Good News and Bad News about Methanol

The idea of using methanol to replace gasoline as a fuel has been around for a while, but it inspired enthusiasm in few people. That's changing, and--for several reasons--Alaskans might want to be alert spectators, if not yet active players, in what promises to be a whole new game.

Methanol emerged from the also-rans officially in June 1989, when President Bush made using alternative, clean-burning fuels part of the clean air plan he presented to Congress. The plan is up for Congressional action in early 1990.

Methanol, a clear, odorless liquid is the leading candidate among possible replacement fuels because it is inexpensive and because adjusting cars to burn it costs comparatively little. Proponents say it will make quite a difference for the better in air quality. The Bush plan aims for having 9 million cars fueled by methanol in nine target cities by the year 2004. That would lower vehicular contribution to the ozone in the air above those cities from the present 40 percent to 10 percent.

Ozone in the stratosphere protects living things from damaging ultraviolet radiation, but ozone at ground level is hazardous to organisms--including people, directly and indirectly. It's been held responsible for about 90 percent of U.S. crop losses from air pollution.

Defenders of the plan say that methanol will cut ozone production because it releases far fewer volatile hydrocarbons released into the air. In sunlight, those substances combine with nitrogen oxides to make ozone.

Methanol does mix in sunlight with oxides of nitrogen to make ozone, but it does so more slowly than gasoline; it's less reactive than gasoline. Gasoline contains no oxygen; methanol does. It also contains less carbon than does gasoline. Those features combine to make it burn more completely and cleanly, creating no soot.

At 4.7 pounds per square inch, the vapor pressure of methanol is about half that of gasoline, so it evaporates much more slowly. That cuts another source of pollution, because cars leak unburned fuel from tanks and fuel lines. The Environmental Protection Agency has calculated that for every mile traveled, a gasoline-powered car releases about one gram of hydrocarbons through evaporating unburned fuel. (That may sound trivial until one thinks of the tens of thousands of cars making long commutes every day in the Los Angeles area, for example. It's no wonder that Southern California spends so much time under a smoggy blanket of foul air.)

The plan has detractors, too--especially in the petroleum and automotive industries. They point out that a gallon of methanol has only half the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. Methanol is more corrosive and more toxic than gasoline. Because it is an alcohol, it penetrates the skin and is metabolized more swiftly than oil-derived gasoline. Drinking methanol or overdosing on its fumes has caused blindness. And, because it is water soluble, methanol spilled on the ground or in a waterway wouldn't have the tendency to float as do oil-based fuels. Cleaning up a spill could be a horrible problem.

They also point out that changing fuels will cost a lot, in everything from duplicate distribution systems to redesigned vehicle engines.

While the debate goes on, all sides are gearing up research. The petroleum industry is talking of reformulated, cleaner gasoline; automotive engineers are working on better fuel injection systems and improved catalytic converters. Chemists are happily studying the combustion products of gasoline, methanol, hybrid fuels, and arcane additives.

But if the advocates of methanol win, it may be a bit of a bad-news, good-news joke for Alaskans. The bad news is that methanol is worse than gasoline for starting cars in cold weather- -and, as we learn again nearly every winter, even gasoline isn't good enough in most of Alaska.

The good news is that methanol is produced mainly from natural gas. As headlines frequently remind us, Alaska has a lot of natural gas--and so far, a lot of trouble trying to transport and market the stuff economically. It could be a very different story if methanol catches on as the fuel of the future.