re: Ann: ISRAELI BREAKTHROUGH WITH CO2 TO FUE... may have been...

re: Ann: ISRAELI BREAKTHROUGH WITH CO2 TO FUE... may have been posted here..

Israel's new motor fuels strategy leans on gas

By Ari Rabinovitch

TEL AVIV Tue Dec 24, 2013 8:50am EST


(Reuters) - Israel plans to cut oil use in transportation by 60 percent by 2025, an aggressive target by world standards, and will tap into its newfound natural gas deposits to make it happen.

It is also investing heavily to help start-ups developing battery and biofuel technologies, and is offering an annual $1 million prize to innovators in the field, almost on par with winning a Nobel.

"The intent is to make Israel a power center that has knowledge and industry in the field, and from there to serve as a catalyst for the rest of the world in making the switch,"
said Eyal Rosner, pointman for the project in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.


...

METHANOL MIXES

In a separate pilot at a small filling station in the northern port of Haifa, about a dozen cars have been running for months on various mixtures of gasoline diluted with methanol. The idea is to reduce costs and pollution.

Some of the cars are powered by a blend called M15, which contains 15 percent methanol, already used widely in China. Others run on a more concentrated M70, which pilot manager Yossi Antverg said has never been tried before.

Optimistic about the results, Dor Chemicals, which has spent $2 million on the pilot, plans to build a $700 million plant that, according to the Dor Group website, will be able to produce a million tons of methanol a year. The facility will be the first of its kind in Israel.

*Start-up NewCO2fuel, one of over a dozen being promoted in the government initiative, is developing a technique to turn the common greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a useful fuel gas mixture called syngas.
*Among other things, syngas can be made into methanol.

Their chemical reactor receives sunlight reflected by a large mirror that is concentrated at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,830 F). That is hot enough to create syngas.

The two-year-old energy firm, half owned by Australia's Greenearth Energy and Erdi Fuels, plans to sell systems that would be built beside factories or power stations to collect carbon dioxide emissions and turn them into fuel.

CEO David Banitt said the company plans to begin in two years a $50 million pilot in Australia. The technology, he said, will be commercial in about four years.

(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and William Hardy)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/24/us-israel-cars-fuels-idUSBRE9BN0BC20131224