What is methanol and how it is produced

 Introduction

Methanol is a combination of four hydrogen, one carbon and one oxygen. 

It is sometimes also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol. Methanol is used in wide industrial applications like in oil industry, paint and plastic etc. 

As the world is growing, our energy requirements will increase day by day. 

And there might be a day when the conventional sources of energies that are fulfilling our major requirements will get exhausted. 

Besides the problem of limited amount of conventional sources of energies there are other factors like greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, climate change etc that are also a bigger issue linked with these sources of energies. 

Keeping this issue in mind, Many countries started investing in renewable sources of energies to tackle various environmental and energy requirement challenges. 

Methanol can be used as an alternate source of energy as it is a cleaner fuel that causes nearly zero emissions and is environmental friendly. 

Methanol's advantage of zero emissions and economically good fuel it a suitable fuel for powering vehicles, ships and industrial boilers. 

How it is produced?

The major advantage of methanol is that it can be produced from any resource that can be converted into synthetic gas.

Methanol can be produced from natural gas, coal and renewable energy sources such as agricultural waste, biomass, municipal solid waste and also from waste CO2 released by power plants.

The first step in any methanol production method is to create a synthetic gas i.e. a mixture of CO, CO2 and hydrogen gas.
In second step hydrogenation of CO and CO2 is done to get methanol.

In Industrial scale, methanol is widely produced from natural gas.

CO2 produced in fossil Or power plants can also be used to produce methanol by reacting it with the hydrogen produced from electrolytsis of water using renewable sources . This method will also helps in reducing CO2 emissions in the environment  from power plants. 

Key advantages of methanol fuel

• On combustion methanol produces significantly lower emissions than gasoline fuels. 
• It has much less chances of catching fire. So it is lot safer than other fuels. 
• Presence of oxygen in methanol makes the combustion process cleaner. 
• It can also blended with other fuels to reduce greenhouse gases emissions.
• It is a perfect solvent that is easily soluble in water. 
• Energy security as it can be produced from any sources that can be converted into synthetic gases. 
• Methanol is cheaper as compared to other fuels.