With crude oil prices in the vicinity of $30/b, natural gas prices at the
U.S. Gulf Coast appear to have risen to a new floor of just under $5/MM Btu.
The demand for electric power generation appears to be driving the demand
for natural gas, with environmental concerns discouraging the use of coal
as a conventional boiler fuel. In certain regions, such concerns even appear
to be hampering the construction of long distance electrical transmission
and gas pipeline facilities required by large centralized power plants. This
is one factor behind the growing interest in fuel cells as an efficient, reliable
and environmentally acceptable means to small scale “distributed”
power generation.
Proven world natural gas reserves, which currently represent about 83% of
the energy equivalence of proven oil reserves, have been growing at a faster
rate. In some remote locations, wellhead costs of “stranded” natural
gas have been estimated to be below $0.25/MMBtu. New world scale methanol
production technologies using stranded natural gas as feedstock may result
in the availability of a fuel grade methanol importable to the U.S. Gulf Coast
and other major consuming regions at a price which would be competitive with
that for natural gas. This is a factor behind growing interest in methanol
based fuel cell technologies for various new small-scale mass-market transportation,
portable power, and stationary power applications.
Recent advances in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), which eliminate the
need for bulky reformer based fuel processors, may soon represent a practical
alternative to conventional batteries for laptop computers and other portable
power applications. Aside from promising considerably longer operating times
than similarly sized conventional batteries, DMFCs may also prove to be more
economical. The scope of this review includes a promising new DMFC membrane
technology under development by Polyfuel, which appears to be nearing commercialization
for mass market portable and “personal” power applications.
by George Apanel
