Methanol

Fire tops an Indy-car driver's fear list. Drivers worry more about fire than crashes and equipment failure primarily because they feel fire before they see it. Methanol, the fuel Indy-cars run on, consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Methanol, whose colorless flame shimmers like heat off a highway on a hot day, is preferred over gasoline because it has a high octane rating and burns cooler than gasoline. Problems with what the drivers call "invisible pain" are amazingly few, but during the final pit stop in last Sunday's race at Cleveland, Al Unser Jr. encountered the terror of fire for the first time in his eight years of Indy- car racing.

In the Region   $5B in power grid upgrades OKd   Regional grid operator PJM Interconnection said it authorized more than 750 electric transmission improvement projects last year costing more than $5 billion to prepare for massive shifts in the way power is produced in the region. PJM, based in Valley Forge, said the unprecedented switch from coal-burning power plants in Appalachia to natural-gas and renewable-energy projects was driving the need to reconfigure the grid to maintain a reliable electricity supply.

For years, Barry Grossman has been saying that a certain type of gasoline makes people ill. He's told it to newspaper reporters across the country. He's said it on radio and television shows. Even on network news. Grossman, a salesman from Plainsboro, N.J., is the founder of Oxy-Busters, a group that opposes gasoline made with methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), an additive that reduces air pollution. He says gasoline with MTBE causes headaches, nausea, asthma and other ailments.

TRIPOLI, Libya - NATO aircraft blasted an oil terminal in a key eastern city at nightfall Sunday after Britain urged the alliance to widen its assault on areas controlled by ruler Moammar Gadhafi. The Libya TV report said the bombs hit methanol tanks at the oil port of Ras Lanouf, causing leaks. NATO officials had no immediate comment. The reported attack came as the Libyan conflict appeared largely deadlocked, with each side claiming gains one day, only to be turned back the next. Libyan rebels said Sunday that they had taken full control of the western port city of Misrata, 125 miles from Tripoli, the only major city in western Libya with a significant rebel toehold.

TRIPOLI, Libya - The top security official in Libya's capital said Tuesday that 79 people have died over the last four days from drinking homemade alcohol, suspected of containing poisonous methanol. Colonel Mahmoud al-Sharif, security chief in Tripoli, said authorities are searching for two people believed to be involved in making the drinks. He said authorities are looking into whether it was the methanol or bad fermentation that caused the large number of victims. He said that at least seven were found dead in their beds after consuming the liquor.

Go ahead, open the front door of the boxy white sedan and slide behind the wheel. Buckle into the red vinyl interior, crank the ignition. You're ready to tackle the freeways in this machine Ford calls the Crown Victoria and Southern California calls the future. Except for a little black box on its dashboard, constantly measuring fuel economy, this car seems much like any other plying the endless highways. In a sea of sleek Hondas and Mercedes and Toyotas and Nissans, it looks like a standard gas-hog.

The fuss over fuel cells is about a car powered by electricity that won't be handicapped by recharging needs yet will be almost pollution-free. Almost, because the fuel-cell vehicle will most likely split hydrogen from gasoline, combine the hydrogen with oxygen and use that mixture to generate the electrical power. And since nearly all liquid fuel is a hydrocarbon, the separation of hydrogen will doubtless leave some carbon compounds as leftovers. If that leftover takes the form of carbon dioxide, the good news will be that carbon dioxide is not officially a pollutant.

Cops in Warminster drive them in pursuit of felons. A construction company uses them to tool around the 'burbs. And the Philadelphia Water Department cruises all the way to Plymouth Meeting just to buy them fuel. They're pioneer vehicles - cars and light trucks that run on compressed natural gas, one of a new generation of cleaner fuels. By the end of the decade, hundreds - probably thousands - of "clean-fuel" vehicles should be plying the Philadelphia area. Some will be converted, some new. Some will run only on alternative fuel; some will be able to switch back to gas or diesel.

Lee Scioli was the first to find out about the compressed natural gas cylinders that were supposed to go up just yards away from her living room in Rhawnhurst. "I was just going out in the morning to go out shopping and somebody was taking pictures of my house," Scioli recalled. "Meanwhile, he was measuring the property line. " A city fire lieutenant was checking out the vacant lot next door, where Sun Refining & Marketing Co. had proposed to put the first public station in Philadelphia for refueling alternative-fueled vehicles.

After years of efforts to reduce the nation's air pollution by making automobiles cleaner and more efficient, it appears that the 1990s will be the decade not so much of cleaner cars but of cleaner gasoline. Seven oil companies - Arco, Conoco, Diamond Shamrock, Exxon, Marathon, Phillips and Shell - are selling or have announced plans to sell cleaner- burning gasolines. Reductions in pollution from the "reformulated" fuels could be substantial. "All in all, you can lower emissions 20 to 50 percent" in a car using cleaner gasoline, said Dexter Sutterfield, director of fuels development at the National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research in Bartlesville, Okla.