Compressed Natural Gas For Vehicles

[two_bit_score]

Thanks, Bird - I can only hope that people understand now, more than they did in the '90's, that we really need an alternative to foriegn oil. From what I've heard, it could be possible, if you had natural gas in your home, to be able to fill a vehicle overnight. I wouldn't mind sacrificing a little power, both of our pickups are overpowered for 99% of their work. I wonder what the natural gas would cost, mile for mile, compared to gasoline?

Google "Phill stations". Also, Fox Service Company in Austin Texas has a lot of good information on their website that will help you understand the ease of refueling at home with CNG.

Right now the only OEM vehicle produced to run on CNG is the Honda GX. That's really sad. Our domestic auto industry is in such a shamble and we can't buy a domestic car or truck OEM that will run on CNG.

It's also a national security issue when you consider how much money we send over to foreign governments every month to import oil for transportation use when we have an abundant supply of natural gas.

Were we to really utilize domestically produced natural gas as a transportation fuel we could revolutionize our country and keep a lot of money at home.

 

[Redneck in training]

The beauty of the gasoline or diesel is it packs lot of energy in small package stored in light more or less flat tank somewhere under the car. CNG in other hand is much less concentrated, requires heavy and strong tank of approximatelly round shape. Many cars in example in Europe use CNG but the tank takes about half of the trunk space while the range of car is about half.
All CNG cars I saw also run on gasoline. Don't know if it is currently possible to convert diesel to CNG. The smaller is the vehicle the less practical CNG is and vice versa.

 

[newbury]

CNG is attractive with too many present limitations.
The present way to "legally" fill up at home is:
Expensive - > about $5K for a "station" plus rebuild cost ($2.5K every 6000hrs of use)
Slow - > "Overnight"
Limited - > 1 car, 4 hrs, 50 miles (est)
My family runs 4 cars and fills each about once every 4 weeks/400 miles, this would not work well for us.

To fill up at a station:
Find a station - how many on road "gas"stations now pump diesel? CNG?

It should be no more difficult than pressurizing and transferring the NG, but the safety implications are massive.

Could you imagine a typical densely packed suburb, each house with say a 100 gallon compressed tank of NG starting to "cook off" like ammo in a fire?
And all connected by NG lines?
Generally where there is use of propane the separate houses are not connected by fuses/pipelines.

 

[Dargo]

Jim, a great deal of drilling for natural gas is currently underway in the Barnett Shale area of north central Texas. CNG powered vehicles are certainly nothing new, and natural gas is a very clean burning fuel, but as to whether it'll catch on for the public, I'd only be guessing when I say I doubt it.

I have to agree with Bird. I don't see it happening. I make my living in and around the auto industry and the concept of CNG has come and gone. Apparently after spending untold millions on research the conclusion was that it just won't work. I saw the long several page list of the reasons why, but I just glanced over it when I saw it because it was already proclaimed as dead and I had no reason to learn more about it.

Where I live our utility provider has had a fleet of small vehicles using CNG for years but that's it. They have a monetary reason to try to push the agenda since they sell NG but not gasoline or diesel. Still one of my friends who works for the utility company says nobody there wants to drive those vehicles because they are slow and have very short ranges.

 

[orezok]

CNG is a viable alternate for fleet use. Here in California, we are not allowed to procure diesel busses to transport children to school They must be CNG or Propane. About 50% of our fleet is now CNG. There are several advantages. Maintenance on the engines has considerably decreased. When diesel was $4+ per gallon we were making CNG for about $1 per gallon. We saved over $200K just last year on fuel.

The disadvantages are the shorter range and slightly lesser power. We have both slow fill and fast fill capability and the slow fill is a perfect solution for school busses.

Most of our white fleet is also going to CNG. We tried conversions on some of our gas units 4 or 5 years ago and they were less than successful but now every major manufacturer offers CNG as a factory option.

The other advantage is that they are exempt for smog checks.

If you want to see the availability and current cost for CNG in your area, go here.

CNG stations and Prices for the US, Canada and Europe

 

[jimainiac]

Thanks everbody for all the information provided - I've learned a lot already. We don't have natural gas in our town, but it is available in the area. There are a couple of pipelines from Canada that run through Maine and join in Portland to go south. It was really interesting to go to that website that shows where natural gas stations are, and the price. Obviously there are pros and cons to cng, and it might not be practical for everybody, but the more people that use it the less gasoline we need, seems to me. We don't generally travel too far from home, making short trips, so in that way we'd be good candidates for cng if we could get rigged up for it.
I figured there was probably a wealth of information out there among the TBN members, and I certainly haven't been disappointed once again!

 

[Wis Bang]

Propane! You can get filled at alot of Propane Jobbers & get a home fueling station. The HP problen can be dealt with [Trucks had a show reciently converting a pickup] and in addition to the fuel cost difference, you can double/tripple oil change intervals 'cause it burns much cleaner than gas. Engine life is also much longer so you could hit 500K with out a re-build.

Dual fuel setups are a compromise while a direct propane only setup can be tuned for performance.

 

[Redneck in training]

Propane! You can get filled at alot of Propane Jobbers & get a home fueling station. The HP problen can be dealt with [Trucks had a show reciently converting a pickup] and in addition to the fuel cost difference, you can double/tripple oil change intervals 'cause it burns much cleaner than gas. Engine life is also much longer so you could hit 500K with out a re-build.

Dual fuel setups are a compromise while a direct propane only setup can be tuned for performance.

Most modern dual fuel (read fuel injected and CNG) cars are tuned for normal performance with either fuel. Less power with CNG is related to energy content of CNG versus gasoline.

Propane is a byproduct of refining of crude into gasoline, diesel, light and heavy heating oil, asphalt, lubricants etc. so that is not real substitute for natural gas. There is only smal amount of propane, propylene, ethylene, butane and other gasses in natural gas.

 

[Renze]

In Holland, they have tried CNG on an agricultural tractor already in 1989: a guy from the agricultural university converted a petrol Ferguson TEF to CNG.

Biggest problems with CNG:
-you need to bring 4x bigger tanks, compared to LPG which means a lot of volume
-engines dont last as long on CNG as they do on diesel
-because of the lower comrpession ratio needed, its not just that easy to convert

Because of that, the biggest application in Holland are city buses, that have a row of tanks on top of the roof or under the floor, anywhere where unused space is.

In England, 2 years ago an agricultural university tested with mixed fuel: They sprayed CNG into the manifold of an old Scania 141 V8 truck: Power rose from 350 to 380 hp and specific fuel consumption dropped 10% because the CNG acted as an accelerator to the Diesel combustion process, causing a cleaner better burn of the diesel.

In other experiments, other researchers used even a 1/3 Diesel, 2/3 CNG mixture successfully.

The beauty of mixed fuel, is that you can keep the compression ratio of the Diesel, work with an unrestricted air flow and have the Diesel combust the CNG. Normally you need the correct air/fuel mixture, but the burning Diesel ignites the relatively lean CNG/Diesel/air mixture well.

 

[Frankdozer]

I once was told that if you fill the trailer tires with propane, the tires last longer and the payload is increased. NOT !!!!