Re: Natural Gas
 

Injecting enormous amounts of seriously poisonous chemicals into the ground water and igniting some of them, also vaporising the rest of them into the air is not that great. I'd rather run my engine on gasoline or diesel. It's really a shame that they did exceptions from the laws of polluting fresh water for gas and oil companies in the US not long ago. They are there for a very good reason protecting humans and the environment we strongly depend on both economically and biologically.

We have to find some better ways to extract the resources of natural gas if we can be able to use them. Pumping them from the sea floor is a lot less prone to pollution. So just because it's named natural doesn't mean it's environmentally friendly, just naturally occurring.

That said natural and bio gas (from waste) is run as a second fuel on both gasoline and diesel-engines sold in Europe, my sister has a Passat 1.4TSI that does that, so there shouldn't be a problem doing that. You only need a second fuel system running to the engine and a computer that selects between them.

Sludgy, propane is both technically. It is a catalyst for diesel, in other words it help diesel burn more completely and it also can be used exclusively.
There are a three propane powered diesel pulling tractors locally and I talked to one of the owners. He fires it up on diesel then switches to propane. I asked why not run diesel with the propane injected as a boost and he said there's limits to how much it helps diesel. Instead he runs propane and injects methanol....and yet there is another guy who runs his diesel pulling tractor on methanol exclusively!
The guy running propane/meth is the points leader every year and the the guy on meth is normally 4-5th so maybe that says something?
Also, I asked what boost pressure he's running (compound turbo's)
120psi!!!!

Anyway, I'm a diesel mech (obviously) and I am into racing so I do take an interest and try to pry as much info as I can from guys doing stuff like this. The points leader was very hard to get info out of but I'm pretty sure what he told me was true, in other words I don't think he made up stuff to throw me off. "uh yeah kid, I run peanut butter in my diesel...yeah that's it" LOL!

Omg the press sure!! From wikipedia...
"CNG is made by compressing natural gas (which is mainly composed of methane [CH4]), to less than 1% of the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure. It is stored and distributed in hard containers at a pressure of 200–248 bar (2900–3600 psi), usually in cylindrical or spherical shapes."

Reckon Obama will allow the use of any of this?

He has no choice/say in the matter. Too much pressure from the market and crisis in the economy.

If you want to read more about fracking (the method used to extract natural gas from the ground), have a look att wikipedias site which gives a balanced view but when interpreted with care basically says it's horrible:

Hydraulic fracturing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I was just thinking what is the proper air to fuel ratio for methane ... Looks like about 20 to 1 ?
I wonder if you can get some energy from decompressing it too, since the pressure is so high.