Why Natural Gas is Natural

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

On 6/30/2019 at 11:47 AM, ronwagn said:

I am OK with gasoline, but think diesel should gradually be replaced with LNG/CNG because it is cleaner and less expensive. 

Something to look at in regards to the comment above:

https://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/Natural_Gas_vs_Diesel_Generators.aspx

[ronwagn + 6,290]

Seems like a balanced article. I would suggest that the ideal would be a dual fuel version for maximum reliability. These are common choices for trucks and ships. You can use a little diesel or all diesel. I understand that a little diesel helps the natural gas somehow. Another possibility is micro turbines which can run off of natural gas or possibly kerosene. I do not know how close kerosene is to diesel chemically. Then there are the fuel cell fans, but that technology seems to be do expensive to really catch on. 

Thanks for the article. I am not a rabid diesel hater, just think that if it gets too expensive it should have to compete with natural gas options. I worked in a hospital for twenty years and our generators always worked when needed. They were probably diesel. 

[canadas canadas + 136]

I have always found it interesting that natural gas is usually seen as something positive where as methane is usually seen as something negative even though methane accounts for most of the components of natural gas especially when used to heat homes.

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

On 6/30/2019 at 12:47 AM, ronwagn said:

I am OK with gasoline, but think diesel should gradually be replaced with LNG/CNG because it is cleaner and less expensive. 

To be honest using oil to produce gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, and petroleum gas is not really the greatest idea in my opinion, a ton of oil is around 500-600 dollars, a ton of gas is between 120 and 300 dollars, is better business is to use oil to make expensive and high added value petrochemicals and using natural gas to produce synthetic fuel.

A lot of the problems of the diesel engine related to the production of NOx and Particulate matter can be partially solved by producing higher quality synthetic diesel fuel from natural gas, which apart from having a 20 to 25% higher energy density due to the higher hydrogen content, it has no sulfur, phosphorous or any substance coming from your oil well, because, well, natural gas is a gas.  And i forgot to mention the NOx emission has been partially solved with the SCR systems.

The thing with natural gas is that either you use it or you burn it, and there's trillions upon trillion of tons of the stuff, is just that most of the sources are not recoverable at this moment, but technology will likely make Kerogen Shale Pyrolysis, Methane Hydrate extraction economically recoverable. Also, 50 years ago your oil well produced 1 to 2KG of natural gas for every 10KG of oil, as we use deeper and older oil deposits we produce more natural gas for every kg of oil, and Tight Oil (wrongly called Shale oil) produces around 1KG of natural gas for every 1KG of oil

[ronwagn + 6,290]

11 hours ago, Sebastian Meana said:

To be honest using oil to produce gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, and petroleum gas is not really the greatest idea in my opinion, a ton of oil is around 500-600 dollars, a ton of gas is between 120 and 300 dollars, is better business is to use oil to make expensive and high added value petrochemicals and using natural gas to produce synthetic fuel.

A lot of the problems of the diesel engine related to the production of NOx and Particulate matter can be partially solved by producing higher quality synthetic diesel fuel from natural gas, which apart from having a 20 to 25% higher energy density due to the higher hydrogen content, it has no sulfur, phosphorous or any substance coming from your oil well, because, well, natural gas is a gas.  And i forgot to mention the NOx emission has been partially solved with the SCR systems.

The thing with natural gas is that either you use it or you burn it, and there's trillions upon trillion of tons of the stuff, is just that most of the sources are not recoverable at this moment, but technology will likely make Kerogen Shale Pyrolysis, Methane Hydrate extraction economically recoverable. Also, 50 years ago your oil well produced 1 to 2KG of natural gas for every 10KG of oil, as we use deeper and older oil deposits we produce more natural gas for every kg of oil, and Tight Oil (wrongly called Shale oil) produces around 1KG of natural gas for every 1KG of oil

I would like to see natural gas used directly in trucking rather than diesel. but making it into gasoline is possible. You are the first to tell me about making it into diesel. 

There are lots of companies using natural gas for trucks. See http://www.ngvglobal.com/

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

4 hours ago, ronwagn said:

I would like to see natural gas used directly in trucking rather than diesel. but making it into gasoline is possible. You are the first to tell me about making it into diesel. 

There are lots of companies using natural gas for trucks. See http://www.ngvglobal.com/

Yes, but there are inconvenients, you loose a lot of torque through, diesel engines have lot's of torque the biggest Inline-6 truck engine, the Caterpillar-C18 acert has 1200hp and 6000NM of torque, and one thing to remember is that power output is a magical number created by multiplying torque x rpm, torque on the other hand is the rotational force and is what moves the truck, diesel engines allways have more force than a spark ignited engine,

The infrastructure of LNG tends to be pretty complex compared with liquid fuels, that's why i think the use of natural gas in transport is easier to apply if is converted to synthetic fuel, it could work well and we could see more and more trucks or even planes working on LNG, is a good rocket fuel for sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyn2gOimRfM

[ronwagn + 6,290]

17 hours ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Yes, but there are inconvenients, you loose a lot of torque through, diesel engines have lot's of torque the biggest Inline-6 truck engine, the Caterpillar-C18 acert has 1200hp and 6000NM of torque, and one thing to remember is that power output is a magical number created by multiplying torque x rpm, torque on the other hand is the rotational force and is what moves the truck, diesel engines allways have more force than a spark ignited engine,

The infrastructure of LNG tends to be pretty complex compared with liquid fuels, that's why i think the use of natural gas in transport is easier to apply if is converted to synthetic fuel, it could work well and we could see more and more trucks or even planes working on LNG, is a good rocket fuel for sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyn2gOimRfM

I have stated that LNG could be used for aircraft, but rockets using LNG is a new idea for me. Inspirational. Thanks

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

On 7/18/2019 at 6:36 PM, canadas canadas said:

I have always found it interesting that natural gas is usually seen as something positive where as methane is usually seen as something negative even though methane accounts for most of the components of natural gas especially when used to heat homes.

There really isn't much of anything else besides methane in LNG, as you mention. I've seen many examples of where people aren't aware of chemical constituents in their products (and let's be fair, we shouldn't expect them to be). It's just typical public disconnect to think of them as separate entities. Another fantastic, and rather hilarious, example is when people think there's a difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear bomb. 

[canadas canadas + 136]

15 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

There really isn't much of anything else besides methane in LNG, as you mention. I've seen many examples of where people aren't aware of chemical constituents in their products (and let's be fair, we shouldn't expect them to be). It's just typical public disconnect to think of them as separate entities. Another fantastic, and rather hilarious, example is when people think there's a difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear bomb. 

Just like dry/lean natural gas is methane as well as compressed natural gas (CNG).

Edited August 3, 2019 by canadas canadas

[canadas canadas + 136]

On 7/31/2019 at 9:20 PM, ronwagn said:

I would like to see natural gas used directly in trucking rather than diesel. but making it into gasoline is possible. You are the first to tell me about making it into diesel. 

There are lots of companies using natural gas for trucks. See http://www.ngvglobal.com/

This has been done for sometime by PetroSA.  See http://www.petrosa.co.za/innovation_in_action/Pages/GTL-TECHNOLOGY.aspx

[ronwagn + 6,290]

9 hours ago, canadas canadas said:

This has been done for sometime by PetroSA.  See http://www.petrosa.co.za/innovation_in_action/Pages/GTL-TECHNOLOGY.aspx

Thanks for the great link which also contains another link with great images. I encourage anyone interested to look at the download. Apparently coal and biomass can also be used. Diesel and naptha at low temp process and more gasoline and less diesel at high temp process!

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by ronwagn

[NickW + 2,714]

On 8/2/2019 at 12:23 AM, ronwagn said:

I have stated that LNG could be used for aircraft, but rockets using LNG is a new idea for me. Inspirational. Thanks

If you read Bob Zubrins book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars he proposes making methane or ethylene* for the fuel for the Earth return vehicle. 

This involves shipping several tonnes of hydrogen as the feedstock. The Carbon and Oxygen come from atmospheric CO2. The chemical process is the Sabatier reaction

 

*Ethylene is C2H4 so is actually less H intensive which is the feedstock you have to take to Mars. 

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

On 8/2/2019 at 8:43 PM, KeyboardWarrior said:

There really isn't much of anything else besides methane in LNG, as you mention. I've seen many examples of where people aren't aware of chemical constituents in their products (and let's be fair, we shouldn't expect them to be). It's just typical public disconnect to think of them as separate entities. Another fantastic, and rather hilarious, example is when people think there's a difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear bomb. 

Well even for a Nerdy guy like me is complicated to remember the stuff there's in gasoline, or how i like to call it "Naphta", i forgot to mention that one of the advantadges of producing synthetic fuel with natural gas, specially with the new STG+ process is that is possible to control very tightly the chemistry of the fuel, if you are curious if i had to make a mixture for high octane gasoline it would be

-Methylbutane
-DimethylButane
-TrimethylButane
-TrimethylPentane
-TetramethyPentane
-TetramethylHexane
-Methylpropylene
-Methylbutylene
-Ethylbutylene
-DimethylPentylene
-TrimethylButylene
-Dimethylhexylene
-TrimethylPentylene
-Paraxylene
-Metaxylene
-Orthoxylene
-Toluene
-Benzene

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

1 hour ago, Sebastian Meana said:

Well even for a Nerdy guy like me is complicated to remember the stuff there's in gasoline, or how i like to call it "Naphta", i forgot to mention that one of the advantadges of producing synthetic fuel with natural gas, specially with the new STG+ process is that is possible to control very tightly the chemistry of the fuel, if you are curious if i had to make a mixture for high octane gasoline it would be

-Methylbutane
-DimethylButane
-TrimethylButane
-TrimethylPentane
-TetramethyPentane
-TetramethylHexane
-Methylpropylene
-Methylbutylene
-Ethylbutylene
-DimethylPentylene
-TrimethylButylene
-Dimethylhexylene
-TrimethylPentylene
-Paraxylene
-Metaxylene
-Orthoxylene
-Toluene
-Benzene

Looks like some good aviation gasoline to me. Too bad the last one on the list is heavily frowned upon lol. Out of curiosity, how do you calculate the octane rating of a fuel mixture? This isn't something I've delved into heavily. 

[Sebastian Meana + 278]

24 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Looks like some good aviation gasoline to me. Too bad the last one on the list is heavily frowned upon lol. Out of curiosity, how do you calculate the octane rating of a fuel mixture? This isn't something I've delved into heavily. 

There's basically a lot of places to see the octane ratings of different compounds put in very nice tables

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9ae6/624cba9d45d758d5999756e3e71aba93e667.pdf
http://www.ou.edu/catalysis/pubs/2006-1.pdf
http://match.pmf.kg.ac.rs/electronic_versions/Match28/match28_13-27.pdf

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

6 hours ago, Sebastian Meana said:

There's basically a lot of places to see the octane ratings of different compounds put in very nice tables

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9ae6/624cba9d45d758d5999756e3e71aba93e667.pdf
http://www.ou.edu/catalysis/pubs/2006-1.pdf
http://match.pmf.kg.ac.rs/electronic_versions/Match28/match28_13-27.pdf

Thanks!