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Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

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Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#21

Post by TimJRobinson »

Puradolia wrote: post #14
im3w1l wrote: post #9

How much sense would it make to do solar -> hydrogen -> methane -> methanol?

There's no reason to do that. You do not want to create more methane, and the possibility of even a trickling of it getting into the atmosphere. This methane to methanol is purely to get rid of the methane we produce, and hopefully the methane stored in the atmosphere. We've got plenty of hydrogen, it's one of the most common elements (iirc) in the known universe, but to convert some into methane? Hydrogen is clean,…

This would be an alternative source of methane rather than getting more from the ground. If we could recycle the carbon in the atmosphere + hydrogen from water we could use this wherever methane is used currently without needing to make new vehicles / aircraft etc that run on hydrogen.

This is a good article about it: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-...

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#22

Post by TSiege »

This is just greenwashing so long as the source of Methane is from fossil fuels. This article is doing a lot of work to cover up this fact. The article says, "Despite the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel, its conversion into methanol produces less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other liquid fuels in the same category." Before we get into "other liquid fuels", if it comes from the ground it's dirty. We have to be 100% clean energy if we want a habitable planet.

Secondly it goes on to say "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." This is a bullshit suggestion with atmospheric methane levels still measuring in the parts per billion range.

Just disingenuous and uncritical reporting all around

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#23

Post by Animats »

TSiege wrote: post #22

This is just greenwashing so long as the source of Methane is from fossil fuels. This article is doing a lot of work to cover up this fact. The article says, "Despite the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel, its conversion into methanol produces less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other liquid fuels in the same category." Before we get into "other liquid fuels", if it comes from the ground it's dirty. We have to be 100…

> Just disingenuous and uncritical reporting all around

Yeah, the jump from "we converted some hydrocarbon into an alcohol at lab scale" to "revolutionary new energy breakthrough" is a bit much. And all too common. Rearranging C, O, and H is routine. It's whether this thing makes sense energetically and financially that's the big deal.

I kind of liked ethanol from cellulose. There's plenty of excess cellulose from agricultural waste. There are processes that work. But not ones that are profitable.

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#24

Post by robotresearcher »

TSiege wrote: post #22

This is just greenwashing so long as the source of Methane is from fossil fuels. This article is doing a lot of work to cover up this fact. The article says, "Despite the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel, its conversion into methanol produces less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other liquid fuels in the same category." Before we get into "other liquid fuels", if it comes from the ground it's dirty. We have to be 100…

> "This article is doing a lot of work to cover up this fact. The article says, "Despite the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel, its conversion... "

So they're covering it up yet pointing it out directly.

Using fossil fuels more efficiently is good, and is consistent with using them less. Using fossil gas more efficiently will keep it in the ground longer, meanwhile we make progress on renewables which keeps gas in the ground longer, etc.

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#25

Post by 99112000 »

> Our success in obtaining methanol under mild conditions, while also expending less energy, is a major step forward.

The energy it took to produce the liquid methanol was higher than what the output can produce.

Spending 2 liter of fuel to recover 1 liter of fuel. Well.. you do the maths.

Good to see progress though!

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#26

Post by drtwitch »

99112000 wrote: post #25

> Our success in obtaining methanol under mild conditions, while also expending less energy, is a major step forward. The energy it took to produce the liquid methanol was higher than what the output can produce. Spending 2 liter of fuel to recover 1 liter of fuel. Well.. you do the maths. Good to see progress though!

That's pretty much standard with chemistry. Have fun trying to violate thermodynamics.

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#27

Post by Schroedingersat »

sfink wrote: post #11
anonporridge wrote: post #3

This 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…

I wonder how efficient the conversion in the article would be, after being adapted to real world "dirty" methane instead of pure.

Synthetic methane has very controllable levels of contaminants. If this can use an abundant catalyst or small enough amounts of rare elements it's a good steptowards powering a lot of existing infrastructure with sunlight.

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#28

Post by Schroedingersat »

Puradolia wrote: post #14
im3w1l wrote: post #9

How much sense would it make to do solar -> hydrogen -> methane -> methanol?

There's no reason to do that. You do not want to create more methane, and the possibility of even a trickling of it getting into the atmosphere. This methane to methanol is purely to get rid of the methane we produce, and hopefully the methane stored in the atmosphere. We've got plenty of hydrogen, it's one of the most common elements (iirc) in the known universe, but to convert some into methane? Hydrogen is clean,…

Hydrogen is incredibly dangerous and bulky. Using it where you create it works well enough, but without some breakthrough in metal hydride storage or similar it's starting to look like a poor choice even against batteries if you want to move your energy around.

Stuff that can store as a liquid opens a lot of possibilities, although this probably means ammonia most of the time.

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#29

Post by dbcooper »

Conversion of methane into methanol is a large scale industrial process that underpins much of the chemical industry. This post's title is misleading, and the original title is slightly more informative: "New Method Converts Greenhouse Gas Into Fuel".

Re: Researchers successfully convert methane gas into liquid methanol

#30

Post by dexwiz »

For context, efficient conversion from Methane to Methanol is difficult. You can order single carbon organic molecules going from reduced to oxidized (high energy to low energy) Methane > Methanol > Formaldehyde > Formic Acid > Carbon Monoxide > Carbon Dioxide. You can step down this chain via oxidization. The most extreme case, combustion, is really easy. But once you provide an oxidizing environment, it's hard to stop a particular step. It's much easier to go the other direction and produce Methanol by reducing Carbon Monoxide with Hydrogen, but this takes extreme pressures and temperatures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol#From_synthesis_gas

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