Re: Propane convert to CNG to power a tractor?

Posted by Hal/ Eastern WA on November 05, 2014 at 16:06:50 from (97.114.73.10):

In Reply to: Propane convert to CNG to power a tractor? posted by Fullers Farmalls on November 04, 2014 at 23:42:29:

It might work, but I doubt that it would ever be practical. And it would be expensive.

Natural gas carries less energy per unit of volume than Propane, so you would need to use a bunch more to get the same level of power production. Another disadvantage of natural gas as compared to propane is that natural gas will not liquify at nearly normal temperatures and pressures like propane will, so the storage tank would need to be changed to something a LOT stronger to handle the extreme pressures needed to carry enough natural gas to get anything done.

Years ago the agency I worked for tried an experiment with compressed natural gas powering an early 80"s Chevy Caprice. The car also retained the normal gasoline tank and carb, but was supposed to be run on the CNG as much as possible. The 3 heavy tanks nearly filled the trunk of the Caprice sedan and were heavy enough that the car sat down a bit in the back. There was almost no room to store other things in the trunk.

The car ran OK, although it was much more powerful using the gasoline system. Maybe it could have been tuned, or the engine built to run better on the CNG, but the engine was a standard 350 only slightly modified to add the CNG system. The worst problem the guys who had to use the car found, was that even with the 3 CNG tanks that filled the entire trunk, it was not possible to go through an 8 hour shift using CNG without filling up. And the process of filling up took about a half hour, which was deemed a huge waste of time. And the tanks could only be filled at one place that was set up with the high pressure CNG system.

So although the CNG fuel cost was much less than the cost of gasoline to go a given distance, the experiment was considered to be a failure. Eventually the car was converted back to a gasoline only system. I wasn"t involved in getting the car set up for CNG, but I believe that the cost of the conversion had been paid for by the local natural gas company. I assume they got the components back when they were removed from the car. I never heard what the conversion would have cost otherwise, but my guess is that it would have been at least several thousand dollars. Those tanks were really hefty.

CNG is something to think about, but in my opinion, it would not be a bit practical to try to run an old tractor on CNG unless you want to do extensive and expensive modifications to the tractor. Could a person get an old propane tractor to run using natural gas and only a slightly modified system? Probably, but it would have no range at all with the existing tank at a safe pressure level. I would not waste my time on it.

Might there be tractors in the future that are set up to use CNG? I think it is very possible, as it appears that our country has a vast amount of natural gas that can be recovered. But I think such a tractor would need to have huge tanks to store enough CNG to get anything done. Good luck!

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