Science Saturday III - fuels

Lots of oil and natural gas has been found in the deep oceans.

All natural gas burns cleanly, meaning that the only expected products from natural gas burning are naturally occurring molecules. Energy obtained from natural gas is "greener" than that from coal (which contains sulfur that burns into sulfur dioxide - a component of acid rain) and oil (which burns so rapidly that toxic carbon monoxide is usually formed as a biproduct). Nature has mechanisms to convert CO2 back to O2 with photosynthesis, so natural gas is a means to fuel the planet for many decades until more sustainable and renewable energy sources can be developed. The only problem that exists however, as the 10-key princess will inform you, is economics.

Natural gas (methane) is a gas, and gases are voluminous and expensive to transport. Oil and coal are not, and so they are much more economical to transport. However, it is possible to break one chemical bond in methane (this is called "C-H activation"), and put the remaining molecule onto a metal atom (this is called "functionalization"). Once functionalized, there are processes to replace the metal atom (M) with a hydroxide (OH) to form methanol (the alcohol that makes you blind if you drink it, but an easily transportable liquid!). This is trickier than it looks. Methane is relatively inert, and the energy required to break one C-H bond in methane almost the same amount of energy required to break all of the C-H bonds causing it to burn up. Furthermore, it seems that the fine-tuned experiments that do activation well (breaking only one C-H bond) have great difficulty with functionalization.



If anyone reading this happens to figure this problem out you'll probably win a Nobel Prize the year you do...