High efforts were made in the last few years to improve the process technology of carburizing. Due to that carburizing with endothermic gas, nitrogen/methanol and hydrocarbon/air have got a place in heat treatment. Increased demands in cost effectiveness and process control have forced the process designers to look for new ways to get improved heat treatment results. This paper looks at methanol as an atmosphere to make the heat treatment process more cost effective and better control. The atmosphere made up of methanol is compared with other types of atmosphere, like endothermic gas, nitrogen- methanol system and direct carburizing. Results indicate the enormous savings due to lower cycle times of carburizing using carrier gas generated by methanol could be achieved. Also it gives better hardness profile with controlled process variation.