[Gasification] Ethanol

[drew]

   I have been trying to get a handle on this as well.    It is my 
understanding that clean wood gas consists mostly of nitrogen, CO and 
Hydrogen.    There is very little methane to convert to methanol.   The 
biomass may give off plenty of methane as it decomposes via the heat, 
but the methane is one of the first things to crack in the tar cracking 
bed.    Methanol was commonly produced from wood, via destructive 
distillation (also known as charcoal making) which took place at lower 
temperatures  (600 C or less I believe).   An issue then is the tars 
associated may poison or coat the catalysts (reducing surface area).   I 
believe this is also where other very toxic things like dioxins can be 
easily produced via salty wood).   I believe that the gases from 
destructive distillation would normally have been lead to a large easy 
to clean condenser (easy is relative, cleaning wood tar is nasty and 
likely toxic), where the tars would have congealed (stockholm tar), the 
resulting gasses then might be safely run through a catalyst bed (copper 
seems like an inexpensive choice).     I am not sure if gas acidity 
would be an issue, if it were the produced gas would have likely been 
bubbled through a buffering fluid, to further clean and balance the 
ph.     This seems likely to produce the toxic soups so common back in 
the day, where if you found you had produced something deadly to plant 
life, you likely painted on your house or rubbed it on your skin to keep 
the bugs away.

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