Not good

[digr]

cut into a compressed natural gas tank, police said.

[Ironman]

Well, you only do that once.
That shop will take a bit of work to get it back in shape
I'm assuming the tank was not empty, filling it with water is a common way to get the gas out, but he must have not know that.

[digr]

Do they sell compressed natural gas in tanks or was it propane?

[JohnBoy]

Originally Posted by digr

Do they sell compressed natural gas in tanks or was it propane?

They do over here anyway. Would be the norm as opposed to propane over here.

[mccutter]

Originally Posted by JohnBoy

They do over here anyway. Would be the norm as opposed to propane over here.

Propane is more easily compressed into a liquid and is sold by weight here. There is either an exchange program or someone specially trained will fill them out of a larger tank. My local ACE Hardware will do that for me. The pic shows shows a similar setup although my ACE has a more basic screw-on fill connector and use a gravity scale along with a flow meter to measure contents. There is always a blast of lost gas when the connector is removed...

CNG cars/trucks as would be used (only) by a gas company have one or two specialized hi-pressure vessels to store the gas. And of course a specialized delivery system possibly piggy-backed onto the petrol system. The greenies once thought of this as a solution without realizing the explosiveness and that people are stupid...

[JohnBoy]

Small/portable bottles would be propane or butane here, never CNG. but on the flipside then you would almost never see big installed propane tanks, they would always be CNG.


CNG in cars too, not propane. it's always been a kind of niche thing, every decade or so it increases in popularity but never really takes off because of the inconvenience of having to track two fuel levels. The safety thing should be relatively minor, they cracked down on randomers installing kits about 20 years ago, so assuming you go to someone who does the job properly it's not a whole lot different to petrol which isnt exactly benign.


The appeal over here is tax related. road fuels in Europe are generally quite heavily taxed, always have been. but CNG isnt a road fuel, it's a heating fuel so if you had a thirsty car it could often pay back the conversion cost in a year or two.

[LKeithR]

Originally Posted by mccutter

...CNG cars/trucks as would be used (only) by a gas company have one or two specialized hi-pressure vessels to store the gas....

Originally Posted by JohnBoy

...CNG in cars too, not propane. it's always been a kind of niche thing, every decade or so it increases in popularity but never really takes off because of the inconvenience of having to track two fuel levels.

Pretty much the same thing here. Natural gas as a road fuel has been around for years; and not just commercial vehicles, it's also used on private cars as well. If a person is running propane it would often be in a dual fuel application but I think most of the natural gas conversions are single fuel only.

Because we have such large reserves of natural gas in this province the government has been pushing it as an alternate fuel for many years. As JohnBoy says, it's popularity ebbs and flows with the price of gasoline.

The biggest problem with natural gas is the range. Because it can't be compressed to a liquid state and always stays as a gas you just don't get that much energy in a single tank. Great for "townies" and those going short distances but very inconvenient if you're going very far...