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Alternative Fuels for Motor Vehicles
Methanol
As an appendix to the use of Ethanol as a fuel there is the use of Methanol.
Methanol is a close cousin to Ethanol in the alcohol family but with some important differences a far as using Methanol as a fuel is concerned.
- Methanol is produced through a steam and catalyst process that reconstitutes methane gas as methanol. Currently, virtually all Methanol produced uses methane derived from natural gas. The side effect of this is that the CO2 released when the alcohol is burnt is a net increase in atmospheric CO2 because the carbon was previously trapped as buried carbon which would not have been naturally released.
- Methanol is a corrosive gas and requires special handling and hence is more expensive to deliver.
- The calorific value of Methanol is even lower than that of Ethanol which makes it of less use as a fuel.
There are currently no Motor Manufacturer with plans to make a car capable of using a Methanol/Gasoline blend as a fuel. This does not of course rule out it's use in the future but at the moment it's a non-starter.