Pickens Plan and CNG

[diandtom]

I have been looking a Mr. Pickens on TV and the other night he was on late night with Jay Leno. He is looking to propel trucks and busses with PNG mostly. Will compressed natural gas power a diesel engine? When I was working in Tampa in the middle sixties General Telephone had a large part of their trucks running on propane, but they were all gas engines. I know you can add propane to a diesel to boost performance. It used with pulling trucks and tractors, not too sure about road use.
Tom

[diandtom]

I have been looking a Mr. Pickens on TV and the other night he was on late night with Jay Leno. He is looking to propel trucks and busses with PNG mostly. Will compressed natural gas power a diesel engine? When I was working in Tampa in the middle sixties General Telephone had a large part of their trucks running on propane, but they were all gas engines. I know you can add propane to a diesel to boost performance. It used with pulling trucks and tractors, not too sure about road use.
Tom

[RustyJC]

Dual fuel engines are commonplace in the industrial engine marketplace for power generation applications. These can run either as straight diesel engines or as gas-diesel engines and can switch back and forth between the two modes on the fly. A gas-diesel engine will use about 2% to 4% of the total fuel energy supplied to the engine as pilot diesel injection to ignite a natural gas-air mixture in the combustion chamber. In other words, a dual fuel engine might have 4% of the energy coming from diesel and 96% from natural gas.

Rusty

[Chickadee]

So....why can you drive a CNG or PNG powered vehicle through area now restricted such as tunnels where propane must be off, and other such areas??? Steve & Lynette

[Oh-one]

JMHO but the open flame on your gas appliance/refrig. is not the same as a combustion engine running on NG. I think Pickens has a great idea,, but the oil companies and the govt. tax on fuels will be a big hurdle. The distribution of CNG will also be a temp. problem that can be overcome. The idea of mobile and stationary energy sources is a viable basis for the future. We need to use a mobile energy to power vehicles and stationary energy to heat and cool bulidings and generate elec bulk elec. power. We have a source of coal, neuc. and nat. gas and oil, we need to better use what we have. I am personally tired of being jerked around by OPEC and the weather!

[MtManLee]

Im going to quote Motorhome Magazine Oct 2008 issue techsavvy section page 72 Dual Fuel "Dual fuel conversions became very popular during and after the energy crisis in 79. Unfortunately they are very inefficient and caused a lot of fires. An internal combustion engine must have a compression ratio above 12:1 for it to run effieciently on LP gas. The ratio is about 9:1 for regular gasoline. Because no engine is specifically built to run on LP gas fuel mileage on LP gas is POOR. That adds to the cost of operating on LP gas which has gone up in price along with all other fuels. The attraction was availability when gasoline was scarce. Then there is the safety issue. Engines running exclusively on one or the other of the fuels can be very safe. Engines capable of running on both with the flick of a switch have been notoriously unsafe. One motorhome company recalled all of its duel fuel LP gas option for safety reasons. To the best of my knowledge, the companies that made dual fuel conversions are all out of business because they were buried in lawsuits. I cannot recommend a dual fuel conversion for any vehicle."

[Glen41]

Lots of reasons why Mr. Pickens plan won't work.
Basically why the Corn to Ethanol is not working for the farmer and for the public. It just does not have the BTU's per unit of volume. That's why running your generator on Propane uses so much more fuel than a gasoline powered genny. It takes more volume of fuel to spin the generator. If you compress natural gas to a liquid, you can get closer but still way short of the mark.
Another thing is the thought of pressurised canisters during a high speed accident. That is another reason why they sort of work on tractors, city buses, and utility vehicles (they don't move very fast) but not in the hands of your everyday idiot. Natural gas leaks have blown up whole houses. You got the picture?
T. Boone Pickens is looking at one thing, his pocketbook. He is seriously invested in natural gas and has close to a monopoly.

[SeeTheUSA]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Glen41:
Lots of reasons why Mr. Pickens plan won't work.
Basically why the Corn to Ethanol is not working for the farmer and for the public. It just does not have the BTU's per unit of volume. That's why running your generator on Propane uses so much more fuel than a gasoline powered genny. It takes more volume of fuel to spin the generator. If you compress natural gas to a liquid, you can get closer but still way short of the mark.
Another thing is the thought of pressurised canisters during a high speed accident. That is another reason why they sort of work on tractors, city buses, and utility vehicles (they don't move very fast) but not in the hands of your everyday idiot. Natural gas leaks have blown up whole houses. You got the picture?
T. Boone Pickens is looking at one thing, his pocketbook. He is seriously invested in natural gas and has close to a monopoly. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


Mr. Pickens is 80 years old and worth about 3 billion dollars ---- my bet is he would genuinely like to see this country do SOMETHING about our energy dependence besides throwing up our hands in defeat! Now he may be seeking some historical limelight, but I say GO FOR IT! I'd sure like to see something different being done for all of our grandchildren.

Seriously - how many more billions do you think Mr. Pickens is seeking at his age?

[diandtom]

Mr. Pickens says NPG is not for the long term. It just to help us get off of importing oil from countries that don't like us. It just a patch until we develope something better. He is big on windpower also.
Tom

[LVJ58]

Presently the CNG option appears to be the most viable method of reducing demand on fuels refined form crude oil.

There are natural gas lines serving most cities and towns. All that's needed is for existing service stations tap into those lines, install the necessary equipment to compress and dispense CNG to vehicles.

Natural gas compressors and dispensing equipment could be installed at one's residence as well, which would be very convenient for those with CNG vehicles.

With today's technology I'm confident tanks for containing CNG in vehicles can be constructed to withstand severe impacts without rupturing.

The CNG tanks for vehicles would probably be safer than the flimsy tanks presently used in vehicles to contain gasoline.

I've seen videos where rear end collisions resulted in a gasoline tank rupture and burst into flames, it's not a pretty sight.

[Old Snipe]

What everyone is missing is CNG tank volume. CNG powering an average car is great for around town driving, say maybe 100 miles on a full tank of CNG. You wouldn't be able to have a tank big enough to drive any long distances.

Went thru this when Congress tried to mandate Fed Gov vehicles needed to be CNG equipped a few years back. Too little range per tank and very few CNG filling stations, just one in Washington, DC at that time.

Imagine how big of a CNG tank you'd have to have to drive a Class A MH long distance like we are able to do on a tank of gas/diesel. CNG filling stations would have to be on every street corner.

[doc]

Anyone have any idea the pressure necessary to liquify natural gas? Figure it has to be pretty high.

[diandtom]

In Bar Harbor Maine they have buses that take you all around town and to Acadia National Park. The buses run on propane and they cannot climb Cadillac Mountain at around 1500 feet. We took a tour and our guide told us this. His bus was diesel and had no problem.

[apackof2]

Pickens is a modern day P.T.Barnum