how can a car run on methanol?

Question

Methanol has been proposed as a fuel of the future for automobiles. Current automotive engines can run on methanol with relatively minor modifications. By what percent would you have to change the size of the gas tank, if you wanted a car to have the same maximum range per tank.

Answer 1

I'm not sure that methanol has been seriously proposed as a widely used fuel. Methanol is a poisonous alcohol and chemically different from ethanol, which HAS been proposed as an alternative fuel and is available in many stations in the midwest (and extensively in Brazil). GM makes ethanol cars and trucks now.

Methanol is used on a limited basis to fuel internal combustion engines, mainly by virtue of the fact that it is not nearly as flammable as gasoline. Methanol blends are the fuel of choice in open wheel racing circuits like Champcars, as well as in radio controlled model airplanes (required in the "glow-plug" engines that primarily power them), cars and trucks. Dirt circle track racecars such as Sprint cars, Late Models, and Modifieds use methanol to fuel their engines. Drag racers and mud racers also use methanol as their primary fuel source. Methanol is required with a supercharged engine in a Top Alcohol Dragster and, until the end of the 2005 season, all vehicles in the Indianapolis 500 had to run methanol. Mud racers have mixed methanol with gasoline and nitrous oxide to produce more power than gasoline and nitrous oxide alone.

One concern with the addition of methanol to automotive fuels is highlighted by recent groundwater impacts from the fuel additive methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE). Leaking underground gasoline storage tanks created MTBE plumes in groundwater that eventually adulterated well water. Methanol's high solubility in water raises concerns that similar well water contamination could arise from the widespread use of methanol as an automotive fuel.

Answer 2

I don't know of any cars that run on Methanol, although technically it's certainly possible. In fact, one of the technical difficulties in producing Ethanol for use as a fuel is keeping the Methanol content low, because Methanol is very poisonous, and - being water soluble - it will tend to leach into the ground water. A Methanol run car would also be very expensive to run, because, unlike Ethanol that can be made by fermentation / distillation, making Methanol in commercial quantities is a complex high-tech process. So why no airplanes running it? Too expensive, and the energy content is so low that the plane would need huge fuel tanks or have a ridiculously short range. (Which is why larger aircraft run on kerosene, not gasoline) Richard

Answer 3

you would have to multiply the size of the tank by aroun 1.6 you need more methanol to go the same distance try loking in a popular science magazine from a few months back they explained this whole thing about alternative fuels and what needs to be done