Deep thoughts on the Web

Frank Weigert — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:19:54 GMT

Chemistry Nobel Prize winner George Olah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Andrew_Olah)
also sees a methanol economy in our future. He has written a book on the subject, “Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy.” (http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16466,296,p1.html for an interview) Another advantage of methanol over ethanol is that a generation ago Mobil developed technology to convert it to high octane gasoline
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_to_gasoline). It was too expensive then to compete with cheap oil.

But neither alcohol is a good choice for the future world-class technology. Aside from the fact that the ratio of energy out to energy in is not very high, the world does not have enough spare land to grow the crops now being considered for enzymatic conversion to fuel alcohols. Capital investment to change over would be incredibly high. The U. S. transportation industry runs on hydrocarbons. There is a huge economic incentive to continue doing so.

And why not. Plants know how to make hydrocarbons directly. Some strains of the algae Botryococcus_braunii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botryococcus_braunii) have a dry weight that is 70% hydrocarbon. See also (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12405558&dopt=AbstractPlus) Although these hydrocarbons are not useful as fuels as is, they make a dandy replacement for crude oil. Other plants do make hydrocarbons directly useable as diesel fuel. Genetic engineering anyone? There is plenty of room in the ocean in which to grow our fuel.

For more details of how plants can produce hydrocarbons directly from CO2 see (http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200111.index.html)