US wants Natural Gas as Alt Fuel

Not worrisome, but expensive, and hydrogen is not abundant in a free state. It has to come from somewhere, so hydrogen is an energy storage system, just like batteries. Add to that the cost a service life of fuel cells and it doesn't make a very attractive alternative for automobile use.

Tom

 

There are less BTU's in NG, and that's one small thing. Compression takes a decent bit of energy / BTU's, in order to make / pump it out of the ground & store, then pump to location(s) ... and that's another small thing. Chilling NG to liquefy takes even MORE BTU's, which takes away from your ultimate BTU usability. Thus, the CNG tank storage in your car is the only practical method for autos. The tanks we use at work for CNG go to 10,000lbs. The tanks have a fiber strengthening wrap around the tanks in order to hold that high pressure. But 10,000lbs means you use more electricity, in order to pump that high a pressure. 10K lbs of pressure ... kind of creepy, thinking about "what if" ... maybe that's just me.

"Clean" ?? Yes, LP and NG are your cleaner carbon fuels ... but NG is "clean" the way nuke is "clean". There is a very dark side of NG, just as there is with nuke power. In order the get the voluminous (pun intended) amounts of NG we need - we 'frack'. I hope we voters truly grasp the dark side of fracking ... maybe go watch the documentary "gasland" ... then weigh the burdens against the benefits for your self.

Fuel (power) is what makes a nation what it is, strength wise / opportunity wise and the less you have, the more reliant 'powerless' countries become on others. When nations become addicted to surplus power, the way the U.S. is, we end up scorching the earth just to maintain our addiction. All that to say, NG is not a silver bullet. Sure, we can go balls out ... start sucking through NG like there's no tomorrow ... get the world to become heavily reliant on it. Watch and see how quick we run through NG. In no time at all, our kids will be talking about peak NG, just like peak oil is now a hot button.

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Hydrogen is not very scary from that standpoint, especially when compared to a tank full of gasoline.

Tom

 

Hey we all saw that video of the Hindenburg.

 

One Civic GX (CNG version) owner posted some great info about his car at My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Leaf vs Civic NGV. I didn't know that the CNG cylinder must be replaced at the 15 year mark.

I posted http://priuschat.com/forums/other-c...atural-gas-vehicles-were-so-slow-fill-up.html long ago. I spoke to a Civic GX owner at Green Drive Expo last year and from http://priuschat.com/forums/local-c...expo-sf-bay-area-9-17-11-a-6.html#post1389389

He also invited me to put my finger in the tailpipe to feel for soot. There wasn't any. He was trying to show how cleanly CNG burns.

 

Yea, the OP (i think) didn't really compare apples to apples. a liquid gallon of NG has 75K btu's of energy compared to gasoline's 114K btu's ... or put another way, it'd take about 1.5 liquid gallons of NG to have a similar amount of btu's as gasoline.

My 3rd car (late 1980's) was a 1978 Ford Econoline Van previously owned by my grand father. He'd stripped of all the smog equipment. Since he lived in the Imperial Valley (CA) - and since they didn't smog check out there in the desert, no one was the wiser ... not even me ... until it was too late. The only way to get The Econoline registered (without $1,000's in smog equipment) was to rip out the gasoline system, and convert it to LPG. Compressed LPG tanks are similarly huge (if you want any distance), just as CNG tanks are big. A van has room for big tanks. I could easily hold 24 gallons of LPG with the available space under the Ford Econoline. Downside? Like CNG - low BTU's per gallon. The 6 cylinder Econoline's mpg's dropped from 14mpg, all the way down to about 10mpg. Thus, the van had a 240 mile range - presuming you could coast on empty into a refilling station. Otherwise you couldn't count on any more range than 210 miles.

On the other hand, on the other/simultaneously running CNG thread (at post #28) ST posted pic's of a Honda CNG tank -



You can see that this little donut shaped tank (like the size that'd fit in a Prius) would be lucky to hold the equivalent of about 6 to 8 gallons. They make these donuts tanks for LPG too. LPG has more BTU's (about 84K) but when full - the tanks are still about 15% empty. They need a certain volume of compressed air, just to force the LPG out of the tank. Yea, these 2 'other' fuels work, but you have to accept low range as a trade off, unless it's in a pickup or van. Then you have to consider mpg if you're driving a big ol' barge. Ok, so the fuel has issues . . . frack/extraction issues, and way less range. It worked for me back in the day (with the Van), and it works for me now (with an EV). Life is a whole bunch of trade offs.

Hydrogen will never (99.9% certainty) be mass produced auto fuel. Hydrogen can come from NG or TONS of electricity. If you use the NG as fuel (instead of stripping the hydrogen molecule off of it) you go WAY farther down the road. If you used the tons of electricity needed to process hydrogen into fuel in an EV in stead, you'd go way farther down the road ... 3 or 4 times as far.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

Then there's the whole issue of how clean the electricity was that you wasted, or how clean the NG drilling is. We DO need alternatives like no body's business, but hydrogen is even less likely than everybody flying around on jet packs.

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The Hindenburg fire was largely fueled by the flammable skin of the airship. The hydrogen did burn, but not explosively. Being lighter than air, the hydrogen fire went up and away from the occupants of the airship and the people on the ground. Unfortunately that wasn't the case with the burning skin of the airship.

If you were to repeat that disaster with gasoline instead of hydrogen, the results would be much, much worse.

Tom

 

The smiley was supposed to convey humor. But... many do not believe the skin theory.
The Hindenburg was not "Painted with Rocket Fuel"

lol. I don't think gasoline will levitate an airship. It will burn more destructively if its tank leaks and its ignited

 

I caught the humor, but the Hindenburg is so commonly cited to "prove" the danger of hydrogen that I couldn't let it go unchallenged. People are surprisingly blasé about familiar dangers, while worrying excessively about new danger. Gasoline is a vile, nasty, and dangerous substance, but most of us are in love with the stuff.

Natural gas can be pretty nasty as well. The Cleveland East Ohio gas explosion is a classic example:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_Explosion"]Cleveland East Ohio Gas explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


Tom

 

Of course all flammable gases are hazardous.
The biggest concern in all cases is air/fuel mixture which if ignited causes an incredibly high energy explosion known as a detonation. H2 has some special stigma associated with it, not all deserved, but it is small molecule so it leaks very easily. IIRC also H2 ignites a little more easily upon leaking. I note they stopped using H2 for airships.

 

On the other hand, being lighter than air, leaking H2 goes up and away instead of pooling on the ground or accumulating. For many applications light gases are safer than liquid fuels.

For airships, a non-combustible alternative was available. For chemical fuels this is not an option, as inert fuels tend to have a lot lower energy density.

Tom

 

...by the way at MW=16 methane is also lighter than air at MW=29.
So natural gas is a little like H2 (rises). Of course, flammable liquids are hazardous as well. But give me an example where light gases are safer than liquid fuels?

 

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density]Energy density - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

there is a technology to convert natural gas to gasoline
Flame Off!: Turning Natural Gas Pollution into Gasoline: Scientific American

 

In a garage with a gas water heater. The gas will float to the ceiling. The liquid will pool, and its heavy fumes could reach the pilot light of the heater and ignite.

Don't get me wrong, it's bad when there's a gas leak or flammable fumes in any enclosed space. This does make the garage example border line. Since, without the door or window open, the gas will eventually reach the pilot light, and you'll have an explosion versus a fire. With ventilation or even outside, the light gas leak will be safer because it is easily dispersed. The liquid will pool with its fumes in a ignitable concentration.

 

It's cost versus practicality. CNG is more popular in other countries where the fuel costs are higher and people are more cost-sensitive. In this country more people trade cost-efficiency for utility.

There's a narrow price band in which it can compete with HEV and PEV.

 

Any application vented above but enclosed below: Boats, basements, surface vehicles, and similar.

Everything is heavier than hydrogen. NG is lighter than air, which is why it is safer in boats and basements than propane and other heavier than air gas fuels. Gasoline fumes are also heavier than air.

Tom

 

...maybe out-of-doors nat gas is better, not sure about enclosures. If I had a NG compressor for an NG car I would try to fill it outside if possible.