Posted on 07/30/2006 10:04:42 PM PDT by GeronL
This week we’re going to refine the argument for natural gas as a comprehensive solution to high energy prices, energy pollution, and energy dependence upon foreign producers outlined in What Bush Can Do To Get Cheaper Gas. To summarize: the solution is for Bush to allow oil & gas companies to extract the vast amounts of NG we have within American boundaries, cut state residents in on the royalties, provide tax credits for folks to run NG in their cars, and before his presidency is over the equivalent cost of driving a car will be less than $1 a gallon.Now for the refinement — of the argument, not NG, which unlike crude oil requires no refining. Seen those full page newspaper ads placed by Chevron trying to frighten you with the claim that the US only has three measly percent of the world’s natural gas supply? Whatever the Chevron’s agenda is, it’s not about telling you the truth.
The SEC makes it a federal felony for an energy company to claim gas reserves as assets if they’re not determined by obsolete technology, i.e., you have to drill a hole. Modern 3D seismic methods get a far better picture of an NG reservoir — but since you don't have to drill a hole, whatever reserves are found by 3DS, the SEC won’t allow it.
The government screws things up more — much more — by not allowing gas exploration companies to survey the offshore continental shelf of over 90 per cent of the US coastline excluding Alaska. They can survey along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana — but not Washington, Oregon, California, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and New England.
There’s likely as much gas off the mouth of the Columbia River as the Mississippi, possibly the same with Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson River. The gas companies know there are fantastic amounts of gas off California, Florida, and much of the eastern seaboard — but the government won’t let them have it.
Gas exploration is not allowed on much of federal land — and one third of the US is owned by the Feds. On what little land they can explore, with 3DS they are discovering huge amounts in “low-permeability reservoirs” — some 460 tcf (trillion cubic feet), tripling alone current US gas reserves.
Put this all together and you have US gas reserves ten to twenty times as greater as the 150 tcf or “3 percent” of world reserves. This is enough to last the US for decades to come, even if we double or triple NG use (which we will with the Natural Gas Solution — the US currently uses some 22 tcf a year).
It's also enough to provide a lot of mailbox money for residents of states producing NG on federal land or offshore. A one-third cut of all federal royalties will overcome state residents' NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) objections (1/3 to Feds, 1/3 to states/ 1/3 to state residents).
What NG we produce, we consume. Crude oil is different. However much more we produce, it will bid for by the world market, such as China and India, because oil is cheaply shipped by ocean tanker. (Japan buys a lot of our Alaska oil, for example).
NG has to liquefied to be shipped over oceans, a costly and dangerous procedure. The only cost-effective way to transport NG is by pipeline. NG extracted offshore just needs a few miles of pipe laid on fairly level ocean floor to hook it up to the existing pipeline network in any US coastal state. Neither the Chinese nor Indians nor other global folks will bid against it. NG is the way to achieve American energy independence.
And do so as an environmentalist’s dream, for NG burns so cleanly, reducing both CO2 emissions and air pollution. That’s because NG is 80 percent hydrogen. There are 4 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in NG. There are only 2 atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of carbon in regular gas. Thus NG emits much less carbon in the atmosphere.
There’s a lot of futuristic talk about the “hydrogen economy,” hydrogen as an ultimate energy source. Given the same size/weight of the pressure tank, NG delivers far more energy than hydrogen: 16 pounds of NG take up the same space as 2 pounds of hydrogen. Your car's trunk isn’t big enough to handle a hydrogen tank capable of driving a few hundred miles — but it can do so with an NG tank.
What really nixes hydrogen is a feature called “embrittlement.” Hydrogen atoms ooze their way into grains of steel and make it as brittle as glass. So you need special high-nickel steel pressure tanks and pipelines. You can’t transport hydrogen in existing NG pipelines — you’d have to build an impossibly costly additional pipeline system, or lug it in special trucks and railroad tank cars like ethanol.
Which brings me to the ludicrous rip-off of ethanol. Ethanol is carcinogenic (cancer-producing). It releases known carcinogens into the atmosphere: acetyl-eldehyde, and peroxy-acetyl-nitrate/nitrite/nitrile, three powerful eye and lung irritants.
Ethanol has only 2/3 the energy of regular gas, so you get 1/3 less energy per gallon, which means it adds 33 percent to the gas-per-mile cost of driving. But there’s also the cost of ethanol transport, which is by truckload or railroad, much higher than by oil pipeline (which ethanol can’t use because it can’t handle any water seepage like oil can).
The argument that ethanol reduces emissions is a fraud. With a modern car engine’s oxygen sensors and computer-controlled fuel injection, there’s no difference in CO (carbon monoxide) coming out your tailpipe with regular gas or ethanol.
(Ever see the 1960s anti-war movie On The Beach? Remember when Fred Astaire kills himself by breathing the fumes of his prized sports car in his closed garage? A modern car doesn't emit enough CO for this to work anymore.)
The reason I’m discussing the ethanol fraud is that Archer-Daniels-Midland and the corn farmer lobby will go nuts in objecting to the Natural Gas Solution. Hell hath no fury than folks threatened with the elimination of their government subsidy. The question to ask the corn farmers is: if ethanol is so great, how come you don’t run your tractors with it and use (far more economical) diesel instead?
You're assuming that the metal parts are "homogenous". Lots of good things are happening today with plasma (and similar) coatings of things like titanium nitride and other ceramics that are superhard and super corrosion resistant.
Sigh---I tell you again--there IS no connection of the oil-containing region under the valve covers to the outside air except for the TINY amount of air that is drawn in by the PCV valve--most of the air volume in the "oil" volume recirculates and is at engine temperature (thus any water that "might" come in thru the PCV valve will evaporate instantly). This region is totally isolated into it's own independent region/volume within the engine by a multitude of seals. The "runners" are completely isolated from this volume. I think you'll also find in most engines that a major portion of this "intake runner" runs through a water-jacketed area, and is heated there, as well.
True, but abrasion can be a problem.
Meanwhile, all I can advise on this issue is use Mobil 1 oil, change it often, keep the oil and water temps elevated a bit from what is best with gasoline, and run Marvel Mystery Oil in the alcohol at about a 100:1 ratio.
Meanwhile, back at the shop, we flush our anodized aluminum fitting equipped fuel system and HPC coated carburetor with kerosene every Sunday afternoon. Microscopic scratches and flaws in even these mil-spec coatings will produce corrosion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1675857/posts
Unless you have an aluminum cylinder head, that is true. This can be doubly compounded by heads that have intake ports close to the valve cover flange or with their outer walls contacting the lubricating oil before the water jackets, which is a textbook description of ANY semi-modern designed engine that uses pushrods.
Whoops! I'll correct myself, since there is the Buick "Nailhead" family, produced from 1953 to 1966 that the pushrods actually entered the rocker area BEHIND (on the exhaust side of the head) the valves, and there are no exposed "backwalls" of the ports under the valve covers. This same engine tarred all American big blocks with the derisive term of "boat anchor", but I digress.
I in no way mean to insult your intelligence or education, but you should get your own $800 carburetor and $400 belt driven fuel pump from Barry Grant to fit some junkyard small block Chevy, spend a few nights bending some stainless hard line, get six feet of Teflon lined hose, a polyethylene fuel cell, and about six 55 gallon drums of methanol. Set it up how you wish. Leave the exhaust heat on the intake. Don't run headers. Keep a blanket to cover the radiator. Throw away the fan. Whatever you wish, but before it's over (in the unlikely event you haven't burned SIXTEEN drums of methanol at the current price of $2.00/gallon and it's still not tuned), drive it every day to work and the store and pick up the kids for ONE week. Keep track of your oil, and when it gets so milky you can't see the ADD mark, change it.
I think the results of this experiment would be like forcing a vegan to take care of 400 head of cattle and their fencing for a month. The vegan still not eat meat, but he'll think about killing every damned cow he sees for the rest of his life.
I knew a guy once who had his pick-up truck running on Propane. He had the tank in the back and it semmed to run just fine.
"Link no worky"
Anyhow, I think the "perfessor" and I should have the gummint tax the dawg $#!+ out of you to keep he and I in a nice shop and some ethanol to burn in our livers while we work on this. We'd have to hire WW as an outside consultant, of course.
you have to copy the link and put into your addrss section.
He was riding around with a bomb in the bed of his truck is what he was doing.
Propane is easy to do and a petroleum product. We're talking alternatives here.
We've already seen huge price increases in NG due to shortages. To say we are going to unleash this huge demand for NG, and production will quickly rise to not only meet the demand but drive the price down, just doesn't make sense to me.
I don't know how much untapped NG we have, but I'm in favor of using other's first and keeping ours in the ground until there really is a shortage. But it's a balancing act. Don't want to fund the Islamies more than we have too."
I have put the article to The Gas Man (45 yrs as VP, project construction, Southern Calif. Gas Co., now Sempra, he literally wrote the book on gas distribution from well to house, he drove a natural gas auto for two years). He concurs with everything but, perhaps, some of the tax fantasies.
We will recall that the largest deposits of low sulphur coal are in the U.S. Escalante Zone. Yet, Klintoon made a national park out of it. Natural gas exploration on land and sea has been stymied by regulation.
yitbos
NG is stored (injected) underground. Some of the best places for it are depleted oil and gas fields.
Those old collapsable tanks went out decades ago.
yitbos
Don't have the time to indulge in frivolous stuff like that any more. If I were to do it, I certainly wouldn't use a fuel-injected engine, and I'd take steps to maximize heat in the intake manifold, and possibly some kind of fuel preheater. I'd probably start with an engine like the old Plymouth Barracuda slant 6 with the LONG intake lines from the carb to the engine intake ports, again to maximize heat transfer to the incoming fuel.
As you wish.
However it tunes out, you'll still take a 20mpg car on gasoline and turn it into an 9mpg car on methanol.
You'll still burn 2.4 times as much by weight.
True, but if the gasoline isn't available, I'll burn it and be thankful.
Not that I'm advocating testing it, but would the car stall from too much CO2 in the mix before a human would succumb from it?
For energy production, what counts is the number of atoms times the amount of energy each type produces when oxidized. The one carbon atom in the methane molecule generates less energy when oxidized than the 4 hydrogen atoms. See here
The energy is released by the oxidation part of the reaction. forming two O=C bonds (which generates 1598 kj) and forming the four H-O bonds (which generates 1836 kj). If we take the oxidation part of the reaction, the H-O bond formation generates 53.5% of the energy released during the oxidation portion of the reaction.
Still short of 80%.
While 80% of the atoms which make up methane are hydrogen atoms, methane is not by any other reckoning "80% hydrogen".
Look at the current technology in Sprint cars. There are many advantages to minimzing the distance from where fuel enters the intake airstream and the cylinder.
The latest hot setup (mechanical injection, but the following points still apply) is called "down nozzles" which require a special cylinder head that allows the injector boss to be machined into the exhaust side of the head, placing the injector discharge immediately above the valve seat on the back wall of the intake port. Getting the fuel away from being above the throttle blades stops the icing problem, and minimizing contact time with the inlet air drastically reduces water condensation problems as well as freeing more of the inlet system to carry only air instead of being crammed full of fuel vapor. Even with your proposed slant 6, 90% of the fuel won't vaporize until it gets into the cylinder.
It will if I get it's temperature up enough before it enters the carburetor (or fuel injectors). It all boils down (no pun intended) to how much energy you put INTO the fuel to overcome that "latent heat of vaporization" problem. Heck, you could actually inject ALL the fuel as vapor with enough fuel preheat--although depending on how the preheat was done (electrical or exhaust gas heat), you might have to do the "startup/warmup" portion of the drive on an alternate fuel--and you'd have to be careful not to "overheat" the fuel to the point that carbonization became a problem.
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