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

[Peter Wilson]

Well said. I especially agree with you about the hypocrisy of blaming the
current energy shortages on China and the rest of the developing world. I'm
no fan of fossil fuels, but those countries have every right to expect
Western standards of living. The Western world has set the example that
others strive for, even if in the end it may result in the destruction of
much of the planet. Although China and India have much better gasification
technology than the west - we could learn a few things off them.

What concerns me, and the reason I replied to this post, is that my country,
New Zealand, has abundant renewable energy sources (water, wind, wave,
geothermal, biomass, solar etc) so much so that with a concerted effort, we
could run this place entirely on renewable energy within the medium term.
New Zealand is also sitting on vast reserves of coal, oil, and gas, most of
which have been proven but not extracted in the past due to higher costs and
distance from markets. With current shortages driving up prices, that's
rapidly making our reserves economic. Given that using fossil fuel is the
easy option, I'm very concerned that New Zealand's renewable energy goals
will be shelved.

So the challenge for us down here, and for others in a similar situation
(Australia for example), is to make the best use of those remaining reserves
in order to make the transition to a renewable future. The planet will only
give us this energy gift once, so we need to make the best use of it.

Peter





On 7/6/06, Mark Ludlow <mark at ludlow.com> wrote:
>
> 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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