Posted on 11/19/2014 5:27:49 AM PST by thackney
While everyone is watching to see how low oil prices will affect U.S. shale drillers, natural gas production continues to rise. Each month, the U.S. posts new production highs (see chart), and 2014 is shaping up to be a record year for natural gas drillers. With production ratcheting upwards, the U.S. has been able to achieve record levels of storage injections, building back inventories after last winter walloped the east coast and depleted supplies.
The abundance of natural gas is allowing utilities to increasingly burn the fuel in power plants for electricity – a well-known trend that continues to accelerate.
But another sector also stands to benefit – the transportation sector. In particular, natural gas is likely to become a serious option for transportation fuels, particularly as an alternative to diesel in long haul trucking or in shorter fleet operations. It can either come in the form of compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG).
There are several advantages that natural gas has over traditional diesel or gasoline powered vehicles First natural gas can be a lot cheaper on an energy equivalent basis, generally a little more than $2 per gallon. There was certainly a much bigger disparity in prices earlier this year when gasoline prices cost more than $4 per gallon, but there is still a financial gain to be had (see chart below from U.S. Department of Energy). Moreover, crude oil prices won’t stay this…
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
I just have a hard time imagining sitting on one.
“Were those propane (LPG)?”
Probably.
My brother in law worked with a family that ran harvesters from farm to farm back in the 70’s. They were featured in National Geographic as a matter of fact back then. All the guy’s trucks were LPG conversions.
Hard on the valves though. Today with the hardened valves and seats due to unleaded gas it would be a non-issue on conversion.
Gasoline Gallon 111,800 BTU
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Gallon 71,100 BTU
There is getting to be quite a reliable network on the nation’s highway system.
Trips need to be planned, but much of the US would be available for a long trip. Duel-fuel would still fit most peoples needs at this point.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_locations.html
Yep.
But, I would be on $2 LNG lasting a lot longer than $2.7 gasoline.
I just finished my first season running a propane-fueled small outboard on a small boat I have. Made by a company called Lehr and derived from a Yamaha motor. It can take either the 1lb Coleman style bottles, or plug via hose into a grill tank.
I only have 15-20 hours on it, but so far I really like it. Lehr really plays up the “green”, angle, but thats never a selling point for me. It’s definitely cheaper than gasoline (each bottle gives a comparable running time to 1/3 a gallon of gasoline, and I can refill them from a grill tank for about $0.60 per. Works out to $1.80 for a gallon of gasoline equivilant).
AND it takes care of the “green” problem of Ethanol gumming up the carb. A real problem with small outboards.
I suspect, mostly due to your imagination, rather that the actual strength. I've worked around CNG, LNG, LPG, and lots of refined products and Petrochemicals. LPG, propane, scares me the most. The CNG, LNG are harder to ignite and outdoors quickly vent up and away. Large propane leaks will hug the ground and pool up to a large volume after a spill.
I just looked at the chart and the closest one to my house is about 40 miles away; I wouldn't expect to have one on every corner, but I would at least like the option of being able to fill up when I'm out running errands and not have to plan a special trip to do it.
I suspect even longer. But it won't be MOST people's purchase for a much longer time. However, if 10~20% of our transportation fuel consumption moves to Natural Gas, our nation would be much more secure along with many more American jobs.
Thanks for sharing that. I wonder when we will see that for more small engines like lawn mowers, etc.
I think the more useful measure would be how far you could travel on say $50 of fuel. Most people have a pretty good idea of how much it takes to fill their car and how many miles they normally can get on a tank.
You need to compare the energy/dollar content.
You don't get the same tank with gasoline, LNG or CNG.
That’s why we were examining “energy content”. This should be a good indicator of how far you can travel, unless a gas vs natgas engine has a vastly different efficiency factor.
BTW, with gasoline at $3, the numbers tighten up quite a bit, at 37kBtu vs 35kBtu.
I agree. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one IF it was going to cost me the same or less than gasoline and without any real inconveniences.
That's the big question for me. I'm more interested in how far I can go per dollar than BTUs.
For instance, yesterday I paid $2.57 to fill up my tank and I know that I'm getting just over 25 MPG, so it will cost me about $0.10 in gas per mile. What's that cost with NG?
Your welcome.
Lehr apparantly makes/made propane weed whackers and leaf blowers that ran on the Coleman bottles too. Some were sold under the Craftsman/Sears label. But from what I’ve read they had reliability issues. The outboards had teething issues as well when first introduced (2012), but they seem to have those under control for the 2013 and 2014 production years. LOT of sailboaters on the East Coast have them now.
The biggest downside, now anyways, is the total cost of the Coleman bottles. You pay a heck of a lot more for the bottle than the propane thats inside them (Walmart has them for a little less that $3 per, for $0.50-.60 of propane). But I already had a number of bottles from camping and picked up an adapter to refill them myself from a grill tank. I’ve since added to my small bottle inventory by grabbing empties that other campers have thrown away ...
And that’s what I’m/we’re saying - if the efficiency of the two engines is the same, you can take the ratios of BTUs per dollar and translate that directly to ratios of miles per dollar.
You won't get the same miles per gallon. And for an individual, my opinion, you don't want LNG. So for CNG, you won't even measure it gallons.
It is reasonable to get the energy efficiency in an internal combustion engine. So same energy in should result in the same energy out, distance traveled.
You can apply the ratio of energy per dollar to miles per dollar and have a reasonable comparison.
I would certainly own a LNG pickup if I knew the infrastructure was in place to fill up.
I don’t think you want a fuel tank that needs to be maintained at -260°F.
I would recommend a CNG fueled, or dual fueled with CNG and Gasoline/diesel.
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