The best long term solution will undoubtedly be a hydrogen based fuel cell / battery hybrid vehicle.   In the mean time, we still need to power over 500 Million 20th century vehicles using synthetic gasoline or some form of liquid fuel, such as ethanol, or methanol.  What a boon it would be if we could combine the generation of electricity with the refining of synthetic gasoline and diesel into one, integrated process! 

SynthGen is a new synergy that would yield both cheap and clean electric power and gasoline or diesel for our legacy cars and trucks.  This is the promise of the clean coal (ICCG) technology being designed today under the label "Future Gen".   Methanol is created from synthetic gas, which is produced in ICCG electric power plants as a secondary fuel.  The same synthetic gas can be routed to an adjacent Methane to Gasoline (MTG) refinery to produce high grade synthetic gasoline or diesel using the Mobil process.

Ethanol produced from our food supply has lead to a speculative hike in the price of corn and all other foods.   We can not allow Human beings to compete with machines for food.  Food is a sacred trust from our Creator, we should not allow it to become yet another money based stock for the technological juggernaut that is destroying the quality of life on Earth.

Methane can be derived from natural gas, but it can also be produced from coal, wood chips, or even municipal refuse, in a well known process called as coal gasification.  Technology currently exists that can provide electric power from synthgas created from coal gasification, where solid or liquid fuels are "burned" in a low oxygen chamber producing CO and other gases, which are then "shifted" down with water into synthetic gas.  The synthgas produced can be burned directly in the plant, using a synthgas furnace, or it can be transferred to an adjacent MTG/Mobil synthetic gasoline or diesel refinery, during off peak hours.  The excess CO2 gas that is emitted can be sequestered using lime vaults or it can be used as a carbon base to refine the synthetic gasoline or diesel.  

The process can be front loaded by "burning" coal, wood chips, sugar cane pulp or even municipal waste.  Plants could well be configured for local conditions in order to use the best available fuel to create the synthgas.  Methane is a gas that can be captured  at cattle or poultry farms in small quantities.   Perhaps some day we will see small size power plants at farms that produce both the electricity for the farm and the fuel for the tractors from the same methanol gas.  Municipal waste also produces reasonable quantities of methane gas from landfill sites which could then be used in a municipal power plant that produces electricity and liquid fuels for the town.

Existing plants can be retro-fitted with synthgas front ends, to use the gas as an "afterburner" creating more steam pressure for the electric turbines, or to pass the synthgas to the MTG refinery.  As an alternative, the synthgas can simply be piped into the local municipal gas system, to use instead of natural gas for home heating and cooking.  In fact, synthgas was used in this fashion since the 19th century, and was known then as "town gas" since it was produced locally.  It was not until the 1950's that this type of hydrogen gas fell out of favor with the introduction of LPG and Natural Gas, in part due to the marketing of these gases as being "clean burning with a nice, blue flame".  With modern catalytic converters, any remaining CO in the synthgas can be scrubbed out before leaving the plant.

The back end production of hydro-chemicals from the liquid methane can be varied according to economic conditions.  While gasoline and diesel can be produced that are high grade and clean burning fuels, the adjacent  refinery can also produce plastics and other products that may be in demand at the time.  Ethanol can also be produced on a MTG refinery, although it is not as good a fuel as gasoline and diesel since it has a lower octane rating and therefore requires larger fuel tanks on vehicles, yielding lower miles per gallon of fuel.

It is a characteristic of our capitalist system that inventions and process improvements are funded by sectarian interests.  Electric power companies are not in the business of making gasoline, nor are oil companies in the business of producing electricity.  In the future, we need a holistic approach to problem solving, one that focuses on the science and technology involved, and ignores the temporal power structures; they fund only those approaches that  result in economic benefit for their own sponsors.   Everyone carries water to their own mill, as we say in Guatemala.   has granted us the use of reason, we must not be afraid of going to where we have never been, if we can use reason and logic to arrive to there.  

Atlanta, GA
May 28, 2008