Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
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Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#2How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#3This may make it easier to bottle up and sell the methane gas as fuel so it can be burned efficiently elsewhere, since transporting gas from remote locations is very hard and expensive, either in pipelines or chilled and liquefied. Still ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere, but that's drastically better than methane, which eventually reacts into CO2 anyway after decades of 10-80x warming.
This is especially true at the many sites that produce very small, but collectively significant, amounts of methane, specifically landfills (check Vespene Energy, a startup in California targeting this problem [0]).
So, this is potentially a fantastic development because it could create a profit incentive to completely capture waste methane rather than at best flaring it (which has been found to only be about 91% efficient in practice [1]) or at worst simply venting it. Right now, the only incentive to even flare methane is general goodwill or fear of the stick of regulation. A carrot to generate money along with the stick of fines would be a much more powerful force to actually reduce the impact, especially in most of the non western world that don't have a very strong stick.
[0] - https://twitter.com/Digital_Ore
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/oil-industry-flaring...
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#4How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
It's not, if you assume the methane is burned completely. But it's being discovered that simply flaring methane isn't as efficient as previously thought, https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/oil-industry-flaring...
So, unless you're running the methane through a generator that burns it much more efficiently, like bitcoin miners are doing, we'd be better off bottling it up as methanol where it can be burned efficiently elsewhere.
The bigger impact is that it potentially creates a profit incentive to capture waste methane, so it's less likely that producers will cut corners and just let it vent. Why vent money into the atmosphere?
The open question is whether conversion to methanol and transportation will be cheap enough to actually generate a profit. If not, then it will be better off just getting burned on site.
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#5How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
The methane won't spend all that time in the atmosphere acting as a GHG much more potent than CO2.
> Furthermore, methane collection from the atmosphere is critical for mitigating the negative consequences of climate change since the gas has 25 times the potential to contribute to global warming as CO2, for example.
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#6How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
The methane won't spend all that time in the atmosphere acting as a GHG much more potent than CO2. > Furthermore, methane collection from the atmosphere is critical for mitigating the negative consequences of climate change since the gas has 25 times the potential to contribute to global warming as CO2, for example.
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Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#7How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
The methane won't spend all that time in the atmosphere acting as a GHG much more potent than CO2. > Furthermore, methane collection from the atmosphere is critical for mitigating the negative consequences of climate change since the gas has 25 times the potential to contribute to global warming as CO2, for example.
> In the study, the scientists used pure methane, but in the future, they will extract the gas from renewables such as biomass.
No extra capture.
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#8How is this better, climate wise, than burning the methane directly? Methanol still has the same amount of carbon in it.
It's not, if you assume the methane is burned completely. But it's being discovered that simply flaring methane isn't as efficient as previously thought, https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/oil-industry-flaring... So, unless you're running the methane through a generator that burns it much more efficiently, like bitcoin miners are doing, we'd be better off bottling it up as methanol where it can be burned efficie…
> we'd be better off bottling it up as methanol where it can be burned efficiently elsewhere.
Liquid gas is compressed methane, and some industries and cars already run by burning it. So the infrastructure already exists.
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#9How much sense would it make to do solar -> hydrogen -> methane -> methanol?
Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not, if you assume the methane is burned completely. But it's being discovered that simply flaring methane isn't as efficient as previously thought, https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/oil-industry-flaring... So, unless you're running the methane through a generator that burns it much more efficiently, like bitcoin miners are doing, we'd be better off bottling it up as methanol where it can be burned efficie…
> we'd be better off bottling it up as methanol where it can be burned efficiently elsewhere. Liquid gas is compressed methane, and some industries and cars already run by burning it. So the infrastructure already exists.
You mean liquefied natural gas? Yeah, that's doable, but as Europe is finding out right now, it's very expensive. You have to keep the liquefied gas sufficiently chilled all through transport. You wouldn't have to do that with methanol.