Nobel Prize chemist suggests using shale gas, mineral water for methanol production

Forrás: MTI | 2013. október 28. hétfő 12:54 |

Hungarian-born Nobel Prize chemist George Olah has suggested that Hungary should produce methanol using its shale gas and thermal water.

At a meeting with Hungarian President Janos Ader in Los Angeles on Sunday, Olah outlined ways to replace fuels for heavy vehicles with ones produced from elements found in Hungary, he told MTI after the meeting.  

Olah, 96, noted that the country was rich in shale gas and thermal water and suggested that both were suitable to make a new liquid fuel. He also cited the example of Iceland, where they produce methanol using thermal water. "If it can be done in Iceland... it could also be done in Hungary," he said. 

Olah said that scientists of Massachusetts Institute of Technology had elaborated a method to use methanol as a universal suitable even for railway engines, and suggested that Hungary could make use of that technology.

Olah, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994, left Hungary in 1956 and spent periods in England and Canada before moving to the United States, where he was naturalised in 1971. Olah is currently a distinguished professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. In 2005, Olah wrote an essay promoting the methanol economy.