomass for somewhere near the price of gasoline, if we can efficiently gather the biomass (the issue you previously identified).
Direct costs FUEL EUR/GJ
(Estimated production cost 2001)
Gasoline (RFG, 10% MTBE) 9.8
MeOH from natural gas 4.7
MeOH from biomass, Finland 16.4
MeOH from biomass, Far East 9.6
Electricity, Finland average 7.0
Maybe produce it cheaply from NG at first, and get widespread acceptance due to the low price and let it displace gasoline in the marketplace. When we get serious about conserving NG or reducing CO2 emissions, then we'll have the option to produce methanol using biomass.
CO2 emmissions:
Here's a chart showing the amount of CO2 produced per km of travel for methanol produced in/used in a number of ways. I would think the 185 g/km figure for gasoline with MTBR additive is fairly close to what conventional cars produce today.
Process g CO2 (eq)/km
Methanol produced from natural gas 117
Methanol produced from biomass 6
Reformulated gasoline including MTBE from biomass 185
Reformulated diesel from crude oil 111
Hybrid vehicles – 85% methanol 117
biomass blended with 15% gasoline
Hybrid vehicles – 85% methanol from 145
natural gas blended with 15% gasoline
http://www.iforest.com/docs/FactSheetMethanol_Final.pdf
By the way, methanol turns out to be a very good fuel for fuel cells. There's still the problem with the cost of fuel cells (expensive catalysts, etc).
This thread is quickly becoming a candidate for "best of" board. The talk about alternative fuels and conservation methods comes up so often here, this is a thread that could be continually linked to.
Originally, I had a plan to run my two cars into the ground, keeping them running until a plug in hybrid car is mass produced by a major player and has reasonable prices (a.k.a. past the early adopter phase). The argument about "just polluting somewhere else with the powerplant" was countered in my mind by the increased efficiency of the power plant when compared to my vehicles gas engine. Are we saying that, rather than being exponentially more efficient, power plants are only marginally so? I have been accused of hypocrisy on another thread, and I have unwittingly been so. What is the best vehicle solution if walking/biking/mass transit is not a solution? Just a plain old vanilla compact car that pushes 40 mpg? Are any of the advances in car technology going to make a difference in total emissions?
Originally, I had a plan to run my two cars into the ground, keeping them running until a plug in hybrid car is mass produced by a major player and has reasonable prices (a.k.a. past the early adopter phase). The argument about "just polluting somewhere else with the powerplant" was countered in my mind by the increased efficiency of the power plant when compared to my vehicles gas engine. Are we saying that, rather than being exponentially more efficient, power plants are only marginally so? I have been accused of hypocrisy on another thread, and I have unwittingly been so. What is the best vehicle solution if walking/biking/mass transit is not a solution? Just a plain old vanilla compact car that pushes 40 mpg? Are any of the advances in car technology going to make a difference in total emissions?
Laurence,
Wait--not so fast! We haven't talked about the amount of fuel/energy used and CO2 produced in the scrapping of one vehicle and the manufacturing of another. This embodied energy is a huge part of the environmental impact of driving. Without doing much research, I'd guess that the lowest impact thing you can do is buy a used economy car and nurse it along for 10 years longer than most folks would have.
For those who demand a new car (for reliability/safety/vanity reasons, whatever) then I'd recommend they look for a flex-fuel vehicle that gets good mileage and buy alcohol-based fuels if they are available in your area. Take the money you saved by not buying a Prius and send it to your favorite environmental organization--or plant a few hundred trees. Then, in 10 years when you would have needed to replace the Prius batteries, send another few thousand bucks to the charity.
Wait--not so fast! We haven't talked about the amount of fuel/energy used and CO2 produced in the scrapping of one vehicle and the manufacturing of another. This embodied energy is a huge part of the environmental impact of driving. Without doing much research, I'd guess that the lowest impact thing you can do is buy a used economy car and nurse it along for 10 years longer than most folks would have.
For those who demand a new car (for reliability/safety/vanity reasons, whatever) then I'd recommend they look for a flex-fuel vehicle that gets good mileage and buy alcohol-based fuels if they are available in your area. Take the money you saved by not buying a Prius and send it to your favorite environmental organization--or plant a few hundred trees. Then, in 10 years when you would have needed to replace the Prius batteries, send another few thousand bucks to the charity.
