OK.. I was driving through my little industrial area where I pull test runs and what not, and to my dismay I caught something pretty peculiar out of the corner of my eye. A single gas pump, and a small lit up fluorescent sign that reads:

Compressed Natural Gas
Natural Gas for Vehicles by PG&E
Minimum octane rating 128
CNG Minimum 88% Methane

Ok, so, what type of "vehicles" are these used for? Fricken jet powered 450 MPH cars? Can we use this high of an octance, or would it sizzle our valves to nice little piece of toast? Someone care to shed some light for me?

 

StrikesTwice,
alot of fleet vehicles use cng..some metro busses as well..people convert their cars to burn cng because it burns cleaner and is cheaper(or used to be).. It's a compressed gas, similar to propane, you can't just pull up and "fill er up" with cng. hope this helps some, there's more to it but it's time for work, sure someone will chime in with the pariticulars for ya....JR

 

There is some kind of a federal bill or something floating around for the past few years to have 15% of a all fleet vehicles run on an alternative source of fuel. I think we will see more of a push towards these standards in the next few years.

 

NGVs Natural Gas Vehicles have been around for a while. There was a lot of interest in the early 70s during the energy crisis and again in the 80s when NG prices went through the roof. Todays interest in NGVs, as was pointed out above, is being driven be the Clean Air Act, particularly in urban areas. Problems include the installation of the storage tank, limited range, some decrease in performance, the amount of time to recharge the tanks and the biggest problem is the lack of fueling stations, at least in the US. Canada has done a much better job of building the infastructure to support NGVs than we have. They also put the storage tanks on the top of busses, which is not allowed in the US. One side note, the Natural Gas industry sponsered Craig Breedlove and his "Blue Flame Special" which set land speed records on the Bonneville flats in the 1980's

 

I believe UPS has their fleet fitted for NG. Supposedly really good emissions.

 

Hmmm, thanks guys. We can't use any of it in our trucks then, eh?

 

you can order CNG trucks and vans from Ford. it is an option. but like propane, you will actually lose hp and mileage

 

I remember a couple or more years ago on either the dicovery channel or the learning channel the had a prototype car that ran on natural gas. It was based off of a corvette same frame but different body(almost looked like a viper) it was pushing out more than 400hp. Out of a natrurally aspirated V8. Not sure if I will be able to but I will try and find more info on it.

 

I'd be interested when they come out with one that runs on rocket fuel....

 

Our police Dept. set up a couple road cars to run Natural Gas or back to regular pump gas with the flip of a switch. If the cars ever had to go out of the area where they couldn't find NG they could switch back to pump gas. As I remember it, we changed them back to pump gas only after a year. The 2 cars (Impalas) actually lost hp. with NG., but got it back after the change.

 

This isnt the car I was talkin about but it will work.http://www.isr.gov.au/resources/netenergy/aen/aen6/6ngvs.html

 

I seem to remember a report of a supercar (McLaren?) that ran on CNG. It's been a long time so I may be misremembering.

 

Some of our local metro buses use it and the van based "trollies: that bus the tourist around the city use it also. It is very clean burning from what I hear. Sure beats diesel!!!!!!!