Posted on 09/12/2008 7:59:30 AM PDT by ZGuy
Check out the following post on CNGchat.com. Its one of the sources I’ve been using while looking at buying a CNG bi-fuel truck. The tanks I’ve seen used are aluminum wrapped in carbon fiber. These are high pressure and are expensive tanks. The following is a comment on the testing tanks experience.
http://cngchat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=845
The pressures I referenced were for pump fill pressures. Depending on the repair and upkeep of the pump the filling pressure may be lower than the 3000 psi + needed for a good “full” fill.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t work, but only in places where CNG is available,...where I live there are very few natural gas lines that you could hook up to. We use electric in 90% of the homes. The southeast does not have that as readily available as other areas of the country. And if you have a pump and no stations are availabe to refill, then you can’t get very far from home. It’s great for those who have availability.....but not for areas that don’t have a lot of natural gas...
The cost of implementing CNG availability to interstate uses will be astronomical. If we don’t drill to provide low cost gas for the poor, then we have not done the right thing...how many single mothers, elderly and disabled can afford to spend 3-7000 dollars to revamp a cheap car that they are having trouble paying for in the first place. We need to do it all, and those who can afford it, it’s great. But those who can’t should be allowed to use gas until their car is in the junkyard.
good question!
Thanks, I appeciate your post. I agree, “dual-fuel” complicates the picture quite a lot, because you’d have to have two radically different fuel delivery systems. To my knowledge, it’s not exceptionally difficult (nor costly) to convert a 100% gas to 100% CNG, but the ability to switch back and forth, I would imagine, could be fairly complex. I’d imagine it’s not made any simpler at all that most cars now utilize fuel injection vs carbueration. Would you agree?
“If we don’t drill to provide low cost gas for the poor, then we have not done the right thing...how many single mothers, elderly and disabled can afford to spend 3-7000 dollars to revamp a cheap car that they are having trouble paying for in the first place.”
You are assuming that demand (markets) will not over time, bring about a reduction in the conversion costs, rendering it possible, as the technology and the cost of it improves (which is always the case if demand rises enough) for, eventually, even if not immediately, many more people could be able to afford the conversion costs. I am assuming the opposite; that if sufficient demand is created the costs will gradually go down.
And, contrary to your assumption about my position it is NOT one of doing nothing about oil sources in the meantime. I just don’t think that is ALL we could, or should do, for the long term. And, for the long term, markets and technology MAY bring LNG and oil “closer” in “long term” costs for a car owner, and maybe, in time, close enough to be an either-or proposition for lots of people. If the LNG option, or others are discouraged, “drill now” alone will leave the tank empty eventually.
bttt
FYI
I have NEVER been a drill only person. If you look up my past posts on this subject you should find I am a do EVERYTHING person. How you got that from my post is unbelievable. I was only speaking to the fact that not all areas of the USA have access to a lot of Natural Gas. As for the price to revamp coming down, it doesn’t matter if the availability of the natural gas is not there.
If you can get natural gas..then do it. I don’t have that access, since my home is electric like 90% of homes in my ares. That was the major point of my answer. Drilling is necessary for a certain amount of people, but for the others ALL ALTERNATIVES should be done. Any “alternative” must be mass produced, and massive amounts of places to refuel are necessary to travel from one area to another, to make it viable and reasonable in cost to the normal person...so we need gas in the meantime. Being a hothead about this accomplishes nothing!
Sorry for any misunderstanding of priorities.
“I was only speaking to the fact that not all areas of the USA have access to a lot of Natural Gas.”
The answer there is (a)more imports and (b)more pipelines (for imported and domestic supplies) and (c)less government regulatory interference to both (a) and (b).
In some areas both (a) and (b) are opposed by local politicians of both parties, due to local special interests that don’t want competition from natural gas. For instance, New Jersey has easy and plentiful natural gas and yet just a couple miles across the river in metro New York it is often not available or very expensive in many places. “Supply” is obviously NOT the issue in that case, and demonstrates the role of politics, government and regulation that often inhibits larger availability of natural gas.
World wide, and even domestically over time, there IS no actual shortage of natural gas for the whole country; only a shortage of the political will to permit the supplies to get out there.
One of the “political will” failures is the political treatment of energy suppliers as “just another company seeking too much profit”, when, the fact is that cheaper and more plentiful energy is not just good for homes, schools and hospitals (who politicians will readily subsidize - doesn’t make it cheaper, just shifts the cost), it is what EVERY business needs as well. Helping energy to be produced and delivered at less cost is good for the entire economy. Helping energy companies be more efficient and profitable at it (keeping the direct and indirect costs of government on them down) helps EVERYONE by helping them get more supplies to all.
Yes, I agree completely.
The dual fuel approach is complex and costly.
There are (or were) several companies that specialized in doing conversions of small block V8’s to run on CNG. These engines really ran quite well, and are found running on “stove” quality CNG in all sorts of applications that were exempt from emissions standards.
Or starts them saying we can't drill our way out of this, or that we don't have the domestic oil to drill, and makes that all too idiotic claim to support a "renewable energy" plan.
I would like T. Boone Pickens, or any body else, to explain to me how we are going to defy the laws of physics which state that energy cannot be recycled or renewed.
Energy can be renewed: E=MC2
The real answer is converting the coal we can’t mine to clean natural gas, check out the economics for the under ground hydrogasification. Mind everyone that henry hub prices have been as high as $15 mmbtu in july. at a production cost of <$3 mmbtu the profit margin for selling it wholesale at $6+ mmbtu is obscene its only a matter of time before some company starts using this kind of technology. the plus side is to appease the carbon gods the spent gasification chamber can be used to store the CO2 produced making the SNG. since the process produced pure high pressure CO2 the storage costs are reduced.
http://www.hceco.com/HCEI105001.pdf
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