Put meth in your tank

Last year, to placate the eco-wackos, President Bush launched FreedomCAR, a $1.2 billion partnership to produce practical, affordable hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles as soon as possible. Now he has launched a companion $720 million Hydrogen Fuel Initiative to develop, over the next five years, the technologies and infrastructure needed to produce, store and distribute hydrogen for use in those fuel-cell vehicles.

Why hydrogen? Well, according to the eco-wackos, hydrogen is the “ultimate fuel.” When you “burn” it, you get water vapor, but no carbon-dioxide.

But hydrogen is not really a fuel at all. There aren’t any underground reservoirs of hydrogen you can tap into. You have to produce it, spending more energy producing it than you get back when you burn it. Worse, the cheapest way to produce hydrogen is to steam-reform methane, and that produces lots of carbon-dioxide.

The high cost of producing hydrogen is just the beginning of your problems. How are you going to store it on board your vehicle? As a solid? As a liquid? As a gas? Hydrogen gas is dangerous stuff. Remember the Hindenberg? Safely storing hydrogen, yet still having it available on demand, is a big, big problem.

And where are you going to find a “filling station” when your tank of hydrogen runs dry? Cape Canaveral?

What’s the solution?

Just forget about using hydrogen in your fuel-cell. Use methanol, instead.

There are a number of prototype fuel-cell vehicles – made by Daimler-Chrysler, Ford and Mazda – already operating.

Some of them operate on hydrogen gas that is stored on board as a liquid in a “cryogenic” tank, as it is on the Space Shuttle.

Some of them operate on hydrogen gas that is made by steam-reforming methanol that is stored on board in a conventional tank, like gasoline.

But some of them operate directly on methanol.

Last June a Daimler-Chrysler NECAR-5 – using a Ballard Power Systems proton-exchange membrane fuel-cell which runs on methanol – traveled from San Francisco to Washington DC without incident. NECAR-5 got about 300 miles per tank of methanol. PEM fuel-cells operate at low temperatures (less than 100 degrees Celsius), allowing fast start-ups and immediate response to demand for power.

Mazda’s Premacy FC-EV – also powered by a Ballard Power Systems fuel-cell running directly on methanol – is currently being road-tested in Japan.

But here’s the kicker: The infrastructure for methanol fuel-cell vehicles already exists.

Methanol is already being used in some “fuel-flexible vehicles” that the State of California has required automakers to develop and market. Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and Mazda all produce and market FFVs which are not noticeably different in appearance from standard gasoline models.

But FFVs can store methanol or gasoline, or any combination of the two, in the same onboard tank. FFV engines sense the percentage of methanol present in the fuel mixture as it is being fed to the engine and automatically adjusts the engine’s ignition parameters. That means FFVs can use methanol when it is available or regular gasoline when it is not.

Of course, the miles per gallon delivered by methanol is somewhat less than that of gasoline. But a FFV using 85 percent methanol and 15 percent unleaded regular gasoline produces one-half of the smog-forming emissions of a comparable vehicle using just gasoline. And that’s the reason California made automakers develop and market FFVs – to reduce pollution.

According to the Methanol Institute, current U.S. methanol production capacity is about 10 billion gallons per year, and even using high-priced U.S. natural gas as a feed stock, the wholesale spot price for methanol is about 45 cents per gallon. Methanol made from remote or “stranded” sources of natural gas – that would not ordinarily be produced – could cost even less.

Hence, the infrastructure needed for use by methanol powered fuel-cell vehicles essentially already exists, while a totally new infrastructure would have to be built for hydrogen powered fuel-cell vehicles.

According to the Methanol Institute, the liquid hydrogen fueling station at the state/private sector California Fuel-Cell Partnership site cost $2.5 million to construct. The methanol pump at the same site cost only $50,000. It has been estimated that a nation-wide hydrogen delivery infrastructure would cost more than $500 billion.

Methanol powered fuel-cells do produce some carbon-dioxide. But carbon-dioxide is not a pollutant. Besides, producing hydrogen from natural gas makes just as much carbon dioxide. Of course, we could build nuclear power plants to generate electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. That wouldn’t produce any carbon-dioxide.

Do you suppose the eco-wackos would go for that?