US wants Natural Gas as Alt Fuel

Since electricity and hydrogen are proposed alt fuels, and natural gas and bio gas are a large part of electricity generation and hydrogen production it makes perfect sense. Certainly more sense than corn based ethanol.

 

i dont quite understand why natural gas doesnt get more usage in cars... in Europe, it greatly varies by country... In Italy, many manufacturers sell conversion kits with full warranty. In other countries, not so. It is pretty strange.

You would think some pan-european legislation would make sense... I think in reality, what real problem here is, is the fact that countries in europe (especially), get % based fuel taxes... so more expensive the fuel, more taxes they get... at minimum, taxes are 50% of fuel price in europe. So if they promoted natural gas, at half the price, they would make half the revenues. For instance, if it gallon is $5, they get $2.5 per, but if it is $10, they get double the money themselves.

I am not fan of conspiracy theories, but that seems like what it is.

 

heh, heh. Naked Gun came up in trivia last night, I remember it had some big energy company conspiracy.

The only president, that I can recall, that passed anti-natural gas legislation was Jimmy Carter. That is why we have as much coal power plants in this country, the laws were passed to build coal, and to not use natural gas. I would call that misguided, not evil, as there was a notion that we were going to run out of natural gas soon.

Clinton reversed that bad law, and with hw bush's cap and trade on emissions the countries laws only slightly favored coal and its pollution over gas. gw bush and obama both had pro natural gas policies. But they have kept a carter era idea of coal gasification and other coal subsidies and grandfathering in the mix.

Exxon and Chevron are major investors in natural gas. Automakers already know how to modify their ICEs to burn NG. They also have been working on tanks for hydrogen, which is more difficult than natural gas fuel tanks.

There is a mild infrastructure for cng, this would need to be greatly expanded for cars, but the pickens plan would require much less infrastructure to support long haul trucks. It certainly would be much cheaper than infrastructure to support hydrogen. The honda civic NG is the only production car, and it is about $4K more expensive about the same as the subsidies. The question is without subsidies for sub compacts to mid size whether it makes much sense. Hybrids seem to make more sense here. For larger vehicles, the size of the tanks is not as much of a problem, so these might be sustainable without long term subsidies - hence the pickens plan. Converting the majority of the fleet would stress ng resources, greatly increasing electricity costs. Utilities using ng are against such things. So NG can take care of part of the problem, but it would not be good to replace more than 20% of the fleet. Just so you know there are major GTL projects around the world which convert natural gas to gasoline.

 

Pickens plan was orig for NG cars, changed to trucks I believe because NG industry advised him refill infrastructure for cars was long term project. Yes I have seen in EU today and NZ years ago quite easy conversion to NG for cars. It is not technical issue but policy and tax structure. Our gaso cost is still relatively low but NG conversion would probably be an ace-in-the-hole in case of national emergency.

 

I really wish natural gas was more available in the US. I live in KY and the nearest stations are 70+ miles away. The reviews on them are not good either. Most people complain about not being able to fill up all the way due to low pressure at the pumps. The infrastucture is just not there. If I could figure out a way to gain access to natgas, I would convert my Prius (and all my vehicles in a heartbeat). It seems the only alternative is to buy a $5000 home filling station (called Phill) that can fill up your tank overnight (not a good solution if you ask me). By the time you pay for the system and take into account the electricity you use to compress the gas, the system becomes a money pit (which leads to utter disenchantenment). I don't think there are any "serious" efforts to increase the use of natgas. If there is, it's not in KY.

 

If you look at the map they are primarily in California and New York
Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center: Natural Gas Fueling Station Locations

State of texas has looked at funding an infrastructure to travel accross the state, and this could be done relatively cheaply. Currently there are only stations in the Houston, DFW and Austin areas. To me the pickens plan makes the most sense, cover the truck routes and focus on converting vehicles traveling those routes. That would leave most cars SOL, as there would not be convenient stations in your neighborhood. For me their is biodiesel much more conveniently located, but it gets scarce when I travel far from home, otherwise I would have looked into that instead of hybrid.

 

Pretty good info on Chrysler, GM , FORD pick-ups and Honda civic CNG vehicles.
They are saying, sort of like EV, NG adds $10-20k to car/pick-up cost.
Obama's budget plan calls for going to $10k subsidy for NG as well as EV.
The NG pick-ups are mostly intended for fleet use.

More natural gas vehicles hitting the market - Yahoo! Finance

 

Since Natural Gas is actually a gas, energy (not power) per volume depends on what pressure you put it under. At atmospheric pressure Natural Gas is about 120 BTU per gallon, as opposed to Gasoline at 114,000 BTU per gallon.

By weight a gallon of Gasoline weighs 6.1 pounds, the equivalent energy in Natural gas form would weigh 5.7 pounds.

 

Adding to the above, for a liquid gas look at LPG or propane, which stores under pressure as a liquid at room temperature, but expands to a gas when released.

Natural gas can also be liquefied, which reduces its volume to about 1/600th. Unfortunately it takes somewhat colder temperatures to achieve this. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is stored at near atmospheric pressure at about -162°C (-260°F).

Tom

 

...there is some analysis by me in ENVIRO thread re: Civic CNG.
Natural gas they talk about equivalent gallons and Civic takes 8 equivalent gallons.
But IIRC the MPG is only about 25 miles per equivalent gallon, one guy here says he does all highway and maybe is at 30 miles per equivalent gallon. So at best your range is 240 miles but closer to 200 miles for city+highway driving. I was curious to know how many MPG a Prius could do on 8 gallon equivs but just have to guess it is <40.

By the way, finally figured out what you guys mean by IIRC. So I am going to use that a lot more since my memory is fading. I will try to LINK to the old thread later.

 

Natural gas used to be a waste product and just flared off at the well head. It is actually "nicer" than gasoline, as it is easier to refine and distribute and pollutes less from the tailpipe. Less emissions control equipment is need. The tank is more expensive though.

Most of the current infrastructure is for CNG at 3600 psi. All it requires is compression at the refueling site. Liquifying it requires more energy. Since there are already pipelines to most places CNG does not require trucks to distribute to most of the country. At 3600 psi you need larger tanks for equivalent range, and most conversions simply add a tank instead of using the existing volume of the gas thank.

 

No, not at all. A natural gas vehicle requires a more expensive bigger tank. There is also a lack of infrastructure for refueling. The federal government has financial incentives and the fuel is less expensive right now than gasoline. This gets rid of the more expensive angle. Natural gas was not considered viable 10 years ago because estimates of reserves were much lower. In the late 70s they thought we were going to run out soon, and regulations were put in place to make it harder to build natural gas power plants.

In an engine mainly designed for gasoline in the civic the natural gas version was roughly equivalent. Designing it for natural might get more distance for the same energy equivalence.

 

Indeed. CNG engines are high-compression. Like diesel, that's part of the reason why it's more expensive but should be more efficient.

However, the problem really is the fuel tank, as you mentioned. They take up space and even then the range is relatively low. Either it's impractical for smaller cars, or you need to reduce the fuel tank, reduce the range and treat it more like a fast-fueled BEV.

CNG's big problem now is competing with HEV. In the future the problem will be PHEV: even at 40mpge and the current low prices CNG is something like $0.05 per mile.

 

Gasoline and diesel have important advantages of high energy density, as a liquid is the easiest energy source to handle. But natural gas is good for vehicles, fleets very practical. When you think about Picken's plan for NG trucks I believe they are quite expensive trucks, he is hoping for subsidies.