Methane for transport fuel?

Question

a couple of years ago i drove a wonderful methane powered truck. it had a pressurized tank the same size as an ordinary truck tank, and went just fine. but i have never seen another since. why not? not even a bin waggon running on landfill gas? surely that would make sense.....

Answer 1

All the taxi's I took in Japan (from the LNG terminal) ran on natural gas or mostly methane.   There is a demand for the fuel there since its cheaper to get than gasoline and they have been using it enough that people aren't afraid of it.   Methane doesn't have as much energy per fuel unit as say propane, so its better suited for industrial purposes until oil gets in shorter supply.

Answer 2

Probably because it would be so hard to find methane to use as a fuel.  There aren't a lot of locations which capture methane, although it's starting to become more common (landfills, farms, etc.).  In order for a vehicle to be viable, it has to have easy access to plenty of fuel though.  Even once you trap the methane, you have to get it to a location where a vehicle can refuel with it.  That's one of the problems with hydrogen as a transportation fuel too.

Answer 3

Plenty of CNG (i.e. methane) vehicles here.  In fact, in Dallas, the entire bus fleet runs on CNG as well as many service fleets.  The primary problem is range and refueling time.  This is not a problem for most fleet vehicles as they actually do not travel long distances on any give day, and can be fueled while they are parked at night.

Dana, once again you show your general ignorance.  There is plenty of methane available to just about anyone who wants it.  In fact, I'll be so bold to say you probably use methane every day.  It's call natural gas.

Answer 4

Hello Littlero, Again???

When I was in college  (Forty years ago!!!!!!!)  Mother Earth News was doing big, big things with methane.  It is a wonderful fuel, and burns clean.  The oil in the crank case stays much cleaner and pollution is nearly Zilch.  Where do you buy it?  You don't.   It is a "home grown" fuel usually used by farmers and ranchers who use a "digestor" to process the material.  Mother Earth News used Sheep (insert four letter word that starts with "S" here).  It is work loading the digester, and it takes a while to "brew" the batch, but you get the fuel gas and high grade fertilizer .  Mother Earth News still sells the plans for about fifty dollars.  In Wichita Kansas they have four HUGE single cylinder engines which are used to power the pumps that move sewage in the treatment plant there.  The fuel is the methane gas straight from the sewer lines.  

Propane gas is also used as a fuel, and in Kansas is cheaper than gasoline.  It burns much like methane and is commercially available.  The engine stays very clean, and makes almost no pollution.

Answer 5

Methane and natural gas (a mix of methane and ethane) have been used as vehicle fuel in Canada but it never really caught on because of limited range on a tank of fuel.  Propane is more commonly used because it has a much higher energy density by volume.

Answer 6

Australia also uses a lot of methane powered vehicles CNG, as well as LPG. both are available at many service stations and mainly because of lower taxes the price is very good. In Australia most of the ethane is taken out of natural gas before it is supplied as fuel gas, (Ethane is a valuable industrial feed stock to make a whole host of substances from) making the natural gas fuel reasonably pure methane. Not sure what other countries do.

Compressed Natural gas is a good fuel for city driving, not so good for long country trips because you don't get as many miles to a tank full.

Hasn't caught on here though, mainly because of a total lack of infrastructure, they still pump petrol by hand in many parts! (no electricity)