LNG

What ever happened to the push for Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) as a highway fuel. Years ago, there was talk about starting the infrastructure to make refueling stations abailable along the highways to encourage the use of abundant natural gas. I know that natural gas prices rose, but surely the fluctuations in oil prices exceeds the natural gas prices. All internal combustion engines produce CO2, but LNG engines burn so much cleaner otherwise. The bulky tanks create problems, but that can be overcome. Any ideas?

Same as any other flash in the pan idea I guess. Until somebody spends their own money to get an idea going on a small scale,then popular demand causes the idea to grow,nothing happens. No industry starts out large scale. That's just the way life is.

T Boon Pickins is pushing the idea of natural gas, which reminded me of the push years ago. Apparently there was government money available at the time.

He's got the money. He should just make it happen. That's the problem,everybody with an idea thinks the government should pay for it and force the whole country to comply forcefully. Good ideas sell themselves.

(quoted from post at 17:42:19 02/14/10) What ever happened to the push for Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) as a highway fuel. Years ago, there was talk about starting the infrastructure to make refueling stations abailable along the highways to encourage the use of abundant natural gas. I know that natural gas prices rose, but surely the fluctuations in oil prices exceeds the natural gas prices. All internal combustion engines produce CO2, but LNG engines burn so much cleaner otherwise. The bulky tanks create problems, but that can be overcome. Any ideas?

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LNG is not a simple fuel to transport & store. It is liquid at several hundred degrees below zero. Extreme insulation will keep it liquid longer, but not forever. If the 'boil-off' isn't being used, it must be safely disposed of. Refrigeration is both costly & bulky. Without extreme cold temps, the whole tank of LNG will boil-off over a period of time and all is lost if not captured & used. Even transporting it across the oceans, they find refrigeration to be unreasonable, so they use insulated tanks & keep the tanks cold by a sort of auto-refrigeration.....the phase change from liquid to gas provides a cooling effect for the remaining liquid. The loss is just part of the cost of transportation so to speak. If you park your LNG car in your garage for a week, you had better be burning or venting that natural gas 'boil-off'! Otherwise, a spark, and no more garage!

You know over the years I have seen them try to push a number of things like the LNG Methane, hydrogen, and of course the many solar set ups and battery's. Just another one of those things they will push for a bit then look at the cost and back off again.
I'm still waiting for warp drive and faster then light stuff, probably will never make it in my life time. LOL

Handling a combustable fuel at 3000 lbs pressure is a little more challenging than the pro-LNG people lead you to believe.

As well, we face shortages of NG. It's down there, but man oh n=man would we need more pipelines to start using it to fuel all our transportation!

Just try running a grain drier off of ng. Kind of a big user. This fall as we took out very wet corn later in the year than normal, a lot of suppliers were cutting off the coops because the big use of the corn drier was interfering with people heating their houses.

It would take massive new infrastructure!

Ethanol is around because it is less painful of a conversion than trying to go to lng. Ethanol is a smooth, small step by step conversion. That works.

Totally changing to something completely different would take huge money. Huge.

--->Paul

Strange after reading post below I don,t know but just got back from several days in mainland of China and in Bejing and another larger city the city buses run on electric like old trolleys
where there is a line then go off on their own
power. I asked what engine and was told it was
their version of our cummings engine running
LGN. I have no idea but all the busses had LARGE
tanks on top that read lgn..I know this they did not emit any smoke..who knows they may be ahead of us..

Around here Power co.'s utility trucks all use LNG. How do they handle the boil off problem??
Led

I know one thing; when they bring those LNG ships up the Houston Ship Channel, they treat them like what they are, a floating bomb.

Are they LNG or propane?

(quoted from post at 20:13:27 02/14/10) Are they LNG or propane?

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or CNG?

LNG is not stored at 3000 PSI. CNG (comprressed natural gas) is. Energy density is much higher with LNG. CNG vehicles have been around a long time. Many metro busses use it.

I believe the dewars that contain LNG are rated for around 100 PSI. Any pressure above that is vented to atmosphere or is compressed and condensed back to liquid. In a proper system, it is consumed without waste.

At times China is less concerned with safety than some other countries?

Sometimes I'm not sure which way I prefer!

--->Paul

What happened is that someone decided to turn our corn into fuel. That helped me. But given that it takes so much energy to produce, it would be interesting to know just where that decision was made.

Might have been CNG. I remember LPG as well. I'm not all that familiar with the gasses. Is there a difference between CNG and LNG. I just assumed that LNG was just the liquid form when NG was compressed. I'm also assuming LPG is propane compressed to a liquid. I guess I'm showing my ignorance now but it probably already shows...lol.

Bob, I suspect that decision involved a large briefcase of $100 dollar bills...lol.

I believe the ocean going LNG tankers inject the boiled off gas into the ship's Diesel propulsion engines. This would be similar to propane injection as found in some Diesel pickup trucks and larger.

I live in a town (Tewksbury, MA) that is the site of a large LNG storage facitity. The capacity is well over one million gallons. All the vented gas is collected, reliquified, and put back in the tank. Truck LNG tankers are used to fill it from the terminal in Everett
(Boston), MA

Thirty years ago a loading dock caught on fire. Two firemen were killed. It was feared that the tank would be weakened by the heat and rupture. Didn't happen.

Over the years, there have been many LNG truck tanker accidents across the nation. No tank ruptures yet. That certainly can't be said for gasoline and Diesel tankers.

As others wrote, the trouble with Liquified Natural Gas is that it has to be kept incredibly cold for it to remain in a liquid state. Maybe it is possible to pressurize it enough to keep it liquid at normal temperatures, but the pressures would have to be way up there, and therefore the tank would have to be super strong and probably super expensive. I get the impression that normal temperature LNG is not a practical idea.

About 25 or 30 years ago, my department did an experiment, converting a Chevy Caprice to run on compressed natural gas, as well as gasoline. At that time natural gas prices were way less than they are now, and it was thought that money might be saved over the increasing costs of gasoline.

The CNG tanks took up most of the room in the trunk and added a bunch of weight to the Caprice. The conversion was also pretty expensive, although they might have had a grant or other funding to do the experiment.

Running the car on CNG, it had quite a bit less power than on gasoline, although admittedly this could have been because the tuning was better using gasoline as the fuel. The car ran OK using the CNG, but the big problem was that even with the trunkful of high pressure tanks, we could only store enough CNG for about half of an 8 hour shift. And then we would have to drive to the local natural gas distribution company shop, since they were the only place around that had the equipment to pressurize the natural gas as much as it needed to be for that purpose. That took lots of man hours away from other duties during the experiment.

There was also some concern about safety--no one really knew what might happen if the Caprice was rear-ended. Maybe the CNG cylinders were durable enough to not break open, but maybe not. Fortunately no such accident ever happened.

I think it was decided that using CNG was very impractical, and probably not something that would be done widely, at least in the forseeable future. For the technology available then, and probably what is available now, normal temperature liquid fuel is the most practical motor vehicle fuel.

I think that same natural gas distributor still runs some of its vehicles on CNG, but probably only in medium size trucks that never get too far away from the fueling equipment.

But the guys that had to deal with that converted Caprice were really glad when the experiment was over and the equipment was removed. Using CNG was just too much hassle.

Mayor Menino is trying to stop them from going into Everett, I heard they may go to Rhode Island

My misake.

How do they store liquid natural gas then? It either needs to compressed to a liquid, or frozen to a liquid? So do they need a big freezer then?

Can't think of a different way of changing itfrom gas to liquid.

--->Paul

In Tewksbury, MA where I live, we have a CNG refueling station next door to a shopping center. It is also next door to a State DPW yard/salt barn as well as a local bus garage. All sites are easy on/off from Interstate 495. The only pumps are CNG.

Although I have never noticed any vehicles refueling there, I believe that some DPW trucks and passenger busses use the facility. I know that the local gas company has a fleet of vehicles, including meter-reader PU trucks, that run on CNG. Mass Bay Transportation Authority (Greater Boston) has converted nearly all it busses to CNG. I believe the program has been very successful.

Good idea but it doesn't work.
The price of natural gas has fluctuated wildly over the past few years also.
Demand for natural gas is increasing as industry and power utilities convert from coal or oil to natural gas.
Natural gas peaking turbines going up all around here. Some small producers are running stationary diesel engines on natural gas via pilot ignition.
Natural gas does make cheap methanol alcohol when mixed with cheap nuclear steam with a catalyst.
Very little to change with vehicles and infrastructure to run everything on methanol.

(quoted from post at 22:20:32 02/14/10) My misake.

How do they store liquid natural gas then? It either needs to compressed to a liquid, or frozen to a liquid? So do they need a big freezer then?

Can't think of a different way of changing itfrom gas to liquid.

--->Paul

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http://www.naturalgas.org/lng/lng.asp

In another part of town and in a related industry, Liquid Carbonics INC has a plant where they make and store carbon dioxide and liquid nitrogen among other industrial gasses.

One of those two gasses (can't remember which) escaped in quantity and created a cloud that enveloped a nearby street. Several cars entered the cloud and stalled from a lack of oxygen. Several people died from asphyciation inside their cars.

Not really sure but sign on utility truck & city buses say "natural gas". Some city buses run on ethanol.(e-85 maybe)
Led

You can buy new trucks today that are CNG & also LNG. Either one is pricey & not much power because of the low btu.

T. Boone is all for it beacause he owns major pipelines that carry the stuff. He stands to make another fortune with increased usage. Funny thing is that he thinks the government should confiscate our money (via taxes) to mandate the increased use.

(quoted from post at 03:38:07 02/15/10) You can buy new trucks today that are CNG & also LNG. Either one is pricey & not much power because of the low btu.

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If you drive one of the few LNG vehicles, you best get going when you fill up, as if you just let it sit there for a period of time, not used, you will need to fill it up again before you get moving, as the LNG will all go away over time unless you have one heck of a refrigerator (260 deg below zero).

A few years ago GM sold a few 3/4 ton pickups set up to run on compressed natural gas. As I recall, they ended up buying them all back and converting to gasoline because of problems with the CNG fuel tanks.

(quoted from post at 07:03:56 02/16/10) A few years ago GM sold a few 3/4 ton pickups set up to run on compressed natural gas. As I recall, they ended up buying them all back and converting to gasoline because of problems with the CNG fuel tanks.

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n the 90's, nearly all the US car makers offered some CNG models.