From fuel efficiencies to environmental controls, the beneficial impact of energy research and applications is felt today more than ever.
When it comes to energy and technology, innovation is increasingly focused on three emerging worldwide issues—transportation, home use and alternate energy sources. Innovation in all three areas is helping to keep energy affordable and is aligned with familiar infrastructure and use, while being responsive regarding social and environmental issues. And natural gas is central within all three.
Transportation presents the most persistent challenge regarding the international issue of carbon dioxide reduction. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2016, CO2 from light-duty vehicles equaled 30 percent of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions, with about 1,540 million metric tons coming from gasoline and diesel. Automakers face demands to squeeze more and more miles from each gallon of motor fuel, but in American markets, the popularity of big SUVs and pickup trucks means that overall vehicular emissions have continued to trend upwards. In addition, the number of vehicle miles traveled has increased.
Natural gas emits 117 pounds of CO2 per million Btus. By comparison, gasoline (without ethanol) emits 157.2 pounds, and diesel 161.3. Clearly, if more vehicles were powered by natural gas, CO2 emissions would start to decrease.
While there are natural gas-powered vehicles now, there are challenges to expansion. Conventional compressed natural gas refueling requires significant energy to compress gas to 3,600 pounds per square inch. This requires expensive, industrial-level infrastructure that demands considerable maintenance. Additionally, CNG cylinders can be a clumsy fit within vehicles.
Now, a company based in South Carolina is working to change that. It’s making natural gas the alternate fuel within a hybrid natural gas/gasoline vehicle, starting with Ford’s top-selling F-150 pickup.
Adsorbed Natural Gas Products Inc. has developed equipment and technology allowing low-pressure natural gas refueling for vehicles. The low-pressure feature is central to ANGP’s offering, which the company refers to as its “plug-in hybrid adsorbed natural gas vehicle,” or PHANGV, for short.
ANGP presents its use of low-pressure natural gas as “an alternative fuel option that redefines hybrid vehicles.” Others agree: In June, at the 2018 World Gas Conference in Washington, D.C., ANGP was selected to receive the conference’s “Transportation Driven by Gas” Innovation Award.
For customers—and natural gas companies—low-pressure fueling could be a game changer, allowing overnight refueling at home or at a business. According to Bob Bonelli, ANGP’s president and CEO, refueling would take about five hours, similar to the amount of time it takes an electric vehicle to recharge overnight with a level 2 charger.
ANGP’s initial customer targets are individual pickup owners and small businesses with, say, a fleet of five to 10 trucks that travel between 80 and 100 miles per day. Importantly, though, the PHANGV application can extend to larger-frame light-duty vehicles, such as SUVs and vans.
A second critical aspect within PHANGV is taking advantage of new composite materials. ANGP’s materials partner is Ingevity Corporation, which specializes in high-performance carbon materials and technologies. ANGP and Ingevity use a highly porous adsorbent material to densely store natural gas molecules at pressures of 900 psig and below. Then, under controlled depressurization, gas is used as the engine demands. Compared to batteries, the system is lightweight, weighing only 270 pounds. To deliver similar power and range, a plug-in system would need to weigh 1,117 pounds. In addition, the PHANGV tanks fit like a tool kit at the top of the truck bed.
This system is market ready, and this month, ANGP plans to have a formal “qualified vehicle modifier” agreement with Ford, which—critical for a buyer—preserves all Ford vehicle warranties.
Cost for the add-on natural gas system and equipment is between $9,000 and $10,000. Bonelli is confident that will come down to $8,000, and maybe even to $5,000 if the equipment is added by the vehicle manufacturer. Bonelli said that consumer surveys show these prices to be in the sweet spot regarding what customers will pay for an alternately fueled vehicle that delivers environmental benefits; uses a fuel that is competitively priced or cheaper than gasoline or diesel; and, of course, is readily available thanks to home fueling.
Bonelli also said that with natural gas, a truck retains all power and performance features. Critically, with this hybrid system, the exact fuel used—natural gas or gasoline—is determined by a singular computer. In most urban areas, for example, natural gas would be the better fuel. However, distance or load could mean an instantaneous switch to gasoline or diesel. The point is, if you’re 150 miles from home and pulling a horse trailer through the Smoky Mountains, you’ll make it back.
With in-home refueling, ANGP calculates a 73 percent potential increase in natural gas consumption per residential customer. But consider this: The average light truck travels about 11,443 miles annually, using about 521 gallons of gasoline. With PHANGV, ANGP says natural gas could replace about 375 gallons—strong numbers for a business case and great numbers for CO2 reduction and the environment.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fuel cells—which use natural gas to produce electricity and heat—can power systems as large as a utility power station and as small as a laptop computer. They can operate at 60 percent efficiency, higher than combustion engines. And hydrogen fuel cells emit only water—no carbon dioxide emissions and no air pollutants.
The full potential from fuel cells, however, remains under development. Significant challenges include cost, durability and performance: Fuel cells, for example, require the rarer-than-gold element platinum.
Despite these challenges, Tokyo Gas is bringing the fuel cell future ever closer. Since 2009, Tokyo Gas and other Japanese partners have made available a power device called Ene-Farm, made by Panasonic Corporation. The size of a typical refrigerator, Ene-Farm uses natural gas as its source of hydrogen, and unlike most other fuel cells, it is aimed at residential home use, including apartment buildings and condominiums.
The project involves what’s being called a model public-private partnership, with the Japanese government subsidizing part of the cost of the device, which totals about $14,000 in U.S. currency. In Tokyo Gas’ case, Ene-Farm installation is one of its 2017 “Key Future Initiatives,” an effort within the company’s larger “Global Warming Countermeasures.” According to Tokyo Gas documents, Ene-Farms can cut CO2 emissions by about 1.3 tons per year compared with conventional systems producing an equivalent amount of electricity and heat. Because of the potential environmental benefits, the Japanese government wants extensive installation, with 5.3 million units installed by 2030.
In theory, Ene-Farm could provide about 60 percent of a typical household’s power for electricity along with hot water, functioning as part of a hybrid itself, supplemented with power from the grid. Ene-Farm has worked dependably for the last 10 years, explained Hiroki Takahashi, spokesperson with TG’s Corporate and Strategy Group. It currently functions at a combined heat/electrical efficiency of 86 percent (35 percent for heat, 51 percent for generating electricity). That’s a solid rating, an efficiency that is frequently contrasted with Japan’s electrical grid, which is at about 35 percent.
Takahashi said that Ene-Farm sales in Japan total about 250,000 units. While government subsidies are slated to end by 2020, Takahashi said that manufacturers and distributors are working to get Ene-Farm costs low enough so that subsidies won’t need to continue.
Energy professionals use the term “at scale” to reference the dimensions of real-world market and infrastructure. When something is “at scale,” it’s ready for prime time—no longer confined to a niche market or laboratory conditions, nor prohibitively expensive and requiring subsidies.
This systemwide application and outcome are the goals of a new project in Sabadell, Spain, called the CoSin project, led by Naturgy, formerly Gas Natural Fenosa, based in Barcelona.
CoSin is a power-to-gas, or P2G, research project that began in May 2018. It’s being touted as another step in moving the world along a fascinating technical possibility: the ability to “save” renewable electric power by converting that electricity into methane, the primary component of natural gas, and then moving that gas into existing pipelines and to customers. Another option is using the gas for power when electrical demand goes up, but wind and solar production is intermittent.
CO2 is also a primary material for P2G. CoSin’s main objective is to develop synthetic fuels using biogenically sourced carbon and water. To start, researchers will use CO2 generated at a sewage treatment plant, and longer term, they want to add other carbon sources, possibly forest biomass, slurries or sewage sludge.
During the past four years, 40 percent of the electricity in Spain has been generated from renewable energy. Gas storage capacity in Spain is huge, close to 30 terawatt hours, which means it would be possible to store, as natural gas, all the renewable electricity produced by wind farms for six months.
Among energy chemists, methanation is not new; it’s more than 100 years old. But the challenge has always been system balance—finding a way to produce the methane that didn’t require more energy than the value of the final methane itself.
CoSin presents an intriguing prospect: that the primary energy input might be free, sourced from renewable energy generated in excess of demand—for example, at night, when the wind is blowing but most people are asleep. Could that “free” energy favorably change the economics of methanation?
The chemistry is easy to grasp. The process depends on electrolysis—using an electric current to split a compound. In this case, that involves using free electricity (from excess solar or wind) to split water (steam) into hydrogen and oxygen, then combining the hydrogen with CO2 under the right conditions to generate methane and water.
Naturgy officials have not yet presented the specific technical challenges that they will focus on at CoSin. P2G, though, is a major topic within European energy research, with recent projects in Germany, the Netherlands and France, and directives by the European Union designed to drive P2G adoption. In the United States, Southern California Gas Company is leading the way with research into P2G. It most recently was awarded $800,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to study how certain microbes can convert carbon dioxide directly to methane using renewable electricity.
It’s no secret that for energy, technology and environmental progress are inextricably linked. As research continues to think ahead, these projects are only the beginning as today’s innovation and imagination lead to payoffs tomorrow and as outside-of-the-box thinking moves into the mainstream.
It’s a fine balance: How can you meet government clean air standards while still providing products to the public at a manageable cost?
Southern California Gas Company is helping to answer that question by its ongoing support of new technologies. This includes its recent participation in the testing of a new low-emission residential natural gas furnace. Developed by Rheem, the Ultra-Low NOx furnace is one of several new models from manufacturers that meet more-stringent emission requirements set by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and that reduce emissions by 65 percent.
It took five years for Rheem engineers to get to that number, and SoCalGas’ testing, completed this summer, evaluated Rheem’s furnace under normal household operating conditions. While Rheem will review the test data prior to full production and is also conducting its own field tests, SoCalGas’ lab testing demonstrated that the units performed as expected, with some units actually testing below the SCAQMD limit of 14 nanograms per joule.
Proper equipment performance is important for SoCalGas, and, of course, residents in its service territory. In addition to air quality benefits, the availability of low NOx furnaces keeps an important appliance option open for consumers in the Los Angeles metro region. SoCalGas reports that households prefer natural gas 4-to-1 over electricity because of its affordability and reliability. Technological advances such as Rheem’s show that new and tougher environmental goals are achievable while maintaining an important energy choice for consumers.
“Everyone deserves the right to choose the appliances and energy that she or he prefers, and it’s been shown that Californians prefer natural gas over electricity for heating their homes and for hot water and cooking,” said Yuri Freedman, senior director for business development at SoCalGas. He pointed out that California’s clean energy future will “depend on diverse energy options that achieve the state’s climate goals, promote resiliency and deliver the affordable, reliable and safe energy that residents deserve.”
For SoCalGas, testing the Ultra-Low NOx furnace is just one of many energy-technology research projects. Since 1990, the company’s energy efficiency and rebate programs have reduced emissions equal to taking nearly 700,000 cars off the road.