Methanol - The Future Fuel of Choice?

[Vimeous]

With fuel prices rising like Willy Wonka's Glass Elevator thoughts turn to alternatives.
LPG is an established fuel even if it's often applied in Heath-Robinson fashion.
Hydrogen fuel cells are a short number of years away.
Nissan have announced plans to pursue a battery-only future and hybrids are bridging the gap.

For petrol-heads however Lotus may have the answer and I'd like to know what you think about it.
Their Exige 270E Tri-fuel is a fascinating application of technology that to me looks and feels like I could be driving it tomorrow.
The case study allows any mix of petrol, ethanol and methanol to be used in the mildly modified Exige.

Could this be the fuel of the future?

[Sinizter]

Methanol wont be the fuel of the future. It just doesnt contain enough energy to be practical as a car fuel.

[kalniel]

Good as a cental/water heating fuel though, or for electricity generation.

[Mblaster]

Methanol wont be the fuel of the future. It just doesnt contain enough energy to be practical as a car fuel.

Ethanol however, actually produces more performance that it's petrol equivilant.

[source]

[schmunk]

Methanol - The Future Drink of Choice?

[kalniel]

Future? It's already fairly common. As long as you don't value your sight too much..

[Rave]

The key question when thinking about all these 'fuels of the future' is how they're going to be made renewably. Ethanol and methanol could potentially become viable sources of energy but I've yet to see a definitive study of how much more energy the Brazilians get out of their ethanol production than they put in.

Hydrogen as far as I'm concerned is more-or-less a complete non-starter. It's extremely energy inefficient to produce and store it. The only benefit of the cars is the fact that they themselves produce zero emissions- the emissions are simply moved somewhere else.

[Vimeous]

Ethanol however, actually produces more performance that it's petrol equivilant.

[source]

Methanol has a higher octane rating than conventional petrol, hence the 270E putting out 266bhp over the standard car's 237bhp. However range will be reduced so next-gen vehicles would need a bigger fuel tank. Sounds like a better version of LPG to me.

The Lotus document acknowledges the unsustainability of relying on crops and bio-mass waste for fuel generation. Demand will undoubtly outstrip supply.
However it also goes on the outline then principles for the generation of synthetic methanol fuel.

I for one am extremely keen to see the technology pushed as the prospects are great if it succeeds.



Doesn't this process bring forth some historical deja-vu?
Hot air is not good enough in my balloon!
Bring-on Hydrogen-in-a-bag.
No-wait! It goes bang alot ..... Methane is the answer!

[Rave]

There's no denying that methanol is a superb fuel for high performance engines. US open wheelers have used it for decades. It has low energy density though. Ethanol is somewhere between Methanol and Octane in the performance/energy density tradeoff.

If, when we run out of oil, it's still sensible to run vehicles using combustion engines rather than batteries then I daresay that either Methanol or Ethanol will be the fuel of choice. But that's a big if.