Why CNG Fuel Is The Best Around
Filed Under (Cars and Trucks) by Randy Lieber on 04-07-2009
Tagged Under : alternative fuel, bi fuel cars, cars, Cars and Trucks, cng cars, dual fuel, fuel types
CNG has a Distribution System Already in Place that is 1000 times more extensive than that used for petroleum products. Mega tanker ships transport oil from the Middle East. Tanker trucks transport 99% of the gasoline and diesel fuel that we consume at the pump. That itself contributes over 22% of price we pay at the pump, not to mention the danger. The transportation costs associated with CNG are almost fixed. Natural gas is distributed nationwide through an extensive network of pipelines, which feed electrical generation plants and domestic and industrial heating uses. Thus, the use of natural gas in vehicles is “piggybacking” on many years of infrastructure development.
PERFORMANCE in regards to CNG is not a problem. CNG is approximately 130 octane. Racing fuels are about approximately 110 octane. The octane in regular gasoline that most of our vehicles run on is 85. In fact, the world land speed record was set by “Blue Flame”, a natural gas vehicle on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on October 28, 1970. The Blue Flame’s record of 630.478 mph, lasted for 13 years.
Gasoline is liquid that is sprayed or injected into a vehicle’s cylinders in a semi-gaseous state. CNG is already gas, thus providing a more complete and cleaner burn. This has to do with the molecular structure of methane, CH4. It has the highest ratio of carbon to hydrogen atoms of any other compound on earth, thus more complete efficient combustion as compared to petroleum,(C8H18). E(85) Ethanol, on the other hand, has very poor performance and requires MORE energy to produce it than it provides. If that isn’t bad enough, they use natural gas to heat the corn to produce ethanol. Add that to the fact that by using our corn reserves (a third of the U.S. annual corn crop) to produce fuel we lose our bargaining chip with other countries to feed their population.
As noted in Time magazine 4/1/08, ethanol is partially responsible for the deforestation of the rainforest as well. The article reports that the corn that is used to distill one tank of ethanol would feed one human for a year. Also less corn available means higher feed prices, thus higher meat, dairy and everything else. In pandering to the farm lobby the federal government and Detroit abandoned CNG as an alternative fuel in favor of E(85) and now we are feeling the pinch at the grocery store and in the lack of new CNG vehicles to choose from. Would you rather import fuel or food? We don’t have to import either if we could get special interests out of our elected officials pockets and heads.
Production, transportation, taxes and profit make up the main elements of petroleum’s price to the consumer. Unlike petroleum, CNG requires relatively little development, production, refinement or transportation. In fact, natural gas is often discovered with petroleum and burned off (flared) as a nuisance. It’s estimated that the world’s NG that is flared off in one year is equivalent to the energy used in the USA in 4 months. Now, consider your ECON 101 class. Remember supply and demand effects? If we have a product with an over abundance (high), with a demand that at this point is almost nil (low), what would you expect the price to be?
REDUCE OUR DEPENDENCE on FOREIGN OIL NOW. Many politicians talk about reducing dependence but what are they doing about it TODAY? It’s a no-brainer! CNG is a domestic fuel. While in 2005, the U.S. imported over 75 percent of the oil it used, 99 percent of the natural gas used in the U.S. is produced in North America (85 percent from the U.S. and 14 percent from Canada). Every gallon equivalent of natural gas used in vehicles is one less gallon of petroleum that has to be imported. All diesel engines can be adapted to a dual fuel system. Diesel engines will run easily on a mixture as low as 20% diesel and 80% CNG according to a Questar executive.
Physical Properties: Natural gas is flammable; otherwise it could not be used as a fuel for internal combustion and other types of energy. When released into the air or mixed with air in an engine, compressed natural gas becomes flammable only when the mixture is between 5 and 15 percent natural gas. When the mixture is less than 5 percent natural gas (too thin) it doesn’t burn. When the mixture is more than 15 percent natural gas (too rich) there is not enough oxygen to allow it to burn. It also has an ignition temperature of approximately 1100 degrees F compared to gasoline and diesel fuel which both have lower concentrations of flammability and much lower temperatures of ignition.
Use it Before it Becomes a Threat? According to the History Channel, one of the Mega Disasters that hangs over our planet is global warming’s effect on methane deposits on the sea floor close to the arctic polar ice cap and its effect on permafrost. Those pockets bubble to the surface as our oceans warm and could provide a flammable methane-rich atmosphere in the future. Scientists have proposed drilling into that deposit to tap into the fuels there, but they are meeting opposition from environmentalists. The History Channel cites known methane deposits on planet earth to be about 20,000 million tons. That’s two to three times that of the known reserves of petroleum and more being produced every minute by nature. Why not reduce the threat? USE IT!
