What Is Synthetic Gasoline?

Methanol is pretty good on its own in gasoline-capable engines if the firmware was right and there were no components in the fuel system sensitive to "pure" alcohol.

It just physically gives the lowest mileage per gallon compared to other alcohols, which still all give shorter range per tank compared to plain hydrocarbons. This is not really that big a deal on the road but for aviation it can make all the difference, so that would have to be where it makes sense to process all the way to a synthetic hydrocarbon fuel. Or if there was actually surplus energy, more energy could be stored by processing the alcohols into lower-oxygen-content higher-energy-density liquids. On a per-tank storage basis too.

Regardless of less energy per gallon, methanol and ethanol do burn with higher octane ratings than most premium gasolines.

Plus in case of fire, alcohols burn with a blue flame too faint to see in sunlight so 15% hydrocarbons are added which would result in a yellow flame instead. That's why the M85 and E85 are only 85% alcohol.

I have seen some renewable naphtha that smelled pretty sweet but like ordinary petroleum naphtha, is not a drop-in replacement for finished gasoline since the antiknock rating is way too low. But naphtha of some kind still makes up the bulk of gasoline blendstocks which are then enhanced with more costly higher-octane hydrocarbons and often 10% ethanol too to barely meet specifications for consumer gasoline. After running it through the analytical lab this renewable stuff was clean clean and I would have to estimate as a liquid it was way less toxic than the natural organic virgin straight-run naphtha obtained from crude oil. And the virgin sweet petroleum naphtha is concentrated from "sweet" crude by distillation without depending on any chemical reactions, and it gags you a lot less than the catalytic naphtha which has been chemically or physically "cracked" into different nasty-smelling hydrocarbons that did not exist naturally within the crude oil to begin with.

& relatively cheap abundant catalysts

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24688...