I could just google the info, but what fun is that? They say you can buy cars that run on natural gas... They say that 8 million cars are in use that run on natural gas, however out of those, only 150,000 are in the US. That sux... Natural gas is cheap, high octane, and the US has LOTS of it. So why are we not using it? On the news they say that car makers won't build US spec natural gas cars on any large scale until the fuel is carried widespread. However, the fuel companies say they aren't going to equip their stations with natural gas until auto makers sell the cars large scale! WTF? Anyway, the point of my thread: On the news they also said that even though there are only 40 gas stations in the US that carry natural gas, you can beat that by filling up at home from your residential gas meter. So how would that work? School me. What bothers me is that residential natural gas is delivered at super low pressure, for safety. Something along the lines of 6 psi... Any propane engine I have ever used, which is the closest I can think of... needed compressed fuel. 6 psi in a car sized fuel tank wouldn't idle an engine for 20 seconds. So how do you compress the low pressure home supply, for use in a vehicle with a limited space for fuel supply? Personally, I think that this method isn't being touted widespread because they don't yet know how to tax you on the fuel if it comes from your home supply. Can I buy a compressor that will hook to my gas meter? Btw: I own a portable gasoline generator for the house (hurricane use) that hooks to my gas meter. Just flip a switch, and no more waiting 4 hours in a fuel line to keep the generator running. I have yet to see a hurricane that knocked out municipal gas... Electricity though, out for weeks. Gasoline either not available, or travel to find gas and wait for hours in line. Not to mention the price gouging and rationing. Getting off topic... I digress. Dave
I have looked extensively into this subject, first you don't have to buy a natural gas vehicle you can get a conversion kit, with tanks and setup it will run you $2000-$5000 depending on what you want to get. They can go onto carbureted cars as well as fuel injected. So yes you can actually put one on your maverick. Also they retain your regular fuel system(minus mechanical fuel pump you must have an electric one) this means with the flip of a switch and a couple of pumps to your accelerator pedal you can run on gas if you need too. You can get the kits here http://www.cngoutfitters.com/ There is a station about 1 mile from my house so I started looking into the economy of CNG, it equates to 2cu feet = 1 gallon of gas. Gas here is $3.65 a gallon and CNG is $.85 per cu foot (.85+.85=$1.70 per equivalent gallon of fuel) It is cheaper here in Utah because stations are more readily available. But unfortunately CNG does not produce the same amount of energy that gasoline does, you will not get quite the mileage or quite the power (many people report that on larger trucks F250's ect their mileage drops from 16-18mpg to about 14-16mpg(measured over distances traveled in comparison to gas motors) or roughly 10% loss of power, but alot of people don't notice the difference between CNG and gasoline. as for home filling you should look at this http://myphill.com/ you plug your car in when you get home and it gets filled in a couple of hours vs. a couple of min at a filling station. Of course if you fill it up every night the only thing you need a filling station for is for beer runs Oh and Ford builds 3 cars that are CNG an F150, a Fusion and a Focus. They are primarily fleet vehicles and the general public is not concerned with them too much. Doing a search of FL I see 15 fueling stations state wide....... sad enough though they are government and state facilitys only...hmm makes you wonder what they know that we don't.... http://afdc.energy.gov/afdc/stations/advanced.php Also a tax credit is available for up to 30% of the cost of installing alternative fueling equipment, not to exceed $30,000.:bananaman Hopefully I answered any question that you had hopefully it works out for you.
It's not that they know something we don't know. If the government or a large company decides they want to run CNG, they can afford to install a filling station and justify it by the fact that over several years they will make those expenses back due to the fact that they are fueling their own vehicles. They are saving the difference between gas and CNG on every gallon minus the 10% loss in energy. If a filling station decided to sell CNG right now in most locations they would not make their money back because there would be no customers buying the fuel. Aside from that they are only making a small profit per unit, not the entire amount between the cost of gas and CNG which means it would take them an eternity to make their money back as the customer is the one saving the diff between gas and CNG, not the business. It's simple to understand that the automakers don't want to mass produce a car you can't fill up. But that's how it was when gasoline was first used right? The tech is available and being produced, but they can't sell a car to you until you have a way to fill it up. So... how do we fix this problem? Generally speaking the government has to put an incentive out there for things like this to change. A tax credit for offering CNG at your buisness perhaps? A penalty for not? Require X number of CNG fueled vehicles sold to the public every year? I don't know what it will take, but it's certainly far from understandable as to why it's not at the time being.
Here is the Mothers Propane car as seen at the HR power tour and on Hot Rod TV. Really cool stuff. http://www.mothers.com/04_community_02_rides/04_community_02_rides_mo_01.html
here a highland propane company used propane to fuel their delivery truck untill last fall when it broke. It was ultra cheap they said, and the conversion for propane is hardly a high cost. but propane costs more per cubic foot than CNG, propane can easily be compressed and liquified as CNG isnt so easy....propane provides more energy or BTUS per volume than CNG does, and is easier to transport. but propane costs 2.79 here at my cost, so you'd save about a buck over what i pay now. My 53 ford 1 ton w/ a 390 fe runs propane w/ 2 10 gallon tanks in between the frame rails. If you want, i will list the conversion process for it. It doesnt get run much, except hauling me to the track and landfill use, etc...
I am just getting back into this discussion. There were no posts last night when I signed off... I knew there was a slight power loss. My generator has a 13 HP Honda engine and is rated for 8500 watts on gas or propane, but the manual says that when running on natural gas, it is going to make about 12 HP and will only handle 8000 watts. It's funny to me that there is only a 2 way switch on the thing. It is either gasoline, or LP/NG. With LP being high pressure, and NG being low pressure, I don't understand how they can plug into the same inlet fitting, but they do. The manual warns that the NG must be uncompressed, low PSI. However it says nothing about the propane being low pressure. The only reason I keep bringing up the generator is that it is the only engine I own to make the comparison between the 3 different fuel options. So I am running it through my brain as I image the setup transfered to a car. I wonder if this means that a car could be converted to run on any of the 3 fuels? That would be cool as heck! You could plug in at night, for your primary fuel. Then if you were caught out and about, needing fuel, you could save a little by running propane. And then as a last resort, if there was no close LP filling station, then you could spend the big bux on gasoline. I only bring this up because there are several local LP filling stations. RVs, campers, trailers, and recreational grilling are huge here in Florida, so there is plenty of LP. Many folks around here LIVE in travel trailers, believe it or not. They cook, cool, and heat everyday with LP. Anyway, I am going to look at the links for a while... Thanks for the links! Any other ideas? Comments?
This has to do with the properties of the two compounds. Propane can be stored as a liquid at a much lower pressure that natural gas can. So "low pressure ng" may actually be a similar pressure to "high pressure propane".
The reason you get a power loss with CNG and Propane over gasoline is that in order to run gasoline the compression has to be kept low (10:1 max) and to get the same power from propane or CNG you need to run 13:1 - 14:1 compression. That will also improve your fuel economy but you can't switch back to gasoline with that kind of compression. The ideal fuel for duel (or tripple) fuel would be alcohol, CNG and Propane. You could keep your compression high and run any of the three fuels. I don't know where you are going to get any of those in my area for less than gasoline but it would work if the fuels were available.
