Natural Gas Can ability Vehicles OR Electric potential Plants

There is nothing really new about using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a vehicle fuel. It works well in internal combustion engines and it is possible to squeeze ample energy on board in a fair size tank at a fair pressure to supply gasoline or diesel equivalent range. There are modification kits available for a number of automobiles, there is at least one production automobile (Honda Civic GX) and there are a number of options for buses (Viking CNG BS-III, New Flyer C/L30LF, C/L35LF, C/L40LF, etc.) suitable for municipal fleets.

The new thing, the reason that talk about CNG is growing, is that natural gas now costs about half as much per unit energy as gasoline and has an even greater cost advantage by diesel fuel.

With new software and lean-burning regimes available, CNG powered engines have improved their fuel economy to the point where they have reached fundamental parity with engines powered by the sister fossil fuels of gasoline and diesel. To compare fuel cost per mile, it is not a poor approximation to compare fuel costs per BTU, (or MMBTU, or therm).

I know, there are

abundant different units out there to cause some confusion, but whether you want to do battle with the energy suppliers, you have to learn their language. Two thumb rules worth knowing - multiply the cost of natural gas in $/MMBTU by 6 and you will find out how much an oil equivalent barrel of natural gas costs. Multiply the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel by 7 and you will find out its cost in $/MMBTU.

One of my most frequently visited web sites is Bloomberg.com: Energy Prices where you can find the market prices for a number of different fuels. There you can find daily market prices (without taxes and retail mark ups) for natural gas, gasoline and distillate fuels (heating oil and diesel fuel are essentially the same composition.) Example: today, natural gas delivered to New York City gate (a trading hub) costs $13.92, the equivalent of $83.50 per barrel when converted to oil equivalent units. Diesel fuel costs $3.92 per gallon, the equivalent of $27.50 per MMBTU. Arm yourself with that info and you can see why folks in decision making positions are looking hard at CNG again… more here

[Source] DForce