[GTALUG] mysterious restarts

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:36:09PM -0400, Bob Jonkman via talk wrote:
> A few (10?) years ago I head a Science Friday show with guest George
> Olah where he made a strong case for using hydrogen, but storing and
> transporting it as methanol. It can be used directly (burned), have the
> hydrogen stripped off and used in hydrogen fuel cells, and there are
> methanol fuel cells. Methanol can be produced directly from carbon
> dioxide. But the best part was that since methanol is a liquid, all our
> current gasoline distribution and storage can be used without a
> fundamental change in infrastructure. Don't know why this hasn't taken
> off...

Methanol is very dangerous to have around.  If it cathes fire, you
can't tell.  The fire isn't very hot and the flame is invisible, so you
can't see the fire, you barely feel the fire, but it is there.

This is not really something we want in cars that crash into each other.

Race cars and such use it but they also have serious training for
recognizing and dealing with the fires.

Ethanol is similar which is why you only get E85, not E100 for sale.
The 15% gasoline means you can see the fire if the fuel cathes on fire.

-- 
len Sorensen