Gas Prices

A friend of mine sent me the attached graphic file... ain't it the truth??????

Ed

we're up to 1.79 in western kentucky

[Brightsu]

We're at 1.49 a gallon in Boiling Springs SC.

Pam

your "high" prices are lower than our bargain prices out here in southern california.. for cheapest unleaded.. i just paid over $2.00 a gallon.. yikes

we get food deliveries from a company called schwan's. gina drives up in this big refrigerated truck. so being a curious person i asked what kind of gas
mileage she gets - she surprised me when she said the truck is powered by propane. wonder when that technology will make it's way to the average car/truck?

Tom/Eileen:

A little over a year ago I was the Logistics Group Commander at one of our southern AF Bases. About 1/3 of my vehicles had been converted to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). There is a Federal Law that mandates federal agencies (DOD included) to reduce reliance on gasoline powered vehicles. Virtually every pickup truck, sedan, staff car, etc. procured by the AF today has to be equipped with an alternate fuel capability. All these vehicles can use gasoline or CNG.

The only thing I noticed about CNG was my folks had to go to the "filling station" more often. I think this has to do with what folks learn about converting a gasoline generator to propane. That is propane & CNG do not contain the same number of BTUs per volume as gasoline. So that means your output from the engine will be less give the same amount of fuel consumption.

For us it was hard to equate to mileage because our flight line vehicles spend almost as much time idling as moving. Our measure of merit was number of hours on a full tank versus miles driven. Based on that, we were going to the pumps far more often.

Given an American's proclivity to despise inconvenience, it will surprise me if compressed gases (natural gas or propane) ever catches hold with consumers.

I grew up in a farming community. More than half of the farmers used propane in their tractors and farm PUs. Back in those days it was a lot cheaper. I don't think It would be today. I now live in a ranching area and some of the ranchers still use in their PUs but their is a reason for that. They have to keep a large tank on the ranch to refill smaller tanks that they use to burn brush and weeds from the fince lines. If you have to keep it anyway and the truck is used mostly on ranch why have to drive to town to refuel? Also lots of folks use it for motors to pump water and to run wells.

[Bill]

Actually, propane isn't too far from gasoline on a BTU-per-gallon basis. Natural gas, being mostly methane (a much simper molecule) probably has a lot less energy per unit volume. In addition, propane is stored as a liquid (you can feel your propane tank slosh when you move it). I'm not sure how compressed natural gas is stored for the applications you discuss, but I bet it is stored as a gas. Assuming this is true, the result would be that there isn't nearly as much actual fuel energy in a gallon. The big tanker ships that move natural gas around the world carry it as a liquid (LNG), because that maximizes their carrying capacity. However, in order to do this, I think they require very elaborate refrigeration machinery to keep the temperature of the LNG way below zero.

In the end, though, you're right. I would be surprised if CNG is ever used for anything other than local-destination vehicles. Propane, on the other hand, would be an excellent fuel for long distance travel - if it doesn't get sidetracked by the hydrogen hoopla.

Bill

Bill:

Read somewhere that a gallon of propane = 91,500 BTU and a gallon of gasoline = 114,000 BTUs. So that puts the same quantity of propane at containing 80% of the energy of an equivalent quantity of gas. The article also said that given the same output from the engine, the propane powered would use 125% more propane than gasoline. I also read in some spec (don't remember what propane p[owered generator it was) but the tank of propane was good for 6 1/2 hours.

I put a post on the Maintenance section that has kits for converting gasoline powered generators to propane. There are kits for Honda 2000eui & 3000eui. The kits are to switch to propane only, propane or CNG, or propane/CNG/gasoline. Costs somewhere between $179 and $279 depending on kit type.

Ed

i'm thinking my food delivery person has a propane powered engine because of environmental purposes. she did say the company was being environmentally compliant.

btw you guys didn't disappoint - there is always a wealth of information from all y'all.