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.'"

Comments

Oh Frack!

[Marillion]

Given that a significant amount (enough to have a noticeable effect on prices) of our natural gas is coming from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) this will undoubtably affect the demand for NG produced by fracking. Given that so many questions are being raised about environmental and safety concerns about the process, is this a good idea?

Re:Oh Frack!

[Dynedain]

CNG vehicles have been around forever, and fill up stations are somewhat common.

Getting people used to the idea of automotive fuels OTHER than gasoline, and the infrastructures to support it is an overall good thing, regardless of the fuel source. If you can convince the populace at large that 2-3 vehicle fuel sources are commonly available and easy to use, then it's less difficult to get another fuel source (say electricity or fuel cells) into the mix.

Re:Oh Frack!

[Andy Dodd]

Better idea - nuke plants. FAR better track record in North America than hydraulic fracturing.

Re:Oh Frack!

[Grishnakh]

CNG has some real problems compared to gasoline in private vehicles, namely the fuel tank. I've been in a couple of these vehicles, and the main problem is that there's little or no storage space. Consumers aren't going to be too happy about that. In pickup trucks, the tank takes up about 1/3 of the cargo bed. So you can forget about carrying sheets of plywood and many other large objects. In small cars, the tank takes up the entire trunk, so you can forget about putting any luggage or groceries or anything else back there.

Basically, CNG has extremely poor energy density compared to gasoline, when you compare the size of a fuel tank versus the driving range that fuel tank gives you. The fuel is a compressed gas, which obviously isn't nearly as dense as a liquid, and because it's compressed it requires a tank with very thick, heavy-duty walls. So you end up with a giant tank consuming your whole trunk just so you can have a measly 100-mile range on CNG, when a simple 12-gallon gasoline tank gives you a 3-400 mile range. The only people here who have these vehicles are people who participated in Arizona's program back around 2000 where the state government gave them a giant discount on the cost of a car, plus a free conversion to CNG (dual-fuel; you can switch between the two). So people were buying these giant, expensive SUVs for 1/2 the normal cost, which had the spare tire replaced with a 5-gallon CNG (good for a 20-mile drive maybe) tank to qualify for this giant rebate. Other vehicles with more serious conversions of course were made too like the ones I mentioned above, but still the range wasn't that great and the tanks took up most of the useful cargo space in these vehicles.

The only way to make these vehicles practical would be to completely redesign the chasses for these giant tanks, but now you're talking about an enormous expense for the automakers, and a totally separate product line, for something that might do about as well as diesel cars have done in the USA (which is very, very bad for those who don't know). You just can't take a regular gas car and convert it to CNG with great results. At least with diesel, you can use the exact same chassis quite easily; you just need to drop in a different engine. Making CNG cars is going to be more like making electric cars (or also hybrid electric cars with very good all-electric range, a la Chevy Volt): for really good results, you'll have to make purpose-built vehicles, just like GM did with the Volt and Tesla did with their cars. Conversions using gasoline chasses just don't work out too well; you either end up with crap range because you're limited to how many batteries you can stuff into various voids in the chassis or engine compartment (which wasn't designed with these batteries in mind), or you end up with no cargo room because you've filled it with batteries (like the electric pickup trucks I've seen pictures of: they fill the cargo bed with batteries, which totally defeats the purpose of a pickup truck).

So if you're an automaker, and you'll have to spend a huge pile of cash to engineer an all-new chassis, would you rather spend that on a car that only runs on CNG (maybe with a tiny gas tank just in case the customer can't find a handy CNG station), or would you rather spend that on making a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle like the Volt that runs ~40 miles on electricity, enough for most commutes, and then has an efficient gas engine for driving cross-country, letting customers use the already-existing gasoline infrastructure?

This whole thing is just a bad idea. Electric is the way to go, hybrid at first, with some dedicated commuter cars like the Leaf, and full electric later when battery capacities are better and fast recharging options are better. The other thing our dumb government should be pushing for cities is a personal rapid transit system like SkyTran, which is all-electric, uses very little power, and would be perfect for shuttling commuters between suburbs and their workplaces. If they want to find something, they should be funding that instead.

If Pakistan had it 13 years ago, why not America?

[exhilaration]

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.

Conversion Costs vs Recovery Time

[JamJam]

There a local program which describes the conversion costs and recovery time (in miles) for converting your vehicle to run on natural gas.

- The after market conversion leaves the existing gasoline system intact and adds the natural gas package to the vehicle. The installation of a natural gas system includes a cylinder that is mounted underneath, in the back of the truck or in the trunk of a car. One 70-litre cylinder equals 18 litres of gasoline and weighs approximately 160 pounds.

Cost Based on a typical ½ ton truck

$9000 - Conversion w/ 2 - 70 litre cylinders
$1.0090 - Gasoline Pump Price per litre
$0.4790 - Natural Gas Pump Price per Litre Equivalent of Gasoline
$0.5300 - Savings per Litre Displaced
$2.409 - Savings per Gallon Displaced

15 mpg gasoline mileage
$160.63- Savings per Thousand Miles

56,031 miles - Miles on Natural Gas Required to Recover Cost of Conversion

it's been tried

[roc97007]

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.

Better (minor) damage to env. than pay terrorists

[wisebabo]

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.

First Off, Listen to Chris Martenson

[rolfwind]

If you want to know the future of energy, listen to this Chris Martenson lecture, I believe scary times are ahead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBiTnBwSWc

As for natural gas.... right now proven world reserves stands at stands at 191T m^3. The US has about 7T m^3, and a huge chunk of the rest is in Russia and Iran, which are not exactly friendly to us nor have we exactly been cultivating decent relationship with them. Since China is scouring the globe for energy sources, I assume they have or will get long term contracts from one or both of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves

Our world usage last year was 168T ft^3 according to this:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/nat_gas.cfm

Google tells me that is equal to 3.2T m^3.

So at current rates, assuming 100% extraction, we have 60 years of Natural Gas. The best case at current usage for proven reserves, much of which are in hostile countries.

The IEA predicts a 2.2% increase in demand annually. Using the rule of 70, that's a doubling time of ~32 years. That cuts down the best case scenario for Natural Gas down to 39 years, at current uses, meaning we don't start leaning on it heavily for transportation and the like.

Now, the scientist in my top link talks about how if everyone switched over to electric cars, they would have to go from 300 generating plants to 3,000. One order of magnitude, 10x. Without doing specific calculations, perhaps we can assume that could carry over to natural gas if used extensive for personal transportation. How many years then?

Yes, NG can be used in conjunction with oil and other energy sources and carry us for a while longer until we find a real solution.

Re:reserved

[Wansu]

Ah, yes. Perhaps if we redesign landfills to harvest natural gas from then they'll be taken over by Exxon, BP, et al.

"When shit becomes gold, the poor will have no assholes."
  -- an unknown but astute source

Re:reserved

[es330td]

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.

Re:reserved

[tragedy]

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?

Re:reserved

[DarkOx]

No heat control means you have a poor appliance. A modern induction stove gives you perfect control. Much better than any gas stove; even commercial ones, and way better than conventional resistance heat electrics.

You do have to have the right cookware though...