Natural Gas Vehicle

Does anyone have any experience using a natural gas vehicle? I've read you can use biogas as fuel. I'm interested in turning a bus into a mobile home. How challenging would it be to become totally fuel self-sufficient?

Would it be better to just stick with a gasoline engine and use alcohol or a diesel engine and use vegetable oil?

I live in a northern climate that gets pretty cold for a pretty long time, however, this doesn't need to be a restriction unless it simply will NOT work in winter.

Natural Gas, whether Methane other, does not compress easily or safely. LNG or Liquified Natural Gas is a cryogenic liquid, chilled way down to pretty extreme temps to get it to liqufy and allow sufficient volume of fuel without involving high pressures which would require heavy tankage. LPG is a separate thing altogether, being Butane and Propane in various combinations.

To run something on Methane biogas you would need a blimp-ish sized low pressure gas bag for any real usable range.

You're better off putting the blimp in your barn attic to run the house gas stove than strapping it to the roof of your car to drive around.







I believe E100 and B99 can be bought straight out of the pumps these days, or you can make your own. No modification needed with modern cars rated to use the stuff.

WVO or SVO needs some modifications, heaters and filter/pump systems, or a dual tank system, there's plenty of info around, just search the forums here or find a specialist forum.

Nice pic from WWll these were popular in the UK until there tendancy to explode caused a rethink

Wow! I was not expecting this level of expertise! Thank you so very much! I think I like the idea of alcohol fuel, since that can still be produced on the homestead.

You can compress natural gas but you need equipment similar to that used for diving equipment. If you want more details just google Jean Pain and watch the videos of him travelling around in his 2CV van with compressed gas bottles derived from woodchip compost.