Methanol, viable fuel of future

As an alternative transportation fuel to gasoline, methanol has the potential to curb the kind of concentrated air pollution event witnessed recently in New Delhi while drawing upon indigenous resources for its production.

Methanol can be produced from a variety of feedstock, including crop residues and municipal solid waste, the burning of which contributed to the precipitous decline in air quality levels in the capital recently, as well as coal, India’s key hydrocarbon reserve.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Union government has, of late, started talking about setting up a methanol economy on account of both air quality and energy security concerns. However, fostering widespread methanol is going to present challenges and the experiences of China and the United States may both prove instructive. Overall, the government would do well to initially focus on select markets to create a sustainable base for heightened methanol production in India.

Though long seen as a clean burning alternative to gasoline that can significantly reduce vehicular tailpipe emissions, methanol has lost out to ethanol in the last 10-15 years as the alternative fuel of choice to reduce gasoline consumption. Even as the Centre sponsors a Rs 500 crore ethanol plant in Bathinda that will use rice and wheat stubble straw as feedstock, much more methanol can be derived out of crop residues more easily and cheaply than ethanol.

Methanol does not impinge on food production the way ethanol will continue to do in the foreseeable future, as most of the latter’s production will be sugarcane or corn-based. Biomass-based methanol also emits significantly less carbondioxide on a life-cycle basis than sugarcane or corn-based ethanol and even CNG.

Domestic biomass-based methanol production need not actually worry about finding an outlet. India already imports around 2 million tonnes of methanol every year for synthesising a range of industrial chemicals. India’s current installed capacity for methanol production is almost wholly based on imported natural gas and can meet just 25% of this demand. Clearly, a major opportunity exists to increase domestic methanol supply using sustainable feedstock while also reducing air pollution.

While supply of methanol derived from renewable sources rises, India can also turn to its coal reserves in the interim for methanol production for considerations of energy security and forex savings.

Syngas produced via coal gasification has been proven to be a viable feedstock for producing methanol. China, the world’s largest producer (and consu-mer) of methanol, derives most of it from its coal reserves, unlike the rest of the world where natural gas is the chief feedstock.

Though it was long thought that India’s high ash content coal could not be used so readily to produce methanol, coal gasification processes suitable for India’s coal reserves have now matured and that is one of the reasons why the Narendra Modi government is spending Rs 7,700 crore to revive the Talcher fertiliser plant using coal gasification.

It must be noted though, that coal-based methanol production leads to greater carbon emissions than oil-based gasoline production and can also stress freshwater supplies in areas of major production, as the experience of China shows. Coal-based methanol should, therefore, be seen as a transition tool in the move towards a more sustainable methanol economy.

Serious contender
With methanol-based chemical industries providing scale and a guaranteed market for domestic methanol production, one could expect methanol supply to rise over time to a point where it will become a serious contender for gasoline, blending into automobile use.

However, as seen in the US in the 1990s, this process is very simple. Although methanol blends of up to 15% can be used in most existing vehicles with little modification, getting distribution networks and automobile firms to simultaneously make investments to accommodate methanol – corrosive towards many materials and less energy dense than ethanol (necessitating more frequent refilling) – proves rather difficult.

Although the government must incentivise the establishment of distribution infrastructure as well as mandate more flex fuel automobiles, it would do well to look towards riverine transport as a major market for methanol.

Worldwide, the marine transport industry is considering methanol as a potential alternative to traditional bunker fuel to meet the more exacting emission standards that it is now being subject to. Obviously, if India wants to clean up its rivers even as it develops a riverine freight transport, it needs a fuel other than the highly polluting bunker fuel for its future river barge fleet.

Methanol will prove far more economically viable for this purpose than say liquefied natural gas (LNG) which will involve much higher capital costs for the transition. Methanol is also not subject to ‘methane slips’ which can neutralise the emissions benefits of LNG use.

So, if India’s rivers have to be both emission-controlled areas as well as transport superhighways simultaneously, methanol is very likely the fuel of choice to reconcile these two seemingly disparate objectives.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based commentator on security and energy issues)