Viability of natural gas conversions on cars and boilers.

Car conversions for LPG and CNG (compressed natural gas) were fairly common a decade ago down here, so its not like you would have to try some potentially dangerous backyard modification. I don't know what has been happening recently, I guess it really depends on if you have easy access to either LPG or CNG.

During WW2 many cars and buses were converted to run on natural gas (not compressed) in the UK towns and cities.

They had a large gas bag on the roof of the vehicle, I don't think it was very efficient, but in the war years and in town at low speeds it was effective at reducing the use of precious coal / petrol reserves in the UK.

Depending on how old your furnace is, you can probably get a bolt on gas burner to replace the oil burner. My father had that option on his oil furnace, but he retired to Virginia before the gas line was installed.

Conversion of a furnace or boiler is easy, you need to change the burner unit, you can also go for a "duel fired burner" so that you can switch the fuel. We do this at my work place. The natural gas for commercial and industrial use is priced at Rs. 12 per cubic metre against Rs. 32 for heavy oil.

However, there is shorage of natural gas and we do not get to use the full "quota" we are allocated. We have to switch the fuel use between heavy oil(we call furnace oil) and natural gas every day.

On vehicles front, While the natural gas price here in Mumbai, India, is Rs. 22 per cubic metre, Petrol is Rs. 55 per litre and diesel Rs. 38 per litre. Now you can imagine the advantage of conversion. Presently one US dollar is Rs. 43.

The conversion kit costs about Rs. 40,000 for petrol vehicles. The conversion kit are mostly Italian. I understand that conversion from diesel to natural gas is very expensive. All the taxis in Mumbai are now on natural gas, and this helps on pollution front as well.

I would like to know fuel prices in your country just for comparison sake. Would like to guess how much our inefficient government swindles from people on fuel front.

Rajesh Salaskar

The swindling by governments is everywhere.

Since the ratio of our Pak Rupee with the USD is at Pak Rs. 75/- to one USD therefore the prices must be viewed in that perspective.

The price of kit varies from Pak Rs. 35000/- to 55000/- depending upon your vehicle.

The price of premium grade petrol is Rs. 87/- per liter whereas CNG is rated Rs. 44/- per kg at 200 Bar.

In a so called 55 liter cylinder approximately 8 kgs of gas worth Rs. 320/- can be filled which gives about 130 to 140 kms in city driving for an average 1300 cc engine as compared to about 13 kms per liter for petrol worth Rs. 87/-.

The advantage is there of course.

I agree with you that the conversion of diesel to natural gas is expensive primarily due to the requirement of a gas compressor.

Best regards

NAVEED ATHAR

Thanks for the quick reply. Petrol looks marginally cheaper(in USD terms) than here in India, but the conversion kit is definitely much cheaper.

The availability of gas though is very poor and you see very long ques of Autorikshaws(all converted to CNG) on CNG pumps. They have to wait hours to get the gas. I think that's why not many cars are going for it.

Best regards

Rajesh Salaskar

Thank you for your response.

Fortunately the situation of gas supply in Pakistan is much better and their are CNG stations just about everywhere with the result that there is some competition between them resulting in their offering lower prices than the government's posted price. At places even within Lahore they go down to as much as Rs. 38/- per kg against Rs. 44/- and the amount and quality is the same.

Nearly every new buyer of a car goes straight for the conversion which facility is offered by a large number of specialised workshops.

I have a Suzuki Margalla (Esteem in India) with a 1.3 Liter since 1998 and it has now put in more than 160000 kms on gas with the engine running fine.

Best Regards

NAVEED ATHAR

If you want a swindling government come to the UK!

Our petrol prices are astromnomical!

£1.099 Per Litre!

and over half of that goes in tax!

That's more expensive than here in India. I was always under impression that we pay maximum for the petrol. Now I know, but this might still be true if you consider relative income of common man.

Moreover, our government swindles all the money from people and then wastes it in inefficient and corrupt systems.

We complain a lot about gas prices, but they are reasonable compared to most countries. Regular gas hit a high of about $4.19/gal, and dropped to the current $3.54 at my local station. The problem is that we have no public transportation to speak of, so we drive everywhere. I have a 25 mile trip each way to work. The average American car is driven between 12,000 and 15,000 miles each year. Add in the (misguided?) individuals that need to have the biggest, thirstiest cars they can find, and you get gas taking a big chuck out of a budget.

I live in Western Australia and we have enough natural gas for many hundreds of years. The lack of interest in running vehicles on CNG is astounding! there are no conversion centres and I can't even find a place that sells tanks.

I have an International Scout ('79 5.6L V8) that runs on petrol or LPG. The price of petrol here is about $1.50/litre and LPG is about 65c/litre. Our dollar is worth about 90c US. I have calculated that CNG (from my house supply and filled/compressed at home) would be about half the price of LPG.

Now Naveed, if you could just point me in the direction of some suppliers?

For conversion of a vehicle from petrol(gas for Americans) to natural gas, you need to have the filling station to get the natural gas at 200 bar pressure apart from the conversion kit in vehicle. The piped gas that supplies the utilities in ncities is at the pressure of 20 bar(kg/cm2). Until you have the filling station that compresses this gas from 20 bar to 200 bar, conversion of vehicle is of no use.

Conversion of boilers and furnaces from oil to natural gas is verymuch easier.

What would a home scale system cost? Seems like the payback shouldn't be all that long, especially if you can avoid all those taxes! At least until your neighbor gets jealous.

Depends on what system you have at home. At my home we replaced the burner nozzles and the piped gas was connected through a gas meter. The charges were only $1200.

Here in Mumbai, India we do not need space heating like in many places, so the system is nothing but a stove with four burners for cooking. But for any system the payback is good unlike for vehicles.

I was trying to get vapor absorption airconditioning for home but the smaller systems (less than 5 TR) are not availale here. Are you aware any of such systems?

I was actually thinking of compression equipment also. So that you could use it for small vehicles. I am thinking of using propane type equipment. What would that cost?

Thanks,

Ron

I have no idea, but compressing combustible gas from 20 bar to 200 bar must be expensive, considering the safety features apart from the compressor equipment itself.

Do you have your own compressor? Is it safe to have around? What would it cost to buy and set up? What is the range? California has companies that convert cars. I just read that natural gas is very cheap in Utah, and that there is a real movement towards natural gas cars. I think it was in the Wall Street Journal. Of course T. Boone Pickens is running ads promoting the idea as well.

Any gas fitter would be able to to obtain appropriate jets, or maybe even install a brand new burner. , and do the job...it doesn't mean getting a new furnace! Go with a pro though...you don't want to mess with fire in the basement!

I remember when natural gas came to town. We were installing a new furnace anyway so that was no problem. I don't think that it took half an hour to change the jets on the water heater and the kitchen stove, truly trivial operations.

You should be able to find several places in any large city that do petrol to LPG conversions. A diesel to LPG conversion requires that you still burn some diesel just to get ignition so the amount of diesel fuel actually used will be much lower.

In Delhi public service vehicles (busses, taxis and auto- rickshaws) were converted to CNG a number of years ago. When I re-visited not long after the change, the air quality was greatly improved (although it can still get bad).

To all of you who responded, thank you very much.

I'm optimistic of my being able to convert the existing furnace to gas use, hopefully with the existing blower.

Because there are no gas stations offering natural gas at 200 bar, the limited range of compressed natural gas makes the auto conversion less than effective. However, if there is a chance that an LPG conversion can give me both dual fuel capability and lower my fuel bills, I may do it.

Again, thanks to all of you, particularly our friends on the other side of the planet, for sharing yourself and your knowledge as you did.

L.J.

See the Phill home natural gas , wall mounted, car filler. It is on todays greencarcongress.com website. I do not know if it compresses the gas, but at least you could fill up when you get home. Love your quote.

Sorry, that was a 2004 article. Just go to myphill.com