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Manmade polluting gas emissions contain a significant amount of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.  The principal sources are landfills, coal mines, stranded oil and gas fields, and agricultural waste.

The methane in those emissions contains a significant amount of hydrogen energy, four hydrogen atoms per molecule.  But as a gas the methane can only be used where it is captured.  Equipment to clean and use it locally, and pipelines to transport it are prohibitively costly for all but the largest emission sites.

General Methanol is commercializing a revolutionary approach for the direct conversion of methane gas into liquid methanol in order to monetize those stranded gas reserves.

Methanol is a very convenient energy storage medium.  There is more hydrogen stored in one liquid liter of methanol than is contained in a liter of cryogenic hydrogen.  Yet methanol is a safe carrier of hydrogen.  Since liquid methanol is stable at ambient temperature and pressure, methanol is readily and safely transported in its natural form, with or without pipelines.

When combusted, methanol does not produce smoke, soot, or particulate.   This is because, like clean natural gas, methanol has only one carbon atom in its molecule, so it is less polluting to the atmosphere than ethanol.  And unlike ethanol, methanol does not compete with the food chain and methanol does not have to be created by fermentation.  Methanol also offers long term non-combustion clean tech power alternatives as the fuel for both direct methanol fuel cells and for pure hydrogen fuel cells.

General Methanol is the exclusive nationwide licensee of the nanotechnology-based approach for direct conversion of methane into methanol currently under development.

The commercial promise is low-cost liquid methanol as a hydrogen rich clean tech alternative energy source, and a valuable chemical intermediary feedstock to manufacture thousands of products now made from petroleum.

As giant integrated petroleum companies move rapidly into the supply of climate-friendly natural gas, conversion of stranded and pipeline gas into liquid methanol offers the promise of a world-wide, low cost, safe liquid transportation fuel from natural gas for climate-friendly combustion and fuel cells.  Longer term the technology offers the additional promise of monetizing the world’s untapped methane hydrate deposits on the ocean floor.