Assessment of costs and benefits of flexible and alternative fuel use in the US transportation sector. Technical report six, Costs of producing methanol from unutilized domestic natural gas.

摘要

The Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-494), Section 400EE, states that the Secretary of Energy ''...shall study methanol plants, including the costs and practicability of such plants that are (A) capable of utilizing current domestic supplies of unutilized natural gas; (B) relocatable; or (C) suitable for natural gas to methanol conversion by natural gas distribution companies...'' The purpose of this report is to characterize unutilized gas within the lower 48 states and to perform an economic analysis of methanol plants required by the act. The approach with regard to unutilized lower 48 gas is to (1) compare the costs of converting such gas to methanol against the expected price of gasoline over the next 20 years, and (2) compare the economics of converting such gas to methanol against the economics of using the gas as a pipeline-transported fuel. This study concludes that remote gas and low-Btu gas generally cannot be converted to methanol at costs near the expected competitive value of gasoline because of the poor economies of scale of small methanol plants.