Compensating for a shortcoming in combustibles, the Uznefteproduct Company is to follow the example of fuel producers from neighbouring China who have actively begun using methanol as a gasoline additive.
The methanol mixture has been actively used for already several years in China as well as in some U.S. states, such as California. It is marked by the M85 subscript and consists of 85 per cent methanol and 15 per cent unleaded gasoline. Cars on this fuel are especially common in California.
The methanol fuel can be used not only in vehicles designed for the consumption of pure methanol and methanol - gasoline blends, but can also be used to drive the vehicles originally designed to run on gasoline and subsequently converted to methanol consumption. It is used in more than 70 countries around the world and some of them have advanced so far it has become a primary fuel.
Methanol burns five times slower than gasoline and it is much easier to extinguish. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that the use of methanol will result in a 95 per cent reduction in the number of casualties from vehicle fires.
Vehicles running on methanol fuel with a lower combustion temperature emit slightly less carbon dioxide, significantly less hydrocarbons and much less NOx compounds than their gasoline analogues.
Cars on the methanol basis can operate 25-30 per cent more efficiently than the ones with conventional gasoline engines and have approximately the same efficiency as those with diesel engines.
In the near future in the Bukhara region it is planning to start the construction of a gas chemical complex with a capacity of 500,000 tons of methanol per year whereby Uzbekistan intends to develop its own standard of gasoline and alcohol blend.