When will the U.S. switch to Ethanol

[silverslith]

Would I ever be able to do this thermal depolymerisation in my basement? That would be so cool. Is there anyway to include electricity in the process, like from surplus wind power when I don't need the electricity? If I used wind power for both electricity and transportation fuel then I could have a larger wind turbine, and store hydrogen and avoid having so many batteries. I'm thinking about some process combining hydrogen and sewage and other waste to produce heat plus some useful transportation fuel. The gas produced could be stored and burned in a cogen process to produce heat and electricity on windless days. The liquid fuel could be used for transportation. With two vehicles you could have a commuter running on gas (methane and hydrogen) and the other car running on liquid fuel. Bit of a pipe dream, but it is always fun to think of technologies that lend themselves to decentralization.

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Sure, its a centries old basement technology. The reformation of the oil into a transport fuel is the part that works best economically at large scale. Not to say you couldn't build a home system for crude-syngas-methanol production.

You need to handle 50-100 atmospheres at high temperatures with a continuous flow system, and the right catalysts . Potentially this is easier at small scale.

You can run any car on methanol or ethanol, the mixture settings need to change is all.

Ethanol won't deliver any economic benefits until cheap high yield cellulose-ethanol is possible at industrial scale. This will require GE Extremeophile bacteria that can digest cellulose to ethanol at high acidity and temperature.

Methanol is a much better fuel for fuel cells than H2 or Ethanol