happycajun

Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan

Gasoline heating value is around 125,000btu/gal. 20gallon tank holds 2,500,000btu's. NG is about 1000btu/ft3 - using 80cuft scuba tanks @ 3000psi require 32 tanks to hold the same btu equiv. Weight of the tanks is about 1,120 lbs. NG takes a lot of energy to compress - cost $$$ tanks - about $5,000 extra . Just a thumbnail analysis - but shows that NG has some of the same problems as electric - distribution, "fill up" time - (ever had a standard 80 filled? how about 32 of them). In otherwords - we would be using them if economical. Differentials in price/btu tend to be transient - with eventual equilibrium at some ratio - Regarding PaulK's 5m cars - he cites no authority firstly. But more importantly - ever notice how many mopeds, vespas and such you see in europe & far east? Not so here - the US has massively different transport issues that vary by location. Like said above - CNG may play a role - but in more of a niche. I think things like GTL probably make more sense (gas to liquids) for the US market - llikely more efficient at the bottom line at some future gasoline-gas cost ratio. I just think that CNG has inherent limitations been involved in this stuff before the first "energy crisis."

Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan

If the technology to use CNG is so simple, and the economics so compelling, and being that NG has been a nuisance by-product of oil production from day one (I still have photos of the huge flares in Saudi from back in the '70s).... then why hasn't some Einstein done hooked us up in bulk?! Don't blow smoke about it being a great conspiracy - Don't BS about it being less hazardous than alternatives. If it is cheap, safe, easy and worth doing - why hasn't it caught on for the last 80 years?

Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan

What you are seeing in Russia is LPG fueled vehicles - VERY OLD tech - and long used as farm and fleet fuel in the US. It is LIQUID propane or butane. As a liquid, it stores much more energy at relatively low pressure in a normal sized container. CNG which Scott mentions is a completely different delivery system, while the combustion end is similar. NG is commonly used in stationary pump or generator installations with hard-piped NG. BUT to store enough NG in a portable container on board a vehicle is another matter. It requires very high pressures - think SCUBA tank - which are very heavy in sizes big enough to hold reasonable amount of fuel. Gas follows the "ideal gas law" or PV=ZnRT which roughly means to store as much NG BTU's in a given volume as propane requires compressing the stuff to something like 700 atmospheres - or about 10,000 psi. Longish time to fill up, more complicated procedure than gasoline, etc..... and importantly - the infrastructure to deliver same is not in place. That is why CNG would be best suited to fleet usage (busses, taxis, UPS trucks, etc.....)

If Russian filling stations were delivering 10,000psi NG to the general public - you would see occassional "light ups" at the stations....

Natural Gas & Wind Power - The Pickens Plan

and now the wind generation is environmentally suspect - first there are those butt-ugly windmills all over - second - they will kill birds like crazy and now - it harms people - the low frequency beat of the spinning prop is causing problems. See: www.oregonlive.com/new... Scott is correct that the intermittency of wind means duplication of generation capacity - the very fast variation in wind velocity also makes for serious distribution problems - power surging up and down with wind gusts is problematic. Ol' Boone has skinned a number of folks over the years - his green-mail of the '80s was what made him rich - not being an "oilman" as he likes to portray. (he's also not a Texan - like Troy Aikman he is a transplant from Henrietta Oklahoma). During the oil crash of the mid to late '80s, Boone was forcing Oil companies to cut core staff and to get out of R&D, all of which has resulted in oil companies getting tuned to do one thing - find and produce oil - mostly using conventional or incrementally innovative technology. Heck, the some of the greatest "tech" innovations came from cheap, fast computers that allowed more use of more sophisticated 3D seismic. There will be no easy, single "answer" to the energy problem - it will involve "conservation" which I think of as continued improvements in efficiency - it will involve finding and producing oil and gas - it will involve nuclear (fission and someday, fusion) - it will involve solar and wind and hydro ... there will be no simple solution.