Home – Home – Jornals – Chemistry for Sustainable Development 2005 number 6

Properties of and methods to obtain dimethyl ether (DME), a new power supply with the enhanced ecological properties, have been considered. With the use of advanced achievements (reforming of natural gas, based on the experience in creation of rocket technologies, direct synthesis of DME from synthesis gas), one might expect that dimethyl ether will appear competitive as compared to traditional combustibles. In the same manner as methanol, DME can be readily processed to high-grade petrol; however, unlike methanol synthesis, synthesis of DME is only slightly sensitive to the composition of synthesis gas (i.e. to the nature of raw material), which makes it possible to consider the processing diagram "carbon-containing raw material ® synthesis gas ® DME ® petrol" as a versatile scheme to yield synthetic engine fuels. Possible use of steam reforming of methanol to yield pure hydrogen for fuel cells has been discussed. Modern catalysts and decontamination methods are already capable to provide methanol processing to pure hydrogen with the productivity that is theoretically acceptable to arrange the appropriate devices onboard a vehicle. Macrokinetic regime of the reaction is of significant importance for a complete decontamination from CO during selective oxidation.