Alternative Fuel Sources - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 76

Chemical and Standard Oil of New Jersey combined their patents and
produced leaded gasoline under the Ethyl brand name.
A few months before Ethyl went on sale, the U.S. Public Health
Service stated tetraethyl lead was poisonous and had the potential to pro-
duce lead oxide which could affect public health in heavily traveled areas.
In 1923, General Motors, financed a study by the U.S. Bureau of Mines
on the safety of tetraethyl lead. The bureau issued a report downplaying
leaded gasoline's potential adverse impact on public health.
The burning of large quantities of gasoline starting in the 1950s
caused lead deposits to occur in the soil. The widespread use of leaded
gasoline was becoming a health hazard.
In the U.S., seven million tons of lead were released between the
1920s and 1986, when it was phased out as automakers switched to un-
leaded gasoline and catalytic converters.
The spreading of economic development to all reaches of the globe
also fueled the growth of the automobile. The industrialized nations in-
cluding Japan, Britain, Germany, France and others have seen great chang-
es in overall energy needs as well.
METHANOL AS FUEL
Our present transportation system and its infrastructure favor liquid
fuels. Methanol or wood alcohol is a potential source or carrier of hydro-
gen.
Fuel cell vehicles with onboard methanol reformers would have very
low emissions of urban air pollutants. Daimler-Chrysler has built demon-
stration fuel cell vehicles that convert methanol to hydrogen.
Methanol, CH 3 OH, is a clear liquid and also the simplest of the alco-
hols, with one carbon atom per molecule. Methanol is extensively used to-
day, the U.S. demand in 2002 was over a billion gallons. Methanol is main-
ly synthesized from natural gas, it can also be produced from a number of
CO 2 -free sources including municipal solid waste and plant matter.
The largest U.S. methanol markets were for producing the gasoline
additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) as well as formaldehyde and
acetic acid. MTBE is being phased out since it has been found to contami-
nate water supplies.
Methanol is already used as an auto fuel. It has been the fuel of choice
at the Indianapolis 500 for more than three decades, partly because it im-