Automobiles methanol fuel

In 1998 a report prepared for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) called Status and Prospects of Fuel Cells as Automotive Engines favored methanol fuel cell stacks in cars over a direct-hydrogen infrastructure. Hydrogen is not as ready for private automobiles because of the difficulties and costs of storing hydrogen on board and the large investments that would be required to make hydrogen more available. 

The aim of the work was to develop a methanol fuel processor for a 50 kW automobile engine. An integrated heat exchanger/reactor was fabricated and results were presented by Hermann et al. [120] of GM/OPEL. The specifications for the system were ambitious, amongst others ... 

There are some problems to recover the CO2 from synthetic fuel use, although it is technically possible. The synthetic fuel such as methanol or synthetic gasoline are not only clean fuel but high cost fuel. Mainly economical reason, these synthetic fuel will not apply to coal-type electric generation, but mostly to automobile engine fuel. The application of CO2 recovery for such small apparatus is quite unfavorable in nowadays technology. 

Almost half of this methanol is converted to formaldehyde as a starting material for various resins and plastics. Methanol is also used as a solvent, as an antifreeze, and as a convenient clean-burning liquid fuel. This last property makes it a candidate as a fuel for automobiles— methanol is already used to power Indianapolis-class race cars— but extensive emissions tests remain to be done before it can be approved as a gasoline substitute. Methanol is a colorless liquid, boiling at 65°C, and is miscible with water in all proportions. It is poisonous drinking as little as 30 mL has been fatal. Ingestion of sublethal amounts can lead to blindness. 

The Direct Methanol Fuel Cell, DMFC, (see Fig. 7-6 in section 7.2.2.4.) is another low temperature fuel cell enjoying a renaissance after significant improvements in current density. The DMFC runs on either liquid or, with better performance but higher system complexity, on gaseous methanol and is normally based on a solid polymer electrolyte (SPFC). R-Ru catalysts were found to produce best oxidation results at the anode, still the power density is relatively low [5, 29]. Conversion rates up to 34 % of the energy content into electricity were measured, an efficiency of 45 % is expected to be feasible in the future. SPFC in the power order of several kW to be used in automobile applications are currently in the development phase. 

Alcohols are some of the most common organic compounds. Methyl alcohol (methanol), also known as wood alcohol, is used as an industrial solvent and as an automobile racing fuel. Ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is sometimes called grain alcohol because it is produced by the fermentation of grain or almost any other organic material. Isopropyl alcohol is the common name for 2-propanol, used as rubbing alcohol. ... 

For different applications, the power needed from the fuel cells varies from less than 1W for small applications such as sensors and mobile phones to over 100 kW for automobiles and stationary applications. With microreactors, hydrogen flows capable of producing power in the range from 0.01 W to 50 kW have been achieved [3]. Numerous applications of fuel conversion in microstructured devices have dealt with the combination with fuel cells to yield a power supply for microelectric devices and microsensors and as an alternative to a conventional battery. Thus, the resulting power output of the fuel cell has been in the low watts area, from 0.01 Wto a few watts, as in the integrated methanol fuel processors built by companies such as Casio and Motorola [4]. PNNL has developed various low-power portable fuel processor systems, from lower than 1W [5-7] to systems that could provide 15 W, such as a portable and lightweight system for a soldier portable fuel cell [8,9]. In the range of... 

NECAR 3 (see Figure 9.8) was the first automobile that was driven by a methanol fuel processor/fuel cell system 90% of the fidl system power was released by this system within 2 s, which is adequate performance compared with conventional... 

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