Methanol economy

The methanol economy is a suggested future economy in which methanol and dimethyl ether replace fossil fuels as a means of energy storage, ground transportation fuel, and raw material for synthetic hydrocarbons and their products. It offers an alternative to the proposed hydrogen economy or ethanol economy, although these concepts are not exclusive. Methanol can be produced from a variety of sources including fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, oil shale, tar sands, etc.) as well as agricultural products and municipal waste, wood and varied biomass. It can also be made from chemical recycling of carbon dioxide.

Nobel prize laureate George A. Olah advocated a methanol economy.[1][2][3][4]

IBC container with 1000 L renewable methanol (the energy content is the same as that of 160 pieces of 50 L gas cylinders filled with hydrogen at 200 bar)[5][6][7]
  1. ^ Olah, George A. (2005). "Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 44 (18): 2636–2639. doi:10.1002/anie.200462121. PMID 15800867. S2CID 43785447.
  2. ^ Olah, George A. (2003). "The Methanol Economy". Chemical & Engineering News. 81 (38): 5. doi:10.1021/cen-v081n038.p005. S2CID 98997784.
  3. ^ Olah, George A.; Goeppert, Alain; Prakash, G. K. Surya (2009). "Chemical Recycling of Carbon Dioxide to Methanol and Dimethyl Ether: From Greenhouse Gas to Renewable, Environmentally Carbon Neutral Fuels and Synthetic Hydrocarbons". The Journal of Organic Chemistry. 74 (2): 487–498. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.629.6092. doi:10.1021/jo801260f. PMID 19063591. S2CID 25108611.
  4. ^ Olah, George A.; Goeppert, Alain; Prakash, G. K. Surya (2006). Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy. Wiley-VCH. ISBN 978-3-527-31275-7.
  5. ^ McAllister, Sara; Chen, Jyh-Yuan; Fernandez-Pello, A. Carlos (2011). "Appendix 1". Fundamentals of Combustion Processes. Mechanical Engineering Series. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-7943-8. ISBN 978-1-4419-7943-8. S2CID 92600221.
  6. ^ "Fuels – Higher and Lower Calorific Values". The Engineering ToolBox. 2003. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
  7. ^ "Hydrogen Zero Grade (N4.5)" (PDF). BOC. n.d. Retrieved 4 August 2021.