Methanol, also called methyl alcohol and wood alcohol is a light, volatile, colorless liquid. Methanol burns in an almost colorless flame. It is commonly used as a denaturant for ethanol manufactured for industrial uses. The majority of all methanol is produced synthetically in a multi-stage process, natural gas and steam are reformed to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide; then, hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases react under pressure in the presence of a catalyst.
One of the largest volume uses of methanol is as a chemical intermediate in making other chemicals. Methanol is used in plastics, plywood, paints, explosives and textiles. Methanol is also used as a building block for other synthetic fuels such as dimethyl ether (DME). As an antifreeze, methanol finds use in the production and transmission of natural gas to prevent gas line freezing conditions. The graphic below demonstrates how various fuel sources can be used through syngas production to produce a liquid fuel or chemical intermediate.
It has been suggested that methanol could replace fossil fuels as a way of providing an efficient way to store energy. In 2006 Nobel Award recipient George A. Olah proposed the methanol economy in a book co-written with Alain Goeppert and G.K. Surya Prakash, "Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy", Wiley-VCH, 2006.
The R3 Sciences G2M process is designed to produce methanol from low volume gas sources including: stranded natural gas, coal bed methane, flare natural gas and other natural gas streams. R3 Sciences G2M process is to designed to recover remote volumes of natural gas, producing a liquid fuel product that can be easily transported.
The methanol can be further processed to produce dimethyl ether (DME) which can be used in diesel compression engines for stationary and transportation use.