Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Natural gas powered cars?

According to Popular Mechanics it costs a gas station around $750k to set up CNG fueling equipment. If you have NG at home, you can set up your own system for about $6500 but there's a catch. The gas coming off the line is at about .5 PSI. To fill your tank, you need about 3500 PSI. To compress it that much will take almost 24 hrs to fill an average sized tank. The huge cost of a commercial system is because it can fill your tank in under 5 min.

PM also said that EPA regulations on conversions virtually eliminate legal home conversions and the fines can be as high as $5k for each day you drive it. They force you to hire a certified installer even if you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself.

Lots of money chasing this, and for good reason with spot wholesale natural gas prices less than $2 per million. NG will remain cheap in North America for many years, perhaps decades. LNG is the best long term play IMO. Look for many local/regional LNG refueling stations scattered along the major arteries. Commercial vehicles will be the early adopters. These are exciting times in the energy industry!

cant see how it is a great long term replacement for gasoline or diesel but there are defiantly areas where it does make sense like some of the instances listed above.....aint a replacement for every vehicle but in places/uses it would be a viable option....

Most of the infrastructure is going to be for commercial vehicles.

It ain't hard to do but ain't cheap either.

We are looking at a ~$10B GTL (Gas to Liquids) Plant either in Texas or Louisiana that will turn the gas into clean burning diesel, base oils and the like. Eyeballing a 2017 start-up if it proceeds. A real money maker if we can continue to forecast low gas prices for the next 30 years. Our first built, in Qatar that I was fortunate enough to work on, started up last year and is a $5B+ a year net business for us and supplying the needs of many.

Northern States Power ran all of their trucks on natural gas/.. it burns so clean, they run synthetic oil in them, change the filter every 20K, never need to change the oil...

the motors always outlasted the vehicle... bodies rusted out before the engine got tired...

burning natural gas as a fuel dates back before WW 2...

it was used heavily in building the Alaskan Hwy back during WW2...

Designing, developing and marketing "green" cars has not been an easy task, which is why gasoline-powered vehicles still rule the road and fossil fuels still account for almost 75 percent of the world's energy consumption. As gasoline prices soar and concern over harmful emission mounts, however, cars that run on alternate fuel sources will become increasingly important. A natural-gas vehicle, or NGV, is the perfect example of such a car -- it's fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly and offers a relatively low cost of ownership.

No way

A point no one has touched on here. Home fill units scare politicians. If .gov figures out how to not miss out on road use taxes and such, it will be common place in my opinion. Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

fking stupid.
HELLO. theres a reson people exchange propan tanks now instead of filling them. The station has to have a certified staff member there to fill the tank. OSHA trained and paid more than a gas station flunky.
People are not going to be able to fill thier own tanks.
Filling up a fking gasoline tank is a chore to plenty of peoples little brains.
So a station with 14 pumps is going to hire a person for each pump?
Thats going to raise the expected price a bit dont you think?
And how exactly is Natural gas going to make the dependency on oil go away? Theres 8 gallons of oil in a tire X 4 tires X 13 million cars?
They making tires out of natural gas, too?
What about all that plastic the cars made of? What about the lubricants, motor oil and belts and hoses and gaskets? all rubber or plastic made from oil right?
Again... FKING STUPID.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 117,000 gasoline stations in the United States in 2007. During 2004-2008, an estimated average of 5,020 fires were reported...causing an annual average of two civilian deaths.
Guess that figure may rise when stations start going up in mushroom clouds.

http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files//PDF/OS.ServiceStations.pdf

Here's the problem as noted in the U.S. Department of Energy graph below:



Compressed Natural gas (CNG) has about 1/4 the energy density of diesel fuel. Note that Fischer-Tropsch Diesel, Biorenewable Diesel, and Gasoline have the highest energy density as Thousands of BTU's per cubic foot. Liquified natural gas has a higher density than CNG, with CNG being the road fuel. CNG has even less density than hydrogen and slightly more than a Li-ion battery. Propane has slightly more than 2.5 times the energy density of CNG. When I worked for a county that had a federal grant to test propane vehicles, we discovered that the loss of power and necessity to fuel at our facilities limited vehicle usefulness. There were also problems in cold weather with propane being able to maintain sufficient flow. At the conclusion of the test all vehicles were converted back to gasoline. Currently ony forklifts are propane powered. There is simply no efficient substitute for diesel and gasoline. Given that individuals can purchase the equipment to manufacture their own biodiesel (depending on local regulations) or use waste vegetable oil (WVO) either directly or as feed stock for biodiesel, CNG is the least likely alternative. Also please note that CNG is stored at 3000 to 4000 psi, which requires specially constructed storage tanks that consume a larger space within a vehicle. While not a problem in bus, over the road trucks and locomotives, these larger tanks reduce automobile load capacity.

Back in the Jimmy Carter gas boom a lot of farmers around here switched to propane in their farm trucks to save money. It was not long before the Fed and state government taxed all of the savings out of it. Without the savings, it was too much trouble so propane farm trucks did not last long. miles

can't see nat gas replacing diesel in the heavy semi trucks....for one thing , the big block gas motors that might work are just not made anymore that I am aware of

for another , the pulling power of a big gasser is pretty poor compared to the 5 and 600 horse diesels alot of trucks run these days , and the fuel milege would be absolutely dismal , like maybe 2 or 3 mpg

there were a few gas powered tractor trailers around 40 years ago , and they were gas sucking dogs....

If all that is directed at me ringworm, you need to study up a bit. There are CNG pumps going in at convenience stores in this area. I don't think they are going to run out and pump it for you there.

As for the rest of that, it had nothing to do with what I posted.

Get a grip and type like you would talk to someone in person.

it was directed to the topic, not you per se.
And the way I talk shouldnt bother.
I sure wouldnt want to live next to a gas station that allows 80 year old grannies in buicks to handle natural gas.
I have seen enough of them drive off with the hose still inside the car. A little gas fire is one thing.

This was big back in the day during the oil crisis.

A lot of people did propane conversions and even some NG conversions apparently.

Compressors are the issue - a "home compressor" to fill your car is in the neighborhood of $7-10k. Then there is the infrastructure issue. Where are all the compressor stations?

Finally, you have stupid-a$$ requirements from the EPA about converting. This limits conversion business which would be big.

When I worked for enstar natural gas co in anchorage they had lines plumbed to fuel the rigs. I was told they did it in the last and it was a bust, so they abandoned ship. Nobody gets gas cheaper than the company who owns the well, pipeline and distribution company.....and they punted.

It would be a whole lot cheaper if we didn't export it. Cheap energy for the USA to hell with the rest of them.