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US Wants Natural Gas As Major Auto Fuel Option
coondoggie writes "Natural gas has never been much of an option for U.S. car drivers, and it's going to take a lot of effort by the government and auto manufacturers to make it a viable alternative to gas. But that's just what a $10 million program from the Department of Energy's advanced project development group The Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) aims to start anyway. ARPA-E's Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy (MOVE) program wants to develop a system 'that could enable natural gas vehicles with on-board storage and at-home refueling with a five-year payback or upfront cost differential of $2,000, which excludes the balance of system and installation costs.'"
I remember when I visited my family in Pakistan back in 1999. My uncle had a switch under the dashboard of his car which switched the fuel source from gasoline to CNG (compressed natural gas) while he was driving, with the CNG being stored in a tank in the trunk. He'd switch to gasoline when driving around the mountains of the capital for the extra power but otherwise keep it at CNG because natural gas was cheaper. This car hadn't come with CNG - the conversion had cost a few hundred dollars (US dollars, I don't remember the price in rupees) for his 1980's model sedan.
I used to work for the local gas company. For decades they've had a compressed natural gas conversion for cars and a small compressor setup for the home at reasonable startup cost ($2,500 at the time). The range wasn't great, (for range you need LNG) but it was better than today's all electric cars and you could fuel up at home in a much shorter time than with electric. The fleet all ran on natural gas, filling up at their own company-maintained filling stations, and besides being cheaper and having lower emissions, as a collateral benefit they were getting exceptional life from the engines of their fleet vehicles.
As I was interested in this conversion myself and only learned about it by accident, I struck up a conversation with the head of marketing asking why they weren't promoting it, since it was an existing solution that people could buy for their own vehicles if they only knew about it.
And most importantly, in most areas the distribution network is already in place, something that Electric is currently struggling with.
He said that the company was under pressure not to promote a consumer compressed natural gas solution for automobiles. He was unwilling to say where the pressure was coming from. I always wondered about that.
So, in short, the solution already exists, exactly as described, and has since at least the nineties. As far as I can see, there's nothing to develop here, just remove the roadblocks to existing solutions.
Mind you, it works best for dedicated commuter and in-town cars, because to keep the cost and complexity down, the car *only* runs on compressed natural gas, and CNG does not have the energy per volume as either LNG or gasoline. But in my opinion CNG is more practical than electric in several respects, not the least of which there are no batteries to replace/recycle.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I would rather have (minor) damage to the environment than to continue to pay Hundreds of Billions of dollars a year to people who hate our guts and will kill after we (inadvertently) burn some of their holy books (despite our president's gracious apology).
From what I've read, the environmental damage is "minor; some low level seismic activity and perhaps some pollution of water supplies. So charge a little more for the natural gas coming out of these rural (low population density) communities and pay for piped in water or buy them out.
When you compare the TREMENDOUS costs our reliance on oil from the middle-east costs us (two wars, huge standing forces in bases all throughout that region, alliance with ethically dubious regimes) IN ADDITION TO the outrageous price we are paying for the oil, these minor concerns are nothing. (Remember all those jobs, money, infrastructure and technology developed will go right here in the old US of A). Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Also, natural gas is (much?) more carbon "lite" than Crude Oil.
CNG or Compressed Natural Gas vehicles are quite common in India. It started out a decade ago when the big cities in India started converting buses to run on CNG instead of diesel to curb pollution. Then, taxis got converted. Now, you can get your private vehicle fitted with a CNG conversion kit or you can directly buy a CNG version of your car from the manufacturer. I haven't driven one myself, but have spoken to lots of cab drivers. Even if you ignore the environmental benefits, the running cost of CNG is less than half of diesel or gasoline.
The other take on this is to have more power generation plants use CNG instead of coal. I find it highly inefficient to transport energy chemically instead of electrically. If you were developing software, this is how you would abstract your layers. Human beings suck at change. The only time we refactor anything in our lives is if we are forced to do it - like a war or an economic crisis or something similar.
Perhaps if we redesign landfills to harvest natural gas from then they'll be taken over by Exxon, BP, et al.
This is already being done. Garbage trucks that run on natural gas are being fueled by the natural gas collected at the very facility at which garbage is dumped. California has over 1,000 trucks running on landfill gas already.
The one big problem with landfill gas in internal combustion engines is the siloxanes. When they're burned, they deposit a layer of hard silicon dioxide that can build up inside an engine and eventually destroy it. It was my understanding that it was still difficult to filter them out. Do you know if the trucks have specially made engines, or do they have a good method of processing/filtering the gas?