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Permalink Reply by Samuel J. Orr on September 28, 2012 at 5:47am

 Anne: Good post and good video. I see the problem as "which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" There is little incentive for converting trucks from diesel to natural gas if there are not fueling stations where these trucks can get natural gas. There may or may not be technology available where by flipping a switch, could allow a truck to run on diesel or on natural gas. This  is an interesting question to which someone likely has an answer. If it exists, and if it is not prohibitively expensive, this fact would be a powerful incentive for O&G companies to make the investment necessary to establish a large number of natural gas refueling stations. On the other hand, if their profits per BTU were higher when they sold diesel, they might not want to make such an investment. I think posing these questions is valuable, even though I have no answers. I am sure there are people smarter than I who may know the answers. Hopefully, they will post to the thread. To all who read this post, please view the short video referenced in by Anne. With natural gas we are probably about  where Henry Ford was with the automobile in the early 1900's. I believe there is company named Westport that holds the most patents for the necessary devices to allow diesel trucks to run on natural gas.  

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Permalink Reply by Tim Tarr on September 28, 2012 at 5:24pm

Don't need to convert diesel trucks to natural gas. Need new trucks that use LNG or better yet CNG, built in U.S.. Along with Trains. The cars and small trucks will follow.

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Permalink Reply by Samuel J. Orr on September 28, 2012 at 8:37pm

I said natural gas but was using the term in its broadest sense. I believe the conversions woould be to CNG.  Not to be insulting to anyone, but CNG equals compressed natural gas and LNG equals   liquified natural gas. Nevertheless, its still natural gas, just like steam, ice, and liquid water are all water. Diesel engines are versatile and can be adapted without too much trouble to run on CNG. The virtue of a truck than can run on conventional diesel fuel or CNG is that Trucks would use CNG at fuel stops where it was available. The necessary number of refueling stations for CNG will not magically spring up over night. Because CNG will presumptively be much cheaper than diesel, trucks will preferentially use it wherever and whenever it is available but will rely on conventional diesel fuel where it is not. This is my speculation, but I welcome comments from truckers, engineers, or anyone with specialized knolwledge. I reiterate that perhaps the best thing about natural gas is that we have lots of it, and we do not have to rely on importing it from a number of unstable countries in the Middle East.

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Permalink Reply by Dan on September 29, 2012 at 2:55am

The new Cafe rules will most likely speed the use of NG.   http://www.autoblog.com/2012/08/29/new-cafe-rules-officially-finali...

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