PDA

View Full Version : Ford F150 natural gas powered



dennis thompson
08-01-2013, 6:52 AM
I see Ford is planning to introduce a nat gas F150. I hear incremental cost to truck will be about $10,000.
Interesting development,does anyone have a nat gas vehicle? What do you think of it? Would you buy one with the $10,000 incremental cost?

Matt Meiser
08-01-2013, 7:28 AM
It's intended for fleet use not individuals. I did a quick calculation and all other things being equal, the payback is close to 100,000 miles. Where would you fuel it? There are very few places around right now.

Edit: According to DoE, there are 596 places in the entire country. And many don't sound like the kind of place you just drive up and get gas (though DTE Energy has some here in Michigan at regular gas stations--I'd guess as much for their own use as for the public.) http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_locations.html

David Weaver
08-01-2013, 8:03 AM
Here in frack america, we're starting to convert fleet vehicles to propane. Yeah, propane. I guess when you frack gas, you get some propane on the side and we have so much here we don't know what to do with it. Cost of fuel for the fleet vehicles on it (taxis, garbage trucks) is about half of other liquid fuels.

The leap from propane to gas isn't much (Farm tractors in the midwest came in various versions for years), just bigger valves (and maybe different compression?) since methane isn't energy dense.

We should be seeing consumer vehicles on natural gas in not too much time. The incremental cost (or most of it) isn't in true production issues other than quantity, as far as I know. 3000 or 4000 psi carbon tanks are only about $800 last time I looked.

Wouldn't buy one as an individual, though, until you know where you can refuel it while you're on the road.

Jim Stewart
08-01-2013, 8:38 AM
One of the advantages would be clean burn which means you could go for many miles between oil changes. I have driven diesel pickups since 1995. At first diesel was cheap and quite an advantage. As diesel became more in demand world wide that advantage went away. I would predict the same for Natural gas. The trucking industry will start to convert as soon as enough truck stops start putting in natural gas. I think I would stick with gasoline for now. As Matt said the payoff will take some time. You should however, get a longer service out of that engine because of the clean burn. If you drive a lot of miles it likely would be an advantage.

Grant Wilkinson
08-01-2013, 8:48 AM
A contractor friend of mine has been driving a natural gas cube van for years now. Ford has had them for a long time. Since most of his work is local, he has regular fill up spots. He can flip a lever under the dash and run gasoline without the engine even stalling. The natural gas burns cleaner and the octane rating is higher than that of regular grade gas. I don't know if that's true when comparing natural gas and premium gasoline.

I looked into converting a couple of my cars over the years, but was told by both Honda and Subaru that their engines would not stand the wear and tear of using natural gas. It seems that gasoline engines are built around the additives that are put into gasoline. Without those additives, the valves won't take the pounding.

Brett Robson
08-01-2013, 9:17 AM
I'd read about home filling systems for CNG vehicles few years back. It looks like at least one is now available: http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles/refueling/Pages/refueling-at-home.aspx

Clarence Martin
08-01-2013, 10:13 AM
Home refilling stations are the way to go. The home refilling station costs $6,000 to $10,000 . Then, there is the electric to run it. Figure it costs less than $2.00 a gallon per tank fill up. There is an additional cost for a Natural Gas vehicle. additional 4 to 5 Grand.

David Weaver
08-01-2013, 10:18 AM
Honda's was called the buddy or some such thing. The one obvious issue that you can't get around is that the gas is being pumped into a tank at what is terminally an extremely extremely high pressure. Good luck to them with the comment that they'd like to make the filler a $500 device. That may be possible at some point if production is outsourced and the throughput is very slow.

As far as the valves, I'm sure that's a problem that could be ironed out. There are NG irrigation engines that have been running for tens of thousands of hours under a heavy load, and those engines have been around for decades and decades (the large stationary gas line engines have been around a lot longer, but they are definitely a different animal than the smaller engines used to run irrigation pumps).

Plus, NG cabs have been running for several years here, and I haven't heard of any problems with them.

John McClanahan
08-01-2013, 10:39 AM
So, how is the power of natural gas engines? Do natural gas vehicles come with large engines? I was going to convert a gasoline generator to propane, then I thought, why not natural gas? I did some research, and propane has less energy than gasoline and natural gas has less energy than propane. It got to looking like the engine might not produce enough horsepower to run the generator properly.

John

Matt Meiser
08-01-2013, 10:44 AM
Home refilling stations are the way to go. The home refilling station costs $6,000 to $10,000 . Then, there is the electric to run it. Figure it costs less than $2.00 a gallon per tank fill up. There is an additional cost for a Natural Gas vehicle. additional 4 to 5 Grand.

So revise my payback calculation to roughly 160,000 to 200,000 miles on an F150 at home.

Then don't take it on a long trip without mapping out exactly where you plan to refuel.

John McClanahan
08-01-2013, 10:51 AM
David,from what I saw on HBO Documentaries, PA is Frack America.:eek: While the show "Gasland" streached the truth with its bias, it's still an eye opener. Remember in 2009, all the commercials of T. Boone Pickins encouraging the use of natural gas? Now, the blond gal in the black business suit tells me the secure infrastructure every evening during the news. Its all about supply and demand. If natural gas powered transportation grows, so will the demand for fracking.

John

David Weaver
08-01-2013, 10:53 AM
So, how is the power of natural gas engines? Do natural gas vehicles come with large engines? I was going to convert a gasoline generator to propane, then I thought, why not natural gas? I did some research, and propane has less energy than gasoline and natural gas has less energy than propane. It got to looking like the engine might not produce enough horsepower to run the generator properly.

John

The older engines (irrigation and tractor engines) that were converted had different heads with higher compression than gasoline heads. The NG versions had bigger valves than the propane versions because of the energy density of the fuels). Power for the various versions (gas, propane and NG) were similar. I've seen more than one person make the comment that a decades old NG or LP engine looked new and clean when the head was removed because of how much less trash there is in NG and LP).

The heads now are popular with vintage tractor pullers because you can get higher compression with them running gasoline (and I guess still have a "stock" tractor under some rules where you can only have stock parts).

David Weaver
08-01-2013, 11:00 AM
David,from what I saw on HBO Documentaries, PA is Frack America.:eek: While the show "Gasland" streached the truth with its bias, it's still an eye opener. Remember in 2009, all the commercials of T. Boone Pickins encouraging the use of natural gas? Now, the blond gal in the black business suit tells me the secure infrastructure every evening during the news. Its all about supply and demand. If natural gas powered transportation grows, so will the demand for fracking.

John

I ride the bus with a trader for a large gas company. In order for him to trade, he has to have a good understanding of pipeline, production, etc. He said that distribution is not in place to use gas as a motor fuel (that's pretty obvious, there's a lot of places, even in PA, where people heat with oil because there are no gas lines), BUT the production is available and then some, and distribution could be put in place relatively quickly if the vehicles were there to burn the gas. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg issue.

There is some pollution with the fracking. Theoretically there shouldn't be, but accidents happen in practice. That said, fracking has completely transformed this region and mostly for the better. It just happened so fast that I don't think the regulators have had a good handle on safety (for example, allowing waste water plants to treat frack water when they have no real ability to remove the majority of radioactivity in it, and where other water works' take their water from further down the river). I think the overall pollution has been less with fracked wells than it would've been with conventional, but that's lost sort of because there wouldn't have been all of these conventional wells. There are definitely winners and losers, and there have definitely been dishonest folks involved in some cases.

It's been a net positive, though, but it is hard on another line of business we have in this area - mining high quality bituminous coal. Our biggest local mining company spun off a gas company, though.

There is so much gas around here that production could probably be increased multiple times if needed, but the price is too low right now to do that. There are other layers that aren't fracked, too...yet.

I sure would love to burn local energy in my car.

Thomas Canfield
08-01-2013, 11:22 AM
Natural gas for general vehicles to me is still way out there. For local fleet use where the supply issue can be addressed, that is where the push should be being made to start. I have seen some reports of supply of LNG (liquefied natural gas) being made available on some major truck routes and trucks are going with LNG for fuel getting around the problem of the high pressure compressed gas tanks and limited range. LNG requires auto refrigeration, or use of product, to maintain the very cold temperature to keep the gas a liquid. Stationary engines can use the natural gas in a pipe line at normal delivery pressure and storage is not an issue. Doing it on a moving vehicle is another set of problems. I also saw that Caterpillar was going to make a larger NG engine for trucks to provide more power since there is less energy in the NG than the diesel engines.

Propane is a liquid at a much lower pressure (about 125 psig) at normal temperatures and so easier to put on a vehicle. Propane for trucks/tractors and farm use was big, but the power of propane is less than diesel or gasoline and most trucks had to switch to gasoline for heavier working applications. Natural gas requires going to cold temperatures and higher pressure or super cold temp and low pressure which is the basis for LNG. With LNG, there is also some issues with vaporizing and warming up the LNG for engine use.

The use of diesel in personal cars/trucks took some time for the supply side to be out there. Natural gas will have even more issues. Someone mentioned the electricity to compress gas at homes, and that cost usually gets overlooked and also the time required for that operation.

This definitely is a discussion that needs a lot of time to bring all the different parts of the puzzle into play.

Harvey M. Taylor
08-01-2013, 12:52 PM
I have had a 55 chevvy car, A 2 ton Ford truck and a 3/4 ton pickup on both gas and propane carburetion. You alternately ran on gas and propane. The gas lubricated the seals. I mistakenly didnt run it on gas, and the seals deteriorated and the truck caught on fire and burned to the ground. The propane didnt explode because of the way the tank was rigged, as all except grill type tanks are. An inside valve detected propane escaping too fast and sealed and s

Harvey M. Taylor
08-01-2013, 1:03 PM
Dont know why the computer quit printing,but here is the 'rest of the story. and sealed the tank from releasing the propane. Here in Tx. we use butane in the summer and propane in the winter because butane freezes. Having gas and propane relieves you of being stranded without a source for butane. The carburetion for propane here in Tx. was about 600 plus the tank. In the car, I had a 30 gal. tank with the regular gas tank. If I wanted both, I w`ould not hesitate in having it installed , My opinion only, Max

Brian Elfert
08-01-2013, 1:43 PM
The local fairgrounds converted a bunch of old vehicles with carbs to use natural gas around 1990. The conversion was sponsored by the natural gas suppliers so it cost the fair nothing. The mechanics liked the fact they no longer had carb problems with the vehicles.

The vehicles had less power with natural gas plus a ton of weight was added because they had at least six huge tanks for the CNG. It took 10 to 15 minutes to fuel the vehicles each time they needed fuel which was at least once during the day plus a fill up at night. When running on gasoline they could go all day on a tank of gasoline so the range was less. All in all, I would use natural gas for my vehicle if I could find stations that sold it and the extra cost was reasonable.

Ken Fitzgerald
08-01-2013, 1:48 PM
David,

In the 60's, a major fertilizer company in Illinois was using propane in all their fleet pickup trucks that their salesmen used to drive out to the farms to interface with their customer. Using propane isn't an entirely new concept.

Joe Angrisani
08-01-2013, 7:20 PM
.....and also the time required for that [refueling] operation.....


.....It took 10 to 15 minutes to fuel the vehicles each time they needed fuel which was at least once during the day plus a fill up at night....

As I understand it, this is one of the tripping points right now. It takes a long time to fuel a vehicle, especially commercial-sized stuff. The pumping facility is either faster and more expensive, or slower and lower cost and designed with overnight fueling in mind. Is this correct?

Brian Elfert
08-01-2013, 8:56 PM
As I understand it, this is one of the tripping points right now. It takes a long time to fuel a vehicle, especially commercial-sized stuff. The pumping facility is either faster and more expensive, or slower and lower cost and designed with overnight fueling in mind. Is this correct?

The local natural gas supplier brought in a temporary fueling station for about three weeks each year. The compressor and fueling station was the size of a large pallet at least. There were about 25 tanks used to store already compressed gas to transfer to vehicles. The night mechanic fueled the vehicles every night plus the drivers usually had to fuel them once during the day. I estimate we got between 75 and 100 miles per fill, but you don't get very good MPG hauling two trailers of passengers between 5 and 15 MPH all day long.

A permanent filling station might have larger capacity to fill faster.

Clarence Martin
08-01-2013, 9:38 PM
I ride the bus with a trader for a large gas company. In order for him to trade, he has to have a good understanding of pipeline, production, etc. He said that distribution is not in place to use gas as a motor fuel (that's pretty obvious, there's a lot of places, even in PA, where people heat with oil because there are no gas lines), BUT the production is available and then some, and distribution could be put in place relatively quickly if the vehicles were there to burn the gas. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg issue.

There is some pollution with the fracking. Theoretically there shouldn't be, but accidents happen in practice. That said, fracking has completely transformed this region and mostly for the better. It just happened so fast that I don't think the regulators have had a good handle on safety (for example, allowing waste water plants to treat frack water when they have no real ability to remove the majority of radioactivity in it, and where other water works' take their water from further down the river). I think the overall pollution has been less with fracked wells than it would've been with conventional, but that's lost sort of because there wouldn't have been all of these conventional wells. There are definitely winners and losers, and there have definitely been dishonest folks involved in some cases.

It's been a net positive, though, but it is hard on another line of business we have in this area - mining high quality bituminous coal. Our biggest local mining company spun off a gas company, though.

There is so much gas around here that production could probably be increased multiple times if needed, but the price is too low right now to do that. There are other layers that aren't fracked, too...yet.

I sure would love to burn local energy in my car.



The big problem with the fracking chemicals , is that the gas companies want to put trade secrets on the chemicals they use to frack the wells. Those chemicals have often been described as no more harmful than dish soap.LOL Up here, they want to send the fracking fluids off to the County water treatment plant to be discharged in the Niagara River, Lake Erie or Lake Ontario. The one water treatment faculity that was supposed to recieve the waste fluids, ended up rejecting it. They won't let the water treatment plants know what is in the fluids. There is no way that they can treat the water unless they know what chemicals to treat the water for, and because of trade secrets, they won't say what those chemicals are.

Then, there is the fact that up to 70% of the chemicals that they inject into the wells, stays in the wells, FOREVER! As we all know, concrete eventually cracks, either through age or from movement of the earth, ect. All those chemicals have to be eating away at the concrete casings as the years go by.

Also have to take into account what happens to the wells after they have used them up. Here, they pushed through a law that took out the DECOMISHIONING of the wells after they have used up all the commercially available gas. The gas companies turn the well over to the property owner to use whatever remaining gas is left in the wells for their own personal use. That us all well and good, but, The homeowners usally don't have the money to properly cap a used up gas well. That could take tens of thousands of dollars, and homeowners insurance will likley not cover the well decomishioning costs. Nor will they cover any contamination caused by leaks .


One thing I did find was the 60% rule for NY. That says that say you have for example, 10 property owners and six property owners wanted wells to be drilled. The remaining 4 property owners could be forced to join in to the drilling for the gas. Even if they did not want to have their property drilled, the gas company could drill right under those properties to get to the properties that would allow drilling. and let's say down the road, the property owners that did not want drilling on their land , at some future date decided that they wanted to drill their own private gas well.... Guess what, they won't have any gas to drill for because it will all have been taken on account of the 60% rule!!!

Bob Rufener
08-04-2013, 6:00 PM
Natural gas could be a viable fuel except for the fact the infrastructure is not in place. The sad thing is, oil drillers in the Dakotas are burning off $100 million (yes million)dollars worth of natural gas every month. What a terrible waste of a natural resource. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/flaring-burns-more-100-million-month-north-dakota-6C10798151

Brian Elfert
08-04-2013, 7:00 PM
Natural gas could be a viable fuel except for the fact the infrastructure is not in place. The sad thing is, oil drillers in the Dakotas are burning off $100 million (yes million)dollars worth of natural gas every month. What a terrible waste of a natural resource. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/flaring-burns-more-100-million-month-north-dakota-6C10798151

The issue is the lack of pipelines to get the gas to market. At $1.2 billion in losses a year you would think they could figure out how to build a pipeline. They have to be releasing a lot of pollutants by burning off all that gas.