Colorado State University set to power a truck using natural gas from your oven
The problem with compressed natural gas vehicles is that you need compressed natural gas and that requires a special fueling station.
â€śItâ€™s a chicken-and-egg problem, do you build vehicles first or do you build the infrastructure,â€ť said Tom Bradley, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State Universityâ€™s Engines and Energy Conservation Laboratory.
Well, CSU and Oregon State University-Bend have received a $700,000 grant from the US Department of Energy to do away with the chicken or maybe the egg. One of them anyway — the compressed natural gas pump.
The goal is to build, in the next eighteen months, a truck that doesnâ€™t need a fueling station because its engine will both compress the gas and power the vehicle. The grant is part of DOEâ€™s ARPA-E program, which is styled on the Department of Defenseâ€™s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency or DARPA.
â€śThe aim is to really get outside the box, to come with big ideas,â€ť said Bradley, who along with Chris Hagen at OSU, is working on the project. The DOE called the CSU-OSU idea â€ścutting edge.â€ť
Bradley said that if successful the technology would integrate compressed natural gas vehicles into the existing natural gas infrastructure. â€śYou could fill up your car with the line that you use to heat your oven or your house,â€ť he said.
The CSU-OSU truck as one of 13 projects — all aimed at dealing with the problem of refueling compressed natural gas vehicles — that Thursday received a total of $30 million in ARAP-E grants. Among the awards were $1.8 million to General Electric Research for an at-home natural gas refueling system that would chill, densify and transfer gas to vehicles and $4.3 million to the University of Texas-Austin for an at-home compressor station.
â€śThese innovative projects will leverage the ingenuity of U.S. scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to develop breakthrough technologies to fuel cars with natural gas,â€ť said Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman. â€śThese projects could transform Americaâ€™s energy infrastructure and economy by utilizing domestic energy sources to power our vehicles, reducing our reliance on imported oil, and increasing American energy security.â€ť
For the moment the operative word is “could.”