Have any of these morons every figured out how the "energy industry" (for lack of a better term), is going to get the infrastructure in place over night?
Next time I'll get a Chevy Volt and a 40 mile extension cord."
Posted on 09/12/2008 7:59:30 AM PDT by ZGuy
It would cost everybody big time. State and federal governments would have to subsidize heating so people wouldn’t freeze to death.
Have any of these morons every figured out how the "energy industry" (for lack of a better term), is going to get the infrastructure in place over night?
Next time I'll get a Chevy Volt and a 40 mile extension cord."
You know the state and fed are going tax NG, so how will they be able to tell what is used for house or car in one of these home systems?
I’m just starting to check into the whole CNG vehicle thing but I’ve noticed a few things:
1: CNG fueling pressures vary. A good fill is 3,000 to 3,400 psi. Many of the current CNG pumps don’t deliver a consistent psi fill rate.
2. CNG fuel has a higher octane than regular gas but you get 12% to 15% less mileage from an equivalent amount of fuel. (However, I’ve seen E85 mileage rates as being 30% to 35% less than gas = Advantage CNG)
3. CNG is only attractive if the price spread between gas and CNG makes it a “good” deal. It will only take the states so long until they tax CNG at gasoline levels thus eliminating the spread. Then we are back at square one again.
Maybe they can put red dye in the heating use only NG, lol.
All great points.
Propane is a better alternative.
I like the way Popular Mechanics shows it.
http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_of_the_Future-e852.pdf
"If natural gas fuel saved you, say, $2 per gallon, then you'd have to drive 124,020 highway miles or 82,680 city miles to break even on fuel costs against the $6,890 purchase price premium."
But
"You can convert an existing car from gasoline to natural gas, but the costs are daunting........."Converting a car to dual-use (as in Iran) costs between $6,000 to $10,000. Converting a car to run on natural gas only is about half as expensive.
So, the actual conversion costs for most drivers (currently owned cars) could be as low as $3,000, or only as much as $5,000 (for conversion to nat gas only). At $2 a gallon, conversion would "pay off" at between 40,000 and 80,000 some miles. Not great, but 1/2 the scariest figures quoted. And, if the industry applied itself both OEM-nat-gas-car-costs and conversion kit costs could come way down.
Good question, but what's to stop the CNG providers from price jacking once they then become the main provider (~monopoly) of transp. fuels, away from diesel/gasoline?
“Can any of our FReeper experts tell us if conversion to a dual fuel for gasoline and natural gas is significantly different than a propane conversion ?”
I spent about six years of my engineering career designing control systems for natural gas engines for both power generation and vehicle use. These were “lean burn” natural gas engines, and generated extremely low emissions. They are very cost effective in certain applications.
Many people mistakenly call propane “natural gas”. But they are two different things. Propane is propane. Natural gas is mostly methane with other combustible gases comprising the balance. CNG is much safer to handle than propane. Being mostly methane, which is lighter than air, a spill just “floats” away. Propane sinks to the ground and hangs around ready to be ignited.
Doing a gasoline to propane (or gasoline to CNG) conversion basically means throwing away your existing fuel system (injectors or carburetor, fuel pump, fuel tank, etc., and replacing it with another fuel system specifically designed to run on propane or CNG versus gasoline. There are commercially available kits to do just this for many V8 engines.
It would be complex and costly to implement a dual fuel strategy for propane or CNG and gasoline, because you essentially need two different fuel systems; one for handling a liquid fuel, and another for handling a gaseous fuel.
Natural gas, as it comes from the well, is abundant here in the US and Canada. But it is also highly variable from a qualitative perspective. The quantity of methane in natural gas can vary widely. This means that the energy density of natural gas can vary tremendously.
The “methane index” is used to denote the actual percentage of methane in the gas, and is standardized in commercial natural gas heating fuel, so that you know how much energy you’re buying per cubic foot of gas.
The other problem with natural gas is that it contains impurities such as sulfur which can make it unusable for low emissions vehicular use without refining. Even with a standardized, commercial blend of CNG, you’d never meet EPA or CARB emissions requirements unless you remove all the impurities.
If we didn’t have all the emissions requirements that we do, we could easily produce vehicle engines that would run very well on the same stuff that comes out of your stove, and we’ve got lot’s of that. There are many places in the western part of the country that have irrigation pumps and other devices running on converted V8’s burning natural gas coming directly out of the ground from a well.
I worked for a city that used natural gas powered pickups. There were two ways to refuel the trucks; slow fill or fast fill. The fast fill took about 10 minutes but would only load enough gas to last about 1 day. The slow fill took about 10-12 hours and would transfer enough natural gas to run the truck for about 3 days. I think the difference has to do with the speed, and resulting friction, of the natural gas flowing into the tank. Most of the CNG equipped trucks were in use 24 hours per day by shift workers. Eventually the city got rid of all the CNG trucks because there was no savings. Also had a problem with the nozzles of the gas lines blowing off the fuel refilling point when they were charged. More than one person was hit in the head by one of the hoses that would come flying off the truck.
My local welding supply has several photos of what an exploding oxygen tank can do to a car. They are typically at 2,000psi. The entire rear of the car was gone and oxygen is not explosive. A tank strong enough to be safe and big enough to be practical would weigh 500lbs.
The setup at the Ford dealership adds about 500 lbs to the truck. Its EPA certified but the safety of the tanks is a concern anytime your putting its contents under high pressure. Safety note taken and I appreciate it.
I’m only researching it at this point. Not sold on it as of yet due to not trusting the state and our friends in the gubmint to keep the price low. I’ve seen Utah in the $1.60 to $1.80 gge range and Texas has been at $2.84 per gge so the spread is all over the place. It may work in some areas; not in others.
“He said they run lousy, never seemed to work right, and always needed repair. “
Jeff, what he is speaking of are “lean burn”, ultra low emissions (ULEV) engines designed for fleet use, and yes, they can be finicky and difficult to maintain. Performance is also highly dependent on fuel quality which is nowhere near as standardized as gasoline from an energy density and impurities standpoint
I worked doing control system design for about six years on this type of engine. Many of the early ULEV natural gas engines were sold way too early in the design and testing process.
Engine manufacturers and fleet owners were too eager to be PC and “go green”. Then there was that little problem of our government subsidizing them with tax breaks which kept them from being properly developed from a commercial viewpoint.
I would guess the same forces that work on the oil companies
I guess what I don’t understand is how natural gas, which is (relatively) cheap now, is supposed to stay cheap once we convert a bunch of cars to this and double our demand (or more)? If demand doubles, won’t price double or more as well? Where does that leave us in cost? Will gasoline go down a proportionate amount as demand reduces? Will it cost some sucker 100$ more per month to heat his house just so he can save 50$ a month on his gas costs for his vehicle?
“What does anyone know about clean coal technology? Or converting coal to fuel. I need to know if I should load up on coal stock(s).”
I am a big fan of coal stocks, and, conveniently, they have just been crushed by about 30%. It is NOT because of coal-to-gas, it is because of met coal, the type of coal used to make steel.
My favorite coal stocks are the ones located in Appalachia, which have among 1: The highest BTU content, 2: The highest proportion of met coal vs. steam coal of all US producers 3: have known, working infrastructure to deliver the coal. We are talking about millions of tons, rail lines are an absolute requirement. The Appal coal cos (generally called CAPP = Central Appalachia) that meet these requirements are:
ANR
PCX
WLT
MEE
Any of these are great investments. PM me for more math than the board needs to know about.
less good: CNX
even less good: JRCC
Just as a point of reference as to how the market views BTU, sulfur, and ash content and proximity to port facilities, consider that steam (not met) coal from CAPP sells for about $100-120/ton, not including special buddy-buddy deals to the local utilities; while PRB (Powder River Basin) Coal, typ from Wy & Colo & Ut sells for....wait for it.....$14 - $18 a ton.
“1: CNG fueling pressures vary. A good fill is 3,000 to 3,400 psi. Many of the current CNG pumps don’t deliver a consistent psi fill rate.”
Are you sure about that? That doesn’t sound right. I was under the impression that methane/propane, the primary components of NG would liquefy at MUCH lower pressures than that, talking low hundreds of pounds. Once a liquid, no further compression is possible. You buy a new propane cylinder for a hand-held torch, you can hear liquid propane sloshing around. That type of stamped sheet-metal cylinder is no kind of 3000 lb affair, that’s for certain. Maybe methane has a higher vapor pressure but I doubt either of them (methane/propane) are in the thousands of lbs. I will check.
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