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Old 11-09-2012, 11:17 AM   #5
shikataganai
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Member#: 92634
Join Date: Aug 2005
Chapter/Region: RMIC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SCRAPPYDO View Post
The natural gas coming out of your house is just about 5 psi. You would need a pumping station of some kind.
That's what a vehicle refueling appliance like the Fuelmaker lineup is for, to compress the fuel to 3,600 psi: http://www.brcfuelmaker.it/eng/flotte/fmq.asp?click=no . Home refueling is certainly not a cheap option, and the Fuelmakers are far more expensive than the EVSE necessary for home charging of EVs...

Example for a good-sized unit for home use would be a Fuelmaker FMQ-2-36. About $9,000 new + installation. Refuels at just under 1 gge/hr, drawing 1.9 kW to power its compressor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SCRAPPYDO View Post
I think this would be smarter if they just made the whole vehicle CNG and srcrew the normal gas all together. That way they could least free up some space for the huge tanks.

Also, that is possibly the most inelegant design I have ever seen. Seems this could be packaged better and lighter and smaller.
It's admittedly a completely different market segment but Honda made the choice to make their Civic Natural Gas a dedicated CNG-only vehicle. They used a Type 4 (composite over plastic liner, so lighter) tank and put it in the trunk. Schematic is for the GX, the last gen version pre-name change:



I'd never consider a dedicated CNG vehicle, though. It'd be like having an EV only with much scarcer public recharging refueling infrastructure, totally tethered to the refueling stations or one's home if one had a VRA.

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/locator/stations/ has a map of what's out there in terms of alt fuel infrastructure nationwide.
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