The lowdown on methanol and dimethyl ester as advanced biofuels

September 13, 2012 |

Methanol and DME – intermediates of great interest – can they make it as finished fuels? Robert Rapier gives us the hard data and the bottom line.

By: Robert Rapier, Energy Trends Insider

In the past few issues of Energy Trends Insider, I looked at some of the companies and the technologies involved in producing ethanol and distillate substitutes. This represents far and away the vast majority of the world’s biofuels, but there are a number other fuels that have a potential to have an impact some day. This article will briefly discuss two of those: Methanol and di-methyl-ether (DME).

Methanol is cheap to produce and has been tested extensively as a gasoline replacement. It is the simplest alcohol and one of the world’s most widely used commodity chemicals. Global capacity of methanol is similar to that of ethanol. Most of the world’s methanol is produced from natural gas, but it can be produced from coal or biomass.

The disadvantages of methanol as a transportation fuel are similar to those of ethanol (but more severe). The energy content is about half that of gasoline, and methanol is more toxic and corrosive than ethanol. Nevertheless, it is deemed to be safe enough to be used by millions of drivers as windshield washer fluid.

The world’s leading producer of methanol is publicly traded Methanex (MEOH). Very little of the methanol they produce ultimately ends up as transportation fuel, although some is sold as a fuel additive. However, methanol has been used in high-performance race cars in the U.S. for many years, and was tested extensively in California from 1980 to 2005 as a part of the California Methanol Program. The program logged 200 million miles of driving on methanol vehicles, but it was killed in 2005, which was the first year of the Renewable Fuel Standard that set ethanol on its meteoric growth path.

Methanol can be converted into di-methyl-ether, which gets around methanol’s toxicity and corrosivity issues. DME can be used as fuel in either a gasoline or a diesel engine, which makes the potential market huge. DME is a gas at room temperature, but compresses to a liquid under mild pressures. It is currently used as a propellant in many consumer products, and is classified as non-toxic and non-carcinogenic. DME is completely miscible with LPG, and can be used as a supplement/replacement in either transportation or heating applications. When combusted, DME burns very cleanly. There are no associated sulfur or particulate emissions (even in a diesel engine).

In North America, there has been some preliminary interest with DME, but the majority of the development has occurred overseas. The Chinese have been increasing their DME capacity for years so they can convert their coal into something much more desirable for them – transportation fuel. The Swedes are also actively developing DME as a transportation fuel. The Swedish company Chemrec converts pulp mills into biorefineries that produce DME. Volvo has been testing the performance of DME in 10 of their heavy trucks, and reporting very good results to date.

This article was republished with permission from Consumer Energy Report under a content partnership with Biofuels Digest, and appeared originally in Energy Trends Insider, a free newsletter from Consumer Energy Report, which focuses on financial and investment issues in the energy industry.

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