Comments on: Natural Gas - Bridge to sustainability by Tom Hewett

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:02:52 +0000

Your information help me a lot. Good job.keep it up. Thanks!

By: Tom Hewett

Tom Hewett — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:42:34 +0000

I have quite accidentally realized that comments can be posted here. Thanks for the comments!

Bill, In hindsight, I would change the title to “Natural Gas - It had better be a bridge!” Fortunately, there are many reasons to count on it being so and thanks for adding the potential of the Siberian shelf to that list.

CNG as a motor fuel is not my area but I know exactly who to talk to and perhaps I can get him to write an editorial soon.

Thanks for reading.

By: Mark Nease

Mark Nease — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:51:43 +0000

“What I hope to share via my experience is that anyone predicting the imminent decline of oil supplies and, as a result, our civilization, could be premature, just as Ravi Batra was in calling the next great depression.”

Premature, perhaps, but not by much…

By: Don Hirschberg

Don Hirschberg — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:19:41 +0000

If we had been using CNG as motor fuel for the last hundred years, knowing the properties of gasoline, we would have had great safely concerns if someone proposed replacing CNG with gasoline. Considering gasoline’s volatility, flammability and explosive limits the idea of millions of air breathing atmospheric tanks in the hands of unknowing people could well have been judged too hazardous.

By: Bill Simpson in Slidell

Bill Simpson in Slidell — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:45:43 +0000

An interesting article Tom. Natural gas had better be a bridge fuel, or we are all in serious trouble. Shell and Qatar just invested a lot of money to build the Pearl natural gas to liquid fuel plant. Shell’s web site explains the whole process. I doubt that they would build such a huge industrial complex if they didn’t think that it would be profitable. How much gas is wasted in the conversion process, I don’t know, but nuclear or solar electricity may eventually be able to reduce any gas wasted in the conversion process. Whether enough gas can be found for widespread use of the process is the great question. Since a liquid is a lot denser than a gas, I’ll bet that it takes a lot of gas to make a gallon of diesel. Is there enough gas out there to keep GTL plants going for a few decades? If there is, that could help a lot with peak oil.
We want to push back a liquid fuel shortage as long as possible, because the escalating cost of liquid fuels will wreck the economy long before the actual physical fuel shortage becomes a critical problem.
Methane hydrates (clathrates) supposedly contain more energy than all other fossil fuels combined. Recently, a team of Japanese and Canadian researchers produced some gas from them with a well in the Canadian Arctic. Will extraction ever be economic, is an open question.
Everyone should be aware that the huge Russian Arctic continental shelf may contain vast volumes of natural gas. It is nearly half the size of the USA! It is shallow water, but iced over. Four large rivers have been depositing organic material into the Arctic Ocean from Siberia for a very long time. I will be surprised if a lot of gas isn’t found there. I have been urging the Russians to increase seismic work there for the last couple of years.

By: Scott Benson

Scott Benson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:06:56 +0000

And don’t get me started on the heaving and creaking you hear when you are trying to fill up the tanks. You feel vunerable just standing next to them.

By: Scott Benson

Scott Benson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:05:08 +0000

Just a quick note from the experience we had with CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles in the 1990s. While we may be on to something with the predicted large amounts of (shale) natural gas now being found around the country, I would remind everyone that you have to compress that gas to 3,600 psi at least to get enough BTUs onboard a standard-sized vehicle to propel it. That is a LOT of pressure to be sitting on, despite its proper claims of safety thus far. Putting a 50 year old secretary into such a vehicle takes energy all by itself. If you’ve never heard a gas pipe on a truck rupture, and I have, it sounds like a bomb going off. All our CNG pickups had to be recalled because someone forgot to prevent the acid-filled rainwater from collecting in the plastic cylinder covers, which essentially “bathed” every cylinder in liquid acid. There are lots of good things about natural gas for vehcles, but from a practical perspective, we’ve stopped buying them.