cng fuel

have any of you thought about or have put compressed natural gas (cng) conversion on trucks pickups or any other equipment. we are a county secondary road system and are looking into it, going to be expensive for the conversions and the a fast fill station. the vehicle conversion show a pay back of 2 to 3 years depending on how much annual fuel usage, the fuel station is another deal looks like around a million dollars looking into federal assistance on that.
would like to here what you guys have had for experience or rumors about it.
THANKS IN ADVANCE

Kinda the same situation here. We've got some small local fleets that would entertain the conversion but there's no high speed filling depots around. They priced an onsite depot and like you said it was about a million but it takes like 5 hrs to fill one truck. Sounds ridiculous to me but its just what I was told.

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I don't know a lot about it . Here is a another thread where we were talking about the subject . www.heavyequipmentforums.com/showthread.php?39291-Questionable-territory/page2

Check out the links I put up in post # 26 . Fair Oaks Farms in northern Indiana has a fleet of trucks using CNG . Might drop them an email or go for a visit in person .I'm sure they would help you in any way they could .

Check out a LP system. Lower cost filling station and a lower pressure operating system, CNG is 3000PSI

I am going to throw this in for you to think about. why did Vectren energy ( natural gas distrubtor) switch all of their service trucks over to gasoline if its so great?? on another note they have built a CNG & LNG filling station right off I65 in sellersburg & a company called RAUN has bought a fleet of KW outfitted with Cummins made to run on it.. its just hard to justify the cost/payback on such a large investment.

Over here it's quite common on large fleets... The saving in fuel (currently) are really good. Won't be long before the government slap a heavy tax on it tho.

CNG refueling was the industry I was in before coming home to farm.

That was back in the mid 90's. I imagine a lot of the players have come and gone.

Some of the best people I knew in the industry are working for these guys now.
http://www.cleanenergyfuels.com/index.html

They are pushing forward with a national LNG network for heavy trucks.

As far as the technology goes, it was well developed back then. The vehicles worked well, the compresses did what they were supposed to. I remember the converted CNG units were economical to run, but gutless pigs otherwise. However, the dedicated CNG vehicles were as powerful as any gas engine. Its all about getting the valving and compression ratios right for the fuel.

The real issue back in the day was money. The projects were entirely based on public sector projects (bus stations, mail fleets) with a lot of government funding. All the projects were low bid, and there was too much throat cutting going on to keep the industry healthy.

Clinton was inclined toward green energy. Bush wasn't. Once Bush got in CNG kindof withered away IIRC.

If I was thinking about going the cngv route, I would be giving a lot of thought to how long natural gas is going to remain cheap. The spot price right now is about 3 times the price it was last summer (seasonal swing and long cold winter) Also, you have europe hungry for a secure source, which the US is going to be quick to fill. I think we are at the bottom of a cycle on nat gas prices.

It was just a few years ago guys were buying corn burning boilers as fast as they could

The compressor stations will take more maintenance than you think. Figure on having a guy dedicated to the compressor to keep it in good shape, and running properly.

Keep this thread going, it should be interesting.

Good luck

Yair . . . watglen. As you say this is an interesting conversation.

I think we are at the bottom of a cycle on nat gas prices.

Click to expand...

I think you are correct there . . . and any extra gas used by the transport sector will tend to drive prices upward.

I think also that if you do a bit of research you will find (at the moment) the US is in no position to export much gas to anywhere . . . there is a lot of gas in some places but, in fact, the US is still a net importer of natural gas and has very little infrastructure to export in the short term.

Several export "trains" (as they are called) are planned in several locations but they are multi-billion dollar facilities and will take a while to build. I am not sure of the ship supply either as I believe there is a shortage of those special tankers with the hemispherical tanks.

I imagine it will only be a few years but the longer it takes to get an export industry up and running the better it will be in the meantime for the ordinary American consumer.

Cheers.

Ths is making me curious. The LNG ship transports obviously arent charge to 3000 psi. Are they doing like a low pressure liquid oxygen tank and doing a continuous bleed to maintain cooling to maintain a liquid state ? Im liking the 30x volume over propane systems.

Yair . . . RZucker. As well as I understand it, the gas is cooled to a liquid and pumped into the tanks and in fact the "bleed off" is used to fuel the ship . . . I'll have a look around and see if I can find some links.

Cheers.

Yair . . . This may be of interest to some . . . .http://peakoil.com/consumption/world-buyers-line-up-to-buy-us-natural-gas

I will see if I can find an understandable description of the export process and the ships . . . there are technical papers out there but nothing I can get my head around.

Cheers

Scrub Puller said:

Yair . . . RZucker. As well as I understand it, the gas is cooled to a liquid and pumped into the tanks and in fact the "bleed off" is used to fuel the ship . . . I'll have a look around and see if I can find some links.

Cheers.

Click to expand...

That actually makes a lot of sense to use that " bleed off" to fuel the ship.

One other question, Is CNG equivalent to gasoline in power? i seem to recall reading that back in the 40s the 1091 Hall Scott engines produced a whole bunch more power on butane than they did on gasoline.

RZ transport ships are liquid. I do some dabbling in the LPG/NH3 industry and know the liquid natural transport/storage vessels are built like a giant thermos and bleed off pressure. Chart builds them a few towns over. This should give you some insight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas

My uncle has been in the LPG industry for 40 yrs. He has always ran a older throttle body injected or carbed pickup off of LP for peanuts, has his own pump and a couple 1000 gal tanks. The -0 cold up here gives some problems low system pressure, just need to build some heat in the motor on gasoline then switch over. He told me about a transport semi that someone built using a Minneapolis Moline LPG engine = very thirsty

Natural systems by Cummins Westport kits/engines are available for most cummins engines. I know Dart Transit has 4 of them. Rummer has it when you put 80,000 behind them its more fuel efficient to burn diesel. Natural has a very low resistance to preignition "knock"

Start doing reading on LPG vs Natural for engine fuel and the characteristics/properties of each. IN a gasoline engine with light loads and your own storage/pump LPG is the way IMO. For heavy loaded equipment diesel will be hard to beat due to its slow burn. You just can not cram enough natural into the cylinder and make big power without "knock".

Along time ago I worked at mine in Southern Arizona that was going produce their own power. They ordered 5 Fairbanks Pielle Stick Dual fuel engines rated 12,000 HP on diesel and 8500 HP on natural gas they were large. They had 2 of the 5 running when I left. Don't know how they worked out mine is dead and I don't know if anyone is still alive from that time 67-68 that worked there