Beer plays a vital part in the life of Matt Groening’s & David X. Cohen’s 31st century Planet Express delivery crew. In their world of Futurama, the one and only Bender Bending Rodríguez Sr. runs not on any kind of battery, but on beer. Which is why designated Bending Unit 22 is seemingly always drunk.
Was it just a prank played by the guys and his creators from Tijuana that made Bender drink copious amounts of alcohol to recharge his fuel cells or is pounding brews a real possibility?
Direct methanol fuel cells are already available in our century, but when it comes to Bender aka the Pharaoh from planet Osiris IV the question isn’t whether or not Bender could technically run on beer, it’s how much he’d have to drink — provided he’d be able to extract the methanol from the beer in the first place… and yes, in order to extract the right amount of methanol, Bender would have to drink massive amounts of beer.
Let’s skip the part where we need to argue what kind of methanol fuel cells Bender is working on, let’s just try to figure out how much beer Bender would have to drink to get a liter’s worth of his methanol.
Based on the consumption of beer, it’s important to note there actually isn’t much methanol in beer. It’s a mere byproduct of fermentation, occurring in…
