Natural Gas

[Bluebottle]

.....and no cheap jokes from you Aussies

This months Kit-Car mag carries an interesting write up about a Lotus Elsie which runs on a dual-fuel system enabling it to be switched from petrol to compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than the more common LPG (Liquid Petrolium Gas) The running costs are claimed to be less than LPG (The 'frozen' status of tax on LPG only lasts until 2004, after which it will probably be taxed to death the same as petrol)
It claims also to be cleaner than LPG but result in a 15% power loss, not bad if your main use is for commuting- switch back to petrol for more fun, a switch on the dash makes the change, and it can be done on the move.

Anyone had any dealings with this fuel, and has anyone tried LPG?

[DAVID PATERSON]

A friend of mine is a combustion enginerr and amajor part of his job is natural gas conversions on very large industrial engines. The cost savings in those situations are enormous and the conversion cost is recovered in months, after that it's all profit.

Another friend is a diesel mechanic who works on the city buses. A small portion of the fleet is trialling natural gas and they are suffering one problem after another with terrible unreliability.

[Valve Bounce]

Well, I had a can of Heinz baked beens for lunch yesterday, mixed with a gourmet sausage sliced up, and microwaved.

[Bomn]

A couple of Aussie links:
Australian natural gas vehicle council
http://www.angvc.org/
and another on natural gas
http://www.natural-gas.com.au/vehicle/index.html
has a menu on the top left for more info.

[Bluebottle]

Originally posted by Valve Bounce
Well, I had a can of Heinz baked beens for lunch yesterday, mixed with a gourmet sausage sliced up, and microwaved.

I think that is what might be called a 'Cheap Joke' as mentioned in my opening post!

I knew you wouldn't let me down!

[Valve Bounce]

I couldn't help it - the devil made me do it

[Bluebottle]

What, making the post or eating the beans?

(slaps self on wrist for being naughty!)

[Valve Bounce]

No!! For the aftermath


On a much more serious note, I live in an apartment in Brisbane, and as such our gas supply is not metered !! We just pay a flat rate every month. Now, there is an outlet on the balcony for a BBQ, so if I attached a small compressor to that, then hooked the compressor to a gas cylinder, presumably I can get free gas for running the car on.

[woodyracing]

i once worked somewhere that had fork lift trucks running off gas, and they were a bit pongy :^|

[avsfan733]

can't be bad for sommuting if it works can it?

[Morris 1100]

There are a lot of fleet vehicles running on LPG in Australia, mostly taxis and company cars but a lot of private owners are using it as well. The transport company that I work for has 4 vehicles on LPG and they do a lot of distance like 400,000 on one engine!
Most large Service Stations have LPG in Australia so it is just as easy to use as petrol.
There is a couple of companies in town that are trialing CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) The big downfall is that it does not compress as much as LPG so you have to have a much bigger tank or fill up more often and there is only one place to fill up at.
One delivery truck in town has been converted to run on CNG and it is often seen in the repair shop for weeks on end but I suppose that there will be problems converting a Diesel to run on gas!

[Sharky]

Over here CNG is taking off quite rapidly. In particular among cabs and buses. I've ridden in a couple of CNG cabs and I personally couldn't tell the difference. The drivers also said that they had no problems with the CNG and that they saved a lot of money. Emissions are considerably lower as well. Only dowside seems to be that you can say goodbye to a considerable space in your trunk and the car puts on a bit of extra weight.

[Amaroo Park]

The Gas cars that we have on leased to clients that would total around a few hundred are all more expensive to maintain than standard fuel cars.

We are spending on a Falcon or Commodore around $1800.00 extra on a 48 month 100000km lease on a gas compaired to a petrol vehicle. Another interesting thing we have been able to annalise with the gas cars is that they spend around 4 to 5 days more off the road for maintenance or repairs than petrol vehicles.

Talking as a mechanic though gas is really not worth the hassles. The savings out the bowser will often be lost at the service repairer

[Crash Test]

Patto- back to the Natural Gas buses- I've heard about those unreliability problems from talking to the drivers, the main problem I can feel is that they totally lack any pull whatsoever... these things are being outdraged by Merc A-Classes!

[moffman]

Originally posted by DAVID PATERSON


Another friend is a diesel mechanic who works on the city buses. A small portion of the fleet is trialling natural gas and they are suffering one problem after another with terrible unreliability.

I drive these buses & the problems have been mostly sorted bar the air conditioning

[KC]

In Tulsa, Oklahoma all of the UPS trucks and a good portion of the FedEx trucks employ CNG for fuel. Oklahoma Natural Gas Corp has an entire fleet of CNG fueled work trucks and cars.

Problems with pressurized fuels are caused by temperature. When the temp is high the pressure is high and the fuel flows well from the tank to the regulator. As the bottle gets empty the temperature drops and the gas starts to liquify and stops flowing and must be heated to make it flow.

The reason gasoline works so well as a fuel is its volatility. It contains more BTUs of energy for its weight that most other commonly used fuels. It burns much hotter and does more work per unit than CNG, methanol, and diesel fuel. Alternate fuels do not work as well because of the inherent horsepower drop when they are used. It takes about twice as much methanol to produce the same power as gasoline. This reduced efficiency starts to negate the benefits of using them.