Posted on 09/12/2013 7:11:43 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
Just how flexible is natural gas? Beyond powering your home heating systems, daily commute vehicles, long-haul trucks and ships at sea, America's own abundant natural gas is now being tested on the rail tracks. BNSF Railway Co., the largest railroad in the U.S. and a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, will begin testing liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a locomotive fuel.
Matthew Rose, BNSF's Chairman and CEO, announced the plans at CERAWeek earlier this year. "The use of liquefied natural gas as an alternative fuel is a potential transformational change for our railroad and for our industry… potentially reducing fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions, thereby providing environmental and energy security benefits to our nation." Businesses and municipal fleets across the country have already found enormous cost savings by converting their vehicles to natural gas, and the same will soon be said for the railroads.
According to Dow Jones Newswires, BNSF estimates that, after the Navy, it is the second largest consumer of diesel in the U.S. With diesel prices at nearly $4 per gallon compared to just over $2 per gallon for large volume LNG users, the cost savings are game-changing. Preliminary tests by General Electric and Caterpillar, which are developing the locomotives, indicate that trains powered by natural gas could also travel farther between refueling and have equivalent towing power to diesel. And because trains, like fleet vehicles, travel on fixed routes, building a fueling infrastructure for freight rail makes good economic sense.
Beyond the corporate balance sheet, using natural gas is significantly better for our nation’s air quality than conventional alternatives, with fewer nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (Sox) emissions and no diesel particulates.
Thanks to decisions by BNSF and other industrial users to power with natural gas, the journey to a cleaner energy future may be just down the tracks. Think about it.
Nothing like adding spark plugs to a locomotive to increase the number of parts that can fail, especially on very large sixteen-cylinder engines. Never mind using a fuel that has 57 percent the BTUs per gallon-equivalent of diesel.
NAtural gas can be used in Diesels. Some even use a small squirt of Diesel to kick off the combustion.
Right, thus the need for fuel tenders.
http://hhpinsight.com/rail/2013/06/cn-orders-lng-tenders-from-westport/
Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs) often deliver similar horsepower ratings to their diesel and gasoline-powered counterparts. Premium gasoline is 91 octane. Natural gas has an octane rating of approximately 130. This higher octane allows for increased engine compression and combustion efficiency. Because of the clean burning attributes of natural gas, NGVs generally have longer engine life compared to most gasoline-powered vehicles.
Awesome!
Only in combination, I think. Natural gas by itself has too low of a cetane number.
I don’t think Zer0 has plans to allow diesel to decrease in price. Coal is to be outlawed too..EPA to set new restrictions soon ,comrade So the demand will leave on source of fuel for electric power plants and trains. It’s part of the grand Utopian plan for de-indutrializing America.
There will be no plentiful enegy policy through Obama. We could have cheap abundant diesel and gasoline for under $2.00 per gallon as it was under Bush.
But the commie President is making sure that those commodities remain high
You can’t run a diesel on Natural Gas alone. You have to have at least 10% diesel in order for the combustion ignition to occur.
where does the...
LNG costs 2 dollars a gallon...
come from?
the last time I checked,
diesel costs ten times as much as NG
on an energy basis.
Do have a source for the Natural Gas price equivalent? It is not clear whether the calculator is supposed to MMF or gallons for the natural gas.
Don’t forget how impractical and dangerous it is to store and transport.
Distribution will be a major problem because gas has to be liquified under high pressure in limited amounts for safety.
If it is this economically feasible then the electomotive industry will adopt it.
If this is done through forced mandate like Obamacare it will be an utter disaster.
LNG is 60% of the energy density of diesel (no idea if that's by weight or volume) which would seem to eliminate most of the cost savings, especially if you add in higher handling costs.
But, unlike a truck engine, the train can run off a simpler, easy-build, single pressurized gas car run in behind the engine like the old tenders. So, if a train could run 1600 miles on a single refill of diesel, you could put a gas-can behind the engine and run 3200 or 4200 miles with little impact on the train weight overall.
So, if the natural gas refill points (basically, a spur track and pumping/compressor/refrigerator station near a natural gas pipeline ) were not at every stop, it would not really matter. Compare that tot a truck, which is much more flexible, but can't pull a trailer behind it to carry its nat gas fuel.
See reply 33 about why it might work - IF (big IF there!) - nat. gas were applied to trains.
Locomotives don’t run on gasoline.
You are spot on. Farmers that buy diesel in bulk usually pay below $2.00 per gallon.
LNG is still a fossil fuel therfore limited. If we were togo all in we would have to import 15% to 20% of LNG by 2025.
Compressed natural gas makes more sense in urban areas for use on buses and taxis; indeed, many taxi fleets around the world use CNG-fueled engines, and a number of city bus fleets have also switched to CNG fueling.
that’s why Buffett is testing this option.
personally, I like old steam locomotives. Give me an ole LIMA anyday.
They sure do if you forget to pick up the green nozzle.
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