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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (93443)	11/12/2007 5:35:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 206110

True, but fuel cost matters a lot in high mileage vehicles, so duplicated fuel systems don't matter much. That's why there are a few fuels at service stations - LPG, 98 RON, 91 RON, Diesel being common. The loss in conversion from methanol to synthetic petrol is [I guess] too large to be worthwhile. Better to use it as methanol [which they did after they finally figured out that they were doing a dopey thing continuing with the gasoline conversion at Motunui]. A good thing about methanol is that it can be just hosed down. It's also not very volatile, so it doesn't catch fire as easily as petrol. Also, when it does catch fire, it's a very moderate flame. People often worry that the flame is invisible. But it's not. It is invisible [other than refraction of light] if the burning process is totally clean. But there are always contaminants in unplanned fires so particles of dust show up as yellow. If there aren't contaminants, the fire probably doesn't matter as it's only methanol burning. At night, methanol makes a fun fuel. You can pour it around the place, across roads etc, in long lines, then light an end and watch the nice flame run along the liquid, then get a pretty little wall of flame. It also helps in evolutionary processes as some Darwin Award types hear that it's an alcohol, and figure it must be good to drink. 25 ml is fatal, so there are regularly dead people from drinking it. Which of course improves the remaining gene pool. The antidote for methanol is ethanol. Ethanol reduces the toxicity of methanol, but stomach pumping is best as the first defence against inadvertent swallowing. Inhaled methanol is probably not as bad as inhaled petrol, so vomiting might be a good idea. I never had to deal with poisoning. I did refuse to allow the word "alcohol" anywhere near the supply chain. Some people call it methyl alcohol, instead of methanol, which tempts the ignorant and stupid to figure it's a cheap personal fuel. We also added Bitrex, to make it nasty to taste. Mqurice