| Author | Message | ||
     Wolfridgerider |
Compressed Natural Gas is starting to take root. I heard today that the City of Columbus Ohio is converting 24 vehicles to CNG. They said it would be like taking 96 vehicles off the road because the emissions are so much lower. its about time!! Now if some national trucking company's would start converting some of there fleets... I think we will be well on our way. Its $1.80 here... aka 1/2 price compared to gas | ||
| Greg_e |
Do you really want several hundred gallons of compressed natural gas rolling down the road on the lower sides of trucks? Many run 200 gallons of diesel because time is money and they don't want the trucks sitting at the pumps. It would take more like 400 gallons of CNG to come close to that same energy density... That's a really big explosion in an accident. The benefits are cleaner emissions and lower engine oil pollution. This allows the oil to continue doing it's job longer and making the engine last longer. And all that said, the modern catalyzed diesel engines are really clean once the cat heats up, problem is the number of trucks on the road that are older and do no have the cats installed. | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
Do you really want several hundred gallons of compressed natural gas rolling down the road on the lower sides of trucks? yep.... no more dangerous than a 16 year old with a iphone | ||
| Swampy |
I already ride Natural gas buses to work, I have also heard the stories of cylinders coming apart before their test dates expire, extremely long refueling times and other woes. I don't know why LPG is such a dead horse in the picture, it is much easier to use and has more BTUs than natural gas. But I really think that the limits of internal combustion engines have been reached. All these years of development and we still only get 35 Mpg from gasoline. Think outside the box......think outside the box......think outside the box..... I was reading a 1953 Popular Mechanics last night, and one of the articles was about catalytic converters, and how in the future, dreaded smog was not going to be a problem from your cars. | ||
| Gregtonn |
Swerving off on to the back roads here. Want to get truck traffic off the highways and save HUGE amounts of fuel? Rebuild the railroad system and use trucks for short haul local delivery. Just a thought. G | ||
| Just_ziptab |
yep.... no more dangerous than a 16 year old with a iphone Actually,probably safer than any "text_turd". Ever think about all the other "stuff" on trucks?.........like a tanker truck with 5,500 GALLONS of ethanol in it. You can walk right into an ethanol fire and not even know it till you are already burnt! For fire training,we've set a pit of 200 proof ethanol on fire and put it out with foam. Freaky stuff with it's invisible flame | ||
| Swampy |
Gregtonn, But that would require coordination and cooperation which neither industry has the ability to figure out. You would think that a local, usually government run, bus transit agency would have the ability to coordinate feeder service with any national bus service, apparently it is impossible. The Private/Public Partnrship has been developing for over 25 years and still there are no rural transit agencies that can schedule either a pick up or drop off at a bus station to connect with a national service. The only freight moving that is coordinated is the intermodal containers, that load cheap crap from China into the intermodal containers, that ar loaded onto fright ships, and brought to the West Coast, and either loaded onto trains or trucks to deliver inventory to Walmart. Only the made in USA stuff is hauled entirely by truck. | ||
| Greg_e |
Not worried about the truckers so much, it's those texting idiots crashing into the trucks or running them off the road that I'm concerned about. The trucks that carry CNG or LPG have very extensive tanks that have several layers just to prevent leaks from a crash. You can't take up that much space on a truck for the fuel supply. The long refueling times comes from the usual pumps, you need to take the maybe 60psi supply line, and pump it up to 3600psi. The only economical refueling would be to remove the empty tank and exchange for full tank. There are other ways to increase fuel economy in trucks, a lot of that comes from streamlining the complete assembly. The next move might be to run them as a diesel electric similar to trains where the diesel turns a generator and the electricity runs the wheels, it may not scale down very well so it may not work great on a truck. But there are definite gains from using stored electricity to go from stop to several miles per hour and helping go up a hill, you also get regenerative breaking to charge those batteries which might take the place of the "Jake" brake. CNG/Electric hybrid buses are making progress in some areas, but I don't think it is practical for long haul work. | ||
| Gregtonn |
"The only economical refueling would be to remove the empty tank and exchange for full tank." Now that would be a job that should require hazardous duty pay. What do you do with the partially full tanks? Where/how do you store them? How many full/semi-empty tanks would be stored at the average truck stop? Sounds like a major disaster just waiting to happen. Maybe diesel isn't such a bad idea for trucks. Or not. G | ||
| Firebolt020283 |
compressed natural gas hurts I don't care you are...  | ||
| Xl1200r |
I'd be all about this if it weren't for the whole fracking thing... I think clean drinking water is reason to keep a few more gasoline powered vehicle on the roads... | ||
| Hootowl |
Can you cite any evidence that fracking contaminates drinking water? Last I heard there wasn't any. Just "concerns" from the anti energy lobby. | ||
| Greg_e |
Oh god, another Fracking argument. And I can here the BattleStar Galactica fans laughing now. They know why I mention this. | ||
| Froggy |
Glad to know I am not the only one that was confused by the last two posts. | ||
| Hootowl |
"Oh god, another Fracking argument." That would be a fracking fracking argument.  | ||
| Crusty |
Wouldn't it be a freakin' fracking argument? | ||
| Hootowl |
Not if your name is Starbuck. | ||
| Greg_e |
I laugh every time I so a "NO FRACK" sign in front of someone's house. Pop culture defeats tree hugger by use of slogan. I have no opinion on fracking rocks. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I'd be interested to know what the actual fuel costs are in terms of production, distribution etc. Pump prices are very misleading due to varying taxation systems. Example, I live on the border between Switzerland & France, Diesel is cheaper than gas in France but vice versa on the Swiss side. Consequently, depending on the current Euro/CHF exchange rate you'll see French cars filling the tanks with unleaded in Swiss or Swiss filling with diesel in France. LPG is also pretty common in Europe & CNG is starting to be seen more too. Also part Ethanol fuel is available. Personally I'm a diesel fan, & as a truck driver I'm not at all sure I fancy being perched on top of potential bleve, it takes quite a bit to get diesel to burn & when it does it's relatively slow, not so with compressed gas. I still wonder if the gas turbine has a place in the trucking industry. Would be quite fun to have an illegal afterburner for those long steep hills.  | ||
| Xl1200r |
I still wonder if the gas turbine has a place in the trucking industry. I think we may see a trend of turbo-generator powered vehicles (a gas turbine spins a generator which powers an electric motor). It's easy to get these to run at a very fast, very efficient speed for this duty, or so I've read. The engine itself also only has pretty much one moving part, so reliability should be up. | ||
| Blake |
>>> The benefits are cleaner emissions and lower engine oil pollution. This allows the oil to continue doing it's job longer and making the engine last longer. I think the biggest benefit is reduced dependence on islamist and despot oil. | ||
| Aesquire |
Since a large electric company is closing several coal plants, and investing billions on "cleaner" energy, ( which I can only assume means NG electric plants.....) Don't expect NG to NOT get more expensive. No matter what they allow in the fracking business. Every Dime comes out of the consumers pocket. Since there is no way to substitute directly energy gathering systems megawatt by megawatt... you HAVE to have old style powerplants to level the load. Most energy gathering systems don't produce power all day, or all the time. There are a very few load leveling setups, like the artificial lake setup in the Catskills, where they pump water up to a lake built on top of the mountain at night...with electricity! Then let it flow down & spin turbines during the day to feed the grid. Into another artificial lake. The problem is there are few places to do that economically. Every Dime comes out of the consumers pocket. The ideas of high pressure air storage are just stupid. There is already a serious issue with experimental CO2 sequestration systems. ( though I'm having a hard time finding the article ) Remember, CO2 + water = acid. Even just compressed air pumped into old sealed mines has issues, not the least of which is crappy efficiency. Here's some guys I don't agree with a LOT on the problem. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/11/12/207025/cc s-carbon-sequestration-study-leaks-contaminate-dri nking-water/ There's already places in PA and China where the Earth Burns because of coal seam fires. Today. Now. Tomorrow, next week, year, etc. Still burning. What do you think will happen when massive amounts of CO2 leak out of underground storage and kill thousands? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos Hmmm. Dubious source, but may be correct. http://dirtybusinessthefilm.com/blog/new-investiga tion-world%E2%80%99s-largest-ccs-site-will-test-po tential-co2-leaks So. If you want "greenie" energy, energy collected from diffuse sources, ( solar/wind/tide ) you need to maintain the same conventional powerplant capacity as if the solar panels didn't even exist. The customer will pay for it all. Every Dime. Meanwhile taking advantage of the tsunami's aftermath in Japan, Germany's Greens are getting all the nuclear plants shut down....and replacing them with fossil fuel plants. ( and the solar/wind/unicorn fart/moonbeam show pieces to look good ) Result? Higher energy costs. Because of a religious cult. Remember. When energy cost is too high to make farming in the US pay.... the planet starves. Oh, yeah. I love diesel. Drive to work with it, drive to store with it, and am about to go run the tractor with it. CNG in cars? keep the frack away from me. Buses, maybe. Semi's? Not so much. We need the NG to keep from freezing in winter. Or abandon the north. nuclear to make electricity. Coal to make chemicals and gasoline/diesel. NG for home heat/chemicals/fertilizer. Or very simply. Solids for stationary. Liquids for vehicles. Gases for piped apps. There's a reason Jets don't run on Propane. | ||
| Aesquire |
To be fair, the new propane powered lawn tools are pretty cool. And with boozy corrosive gasoline, Propane can solve the carb rot issue. So add canned gases to the portable tool list. CNG does work in cars fine. But the low price is temporary, and refilling has issues. |
