http://www.jlcny.org/site/index.php/news....

Can you imagine fueling up at your house in an hour with a 250 mile range.
It is super clean, reduces CO2, and comes from our own country for the next 100 years.

If it works and is cost effective the Eco-Nazis will have it killed. Eco-Nazis don't have give a rats ass about the environment. It's all a lie. They will have this killed.

The only problem with this is that compressed gases and J6P do not especially mix well, unless you are talking about the vapor pressure of carbon dioxide over 12 ounces of Budweiser or Diet Coke.

If GE sells 100,000 of these, even with a .01% failure rate, there are probably going to be 10 major failures and perhaps 3-4 ass-blasting (eg; fatal) house destroying explosions. GE can not manufacture these things domestically, so they will be of Chinese manufacture, like their X-ray machines. Perhaps Mr. Immelt is lobbying Mr. 0bama for a green-energy-industrial-accident liability limitation as we speak?

"The only problem with this is that compressed gases and J6P do not especially mix well."

You can say the same thing about gasoline. Can you imagine trying to sell people on gasoline for the firs time? The vapor from just a few cups in a confined space is enough to blow up a whole house.

Next they're going to try to sell propane barbecues. Oh the horror that will bring!

The vapor pressure of propane is in the area of 120 lbs (8 atmospheres) over the liguid in the tank, the tanks being tightly regulated and subject to inspection, ICC regulations, with test dates. 120 lbs of nat gas would be enough to drive a car about a mile or two. If there is going to be compressed natural gas (CNG) where, at about 100 times atmospheric pressure at about 42% of gasoline energy density, you are talking about 1500 psi on a full tank. I guarantee you, over hundreds of thousands of installations, you are going to see some bodacious fires from leakage incidents and from homebrew dudes screwing around with the things. Those will be fatal incidents and/or house burn-downs and assuming GE earns $350 on a $500 compressor, very high margin, it may be a net loss given a few multi-million dollar lawsuits. We'll see.

bilge

Compressed natural gas is already being used by 112,000 vehicles in the U.S., almost exclusively in commercial or governmental fleet vehicles. Worldwide 12 million vehicles use CNG. Enviros love CNG (or compressed propane where CNG isn't available) because emissions are much lower than with conventional diesel or gasoline.

I'm very leery of in-home CNG fueling stations, though, particularly ones that claim to refill a CNG tank in an hour or less. The gas needs to be dewatered as it's compressed, and most "slow-fill" methods take as much as eight hours to refill a tank. Fast-fill requires some pretty elaborate safety precautions and dryer systems to remove the moisture. As it now stands, CNG fleets usually maintain their own refueling stations with certified personnel conducting the refueling operations. Giving J6P access in millions of homes is asking for trouble.

More Greenie horse****. The quality of this kind of fuel compared to conventional liquid fuels is very low (storage, ease of transport, yada, yada) Again, Nuclear ----> liquefy coal = high quality liquid fuels.

"Giving J6P access in millions of homes is asking for trouble."

That's all I'm sayin'. The home compressor idea does NOT thrill me. The NG story is a good one, but the single fly in the ointment is the difficulty getting NG to a liquid where it might be moved (on a bulk scale) more conveniently. This is the big giant difference between propane (LPG if it is liquified) and nat gas (mostly methane) Propane is easily liquified at ~~120 psi and the vapor pressure will keep the rest of the liquid under it liquid indefinitely...for 20+ years if I believe the near-full barbecue tank from my folks house I had to take to HazMat. Nat gas, no, upwards of 3000 psi and need to refrigerate the tank and also let some blow off periodically.

Gamma, the natgas used in CNG vehicles is NOT liquified. It's compressed natural gas, not liquified natural gas. CNG fleets that use the "slow-fill" method of refueling can take the gas directly out of the local pipeline and run it through a compressor and dryer and into the tank. No refrigeration needed.

The reason CNG is getting so much attention is that at current prices the fuel cost per mile is half or less that of diesel or gasoline. Also, the modified diesel engines used last almost forever because it burns so clean. The folks using CNG vehicles here in Maine don't know what the engine lifetime is because they haven't worn one out yet. The vehicle bodies rust out first.

Originally conversion of a diesel engine to CNG cost about $10,000 each, mostly for the new fuel tank and system and to replace the valve seats with specially hardened seats because CNG burns hotter than diesel. Now a lot of engines come from the factory with the hardened valve seats already installed, so it's more a matter of recalibrating the electronics. Even in the old days a commercial vehicle in constant use would break even on the conversion cost in two years or so.

Note that natural gas has a habit of varying in cost by a factor of 4 or more, and we're at the lower end of the range. It suddenly gets "much less cheap" if it goes up in price.

What happens to price if demand moves materially higher?

Don't most of these vehicles have the ability to use Natural Gas or Gasoline?

Coaster, I am aware of all that. I am saying one thing and one thing only, and that is that installing millions of home-based natural gas compressors to compress city-supplied NG to a point where it will become a practical vehicle fuel is a recipe for home blowups. I'm very much in favor of the use of NG but I think that as opposed to home-compress, people are going to have to buy pre-filled tanks at tightly regulated filling stations and swap them out if they want to fill up and go. And that wouldn't be a deal killer as far as NG is concerned.

Krzelune, no. The fuel delivery systems for gasoline vs natgas are completely different. And Karl is absolutely right that natgas has seen wide price swings. If CNG vehicles started numbering in the seven figures or more, it would definitely affect the price.

ETA: Sorry if I misunderstood you, Gamma, but you were talking about liquified natural gas, and natgas doesn't have to be liquified to be delivered unless it's being shipped in from overseas in an LNG tanker.

How they gonna get all there taxes.

Yes Gen - I remember the last time natgas was cheap (under $2 a mcf in the '90s) - lots of very efficient combined cycle natgas-fired power plants were built by companies that ended up going bankrupt (most spectacularly calpine but also numerous smaller ones). all those new power plants significantly increased demand which helped cause the price spikes in the '00s.

Dual Fuel cars were all the rage in Europe in the 80's and there were no catastrophes. It died out because oil came down and NG went up.

NG upside potential is hugely reduced by the new Fracturing technology - it will allow most places on the globe to become self sufficient in energy for a number of years.

Bull****.

Fracking simply increases the rate of extraction of a deposit. It does not change the total amount of gas in the deposit. Proponents are going to figure this out the hard way.

One problem with fracking is that fracked wells produce more than half their total gas in the first year, then extraction tails off rapidly to the point where the well becomes uneconomical to maintain. So producers have to keep drilling new wells to keep production numbers up.

Agau, I am not aware that the dual fuel vehicles in Europe used natgas and liquid fuels. IIRC they were able to use ethanol/methanol and gasoline in varying mixtures. A vehicle capable of using both natgas and diesel would need two separate fuel storage and delivery systems. Pretty awkward and space consuming for standard production, I think, and switching from one to another would entail more than just flipping a switch.

Coaster

Yes dual fuel was and will become the rage IMHO.
Here is a study citing European dual fuel during the 80's oil crunch
http://www.its.uci.edu/its/publications/....
It's actually a simple system that runs parallel to the gasoline injection system

In NG mode the gasoline supply is cut off and NG is squirted into the air stream using a simple - that only takes a regulator and solenoid valve and some plumbing.

Go to any construction site and the mid range boomlifts will be dual fuel
Also google dual fuel Honda - big developments there since just about all of ny pa Texas and Ohio now have accessible gas deposits thanks to fracturing

These wells lest several years and are refractured or new one drilled 50 yards to the right and will be producing for many decades imho

"Natural Alternative: The Civic Natural Gas
The Civic Natural Gas is the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle certified by the EPA. It meets Tier-2 Bin-2 and ILEV requirements—a claim no other vehicle with an engine can currently make.

The Civic Natural Gas runs entirely on natural gas, and it was developed with the real world in mind. Unlike other flex- or dual-fuel vehicles, which operate primarily on gasoline, the Honda Civic Natural Gas is run on compressed natural gas and operates virtually pollution-free. In fact, during testing, we found that hydrocarbon emissions were so low we had to develop new techniques to measure them.

The Civic Natural Gas hits all three of Honda's environmental targets: low emissions, high fuel economy and use of an economical, North American-based alternative fuel. But we are not just out to make an environmental statement. The strongest message about the Civic Natural Gas is that we didn't design it only to satisfy fleet or government customers, but to satisfy Civic customers as well."

From Honda Civic NG car blurb