M85 FUELS

M85 Fuel is a mixture of 85% methanol and 15% premium unleaded gas used to power flex-fuel vehicles.   Methanol is typically made from natural gas, although it is possible to produce it by fermenting biomass (this is why it is sometimes called "wood alcohol"), this is not economically competitive yet.  Because it is easier to transport natural gas to a distant market by converting it to methanol, which is a liquid at ordinary temperatures and pressures, than by chilling and liquefying it or by building a long pipeline, some oil-exporting countries are looking at exporting their "waste" natural gas, that which they currently burn off, by converting it to methanol.  At this time, however, most of the natural gas that goes into methanol in the United States is still domestically produced.  In the not-too-distant future, so called neat, or 100% methanol may be the preferred means of storing hydrogen for fuel-cell electric vehicles, but this technology is still in the R&D stage.

Alcohol fuels like M85 are perhaps the most transparent alternative fuels to the user, that is, they are the least distinguishable from gasoline in how you buy and use them, which should ease acceptance.  The fuel system of a car or truck only needs to be slightly changed (somewhat different materials, bigger fuel injectors, and a fuel composition sensor) in order for it to run on M85, and recently automakers have been offering M85 vehicles at no extra cost over their gasoline counterparts (or even for slightly less money), though at present automakers seem to be more interested in ethanol (E85).  At least in California, the fuel costs about the same per mile as mid-grade gasoline (that is, you need about 1.7 gallons of M85 to get the same driving range as one gallon of gasoline, but price of a gallon of gasoline is about 1.7 times the price of a gallon of M85, so it balances out).  And perhaps best of all, modern M85 vehicles are flex-fuel vehicles, which means that any mixture of M85 and gasoline in the fuel tank can be used by the engine; a fuel-composition sensor tells the engine computer what percentage of methanol is in the fuel, and it adjusts the injectors and ignition accordingly.  Thus an M85 vehicle is a gasoline vehicle if M85 is not available, but you can top it off with M85 whenever you get back into an area where it can be found, and you don't have to have two separate fuel systems to do this.