[Gasification] [Stoves] Thanks to Tom Reed for His PerspectiveSetting Remarks on Methanol, the "Other" Alcohol

[Mark Ludlow]

The sky is falling!

Yes, we are running out of natural gas. We began running out when we started
using it in earnest. And we are running out of coal and oil and old-growth
timber and gold and common sense, apparently.

Early astronauts reported being able to see three things on the dark face of
the earth: the lighted highways in Belgium; the squid fleet off the Sea of
Japan; and the natural gas flares from the Kuwaiti oil fields. Natural gas
has been too cheap to productively recover for most of petroleum history.

How much do we have left? It's a subject of debate. Where I live, there are
plans in various stages for four LNG terminals. Energy economics dictates
that only one will actually be built; the rest would be redundant. LNG for
these re-vaporization terminals is scheduled to come from Australia and
Indonesia where vast amounts of reserves exist as "stranded" gas. China is
incapable of absorbing much of this in the short term because their NG
pipeline infrastructure is almost non-existent.

No informed person disputes the plentitude of coal. How long it will last is
certainly open to debate, but there's a lot of it in proven reserves. The
Powder River Basin alone fills the equivalent of 200 miles of coal trains
daily and there are reserves there (proven: 800 BILLION TONS) to do this for
quite some time into the future.

For natural gas, large reserves also exist, but frequently they are
geographically removed from the end user demand. Mr. Stokes' suggestions
that natural gas would be appropriate as cooking fuel in places such as
Nigeria is very appropriate, inasmuch as so much of it is being wasted at
present. For the rest of the world, (such as the Eastern Europe/ex USSR,
where at least 2,000 trillion cubic feat have been discovered to date) the
problem becomes getting the fuel to where it's needed. Converting natural
gas to methanol is an entirely appropriate solution. Nearly all methanol
used today comes from natural gas, so the technology is in place. It would
be much easier to transport than LNG.

Hand-wringing never solved anyone's problems. Certainly, fossil fuels are
finite but that should only make us more determined to extract the greatest
possible social and economic good possible from each barrel or cubic foot
that we extract from the earth. Perhaps someday we will be able to perfect a
process as elegant and efficient as photosynthesis on a large, industrial
scale. Until then, gasification and biomass, solar, wind, tidal, etc.-in
addition to the most readily available source of energy: conservation-will
have to make their contributions to a petro-civilization. Just because gas,
coal and oil are finite is no reason to be profligate with what remains.
There's also no reason to deny the developing world access to the same
standard of living that the West enjoys, simply because they, "got to the
table too late".

Mark Ludlow

-----Original Message-----
From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Harmon Seaver
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 4:31 PM
To: Gasification
Cc: Stoves-List
Subject: Re: [Gasification] [Stoves] Thanks to Tom Reed for His
PerspectiveSetting Remarks on Methanol, the "Other" Alcohol


On 7/6/06, Harry Stokes <hstokes at blazenet.net> wrote:
> Tom Reed's are words of wisdom.  As energy needy as the world is, we 
> simply cannot rule methanol out.  We have lived for a 100 years with 
> highly toxic petroleum fuels; surely we can learn how to use the 
> environmentally benign alcohols, including methanol, safely.

  Nobody wants to rule out methanol -- but if it comes into wide use as a
common fuel, I think there will be a lot more poisonings of clueless people.

> Since methanol is an easy and cheap
> way to use natural gas,

    Natural gas will be gone shortly. In North America, it is almost gone
now. In fact, in the winter of 2003, nat gas supplies in the US got so low
that gas companies had to use "triage" -- they cut off gas to all industrial
users that use it as a feedstock, and also to nat gas fueled electrical
power producers in order to keep homeowners from freezing. Since then, we
have been importing most gas from Canada, but they too are going to run out
very soon.
    One big problem with nat gas wells is, unlike water or oil wells, there
is almost no warning when they are empty. Just like when a propane tank is
empty -- one minute there is sufficient supply, next it is gone. The US
supply is essentially gone.
     Making methanol or hydrogen from nat gas is a very stupid idea at this
point. As is making fertilizer out of it, one of the major sources of
fertilizer in the present time. After the 2003 shortage, most of the
idustries using nat gas as a feedstock moved out of north america.

>and since many of the poorest of the African  countries do have 
>non-commercial (in large scale terms) supplies of natural  gas (enough 
>to provide hundreds of years of cooking energy for those  countries),

   Hundreds of years?? Are you kidding? It is quite questionable at this
point that there is even "hundreds of years" left of even coal.


> why not learn how to use methanol, as well as ethanol, safely and 
> effectively?  These two alcohols go hand in hand; having recourse to 
> one makes the other more feasible because, together, they may be able 
> to provide the quantities necessary to make a dent in the need for 
> clean cooking energy.

    The only place that alcohol (of any type) has a place as cooking fuel is
in places in the 3rd world that have no more wood.



> Nigeria is responsible for some 40% of all gas flared worldwide.  The 
> World Bank is promoting large scale utilization of this gas, for 
> example the construction of LNG facilities to freeze the gas and ship it
to the West.
> This is an enormously expensive undertaking, which only the West can
afford.

   Right -- and even the West can't afford it. LNG is an absurd idea
-- have you looked at the type of ship that is required to transport it? And
the port facilities on both ends -- horrendous dangers even without the
whole concept of world terrorism. Not to mention, of course, the truly tiny
amounts of gas that actually can be transported that way.


> This same gas could be made cheaply and easily into methanol at the 
> flow station or the wellhead for use as an all-purpose fuel for 
> cooking, lighting, distributed electricity generation, and so on.  It 
> would then be available for the Nigerian people themselves, who deeply 
> resent their current state of deep energy poverty.

   Why not just keep it as nat gas and pipe it to the Nigerian cities?

> There is a lot of talk now in Nigeria
> about ethanol from cassava.  Shifting to an alcohol energy economy in 
> Nigeria for domestic needs could make a lot of sense, wherein both 
> ethanol and methanol would play a role.
>
> To put in perspective the amount of natural gas that Nigeria flares, 
> there is enough gas flared to provide ample cooking energy for every 
> family in all of West Africa on a daily basis.  This energy is 
> currently going into the atmosphere as flared and vented gas, with
enormous GHG commitment.
>

   One of the biggest problems in the world today it the vast overestimate
of both oil and gas supplies. By 2015, at their present rate of growth,
China alone will need 100% of world oil supply. We are now at the actual
peak of world oil supplies (and much of what's left will be much harder to
extract, like the tar sands and shale oil,
etc.) and world nat gas supplies is not far behind. Nat gas supplies in NA
is far beyond peak.


--
Harmon Seaver

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