How to construct a micro liquefaction cryo compressor for gas storage

[fabricator]

The one thing that has always made me shy away from LNG is the possible crater.

It's no worse than having a big tank of gas (petrol), shurely? Better, in fact, because the explosion will tend to go upwards, rather than hanging around on the floor in puddles setting fire to stuff. Take a leaf out of the electricity industry's book: Build a very very strong shed (triple-thick block walls) with a weak roof... if you can make the bang go up, instead of out, then the damage will be limited to a weak (=cheap) roof.

I've seen estimates of the size of the explosion that would result from an LNG explosion of one of the super tankers that come into our big harbors, it would be about the size of the Hiroshima bomb, without the radiation of course.

[AdeV]

The one thing that has always made me shy away from LNG is the possible crater.

It's no worse than having a big tank of gas (petrol), shurely? Better, in fact, because the explosion will tend to go upwards, rather than hanging around on the floor in puddles setting fire to stuff. Take a leaf out of the electricity industry's book: Build a very very strong shed (triple-thick block walls) with a weak roof... if you can make the bang go up, instead of out, then the damage will be limited to a weak (=cheap) roof.

I've seen estimates of the size of the explosion that would result from an LNG explosion of one of the super tankers that come into our big harbors, it would be about the size of the Hiroshima bomb, without the radiation of course.

The Hiroshima bomb was estimated to be 21 kilotons yield. An LNG supertanker contains up to 266,000 cubic metres of gas (both from Wikipedia, so take with appropriate sized pinch of salt.

Assuming that is accurate, 12.6 cubic metres of gas would have the same explosive force as a ton of TNT - that seems unlikely to me, someone has presumably been exaggerating?

FWIW, the energy density of petrol is much higher even than LNG, and you carry around maybe 1 cubic metre in your gas tank every time you fill up. Doesn't sitting atop this massive bomb not bother you?

[fabricator]

Real trucks don't have spark plugs or burn gasoline. I make my own fuel.

[Derb]

The only down side to using CNG cylinders (expired cert) would be consequences should things go pear shaped. I had a 245 cu/inch Chrysler running on CNG and it ran a treat. Had one 75 litre tank east/west behind the rear seat and two torpedo fashion in the rear guards. The range was quite good so god only knows how long those tanks would run a little 6 HP engine on a generator. A few heroes over here used diving compressors and sucked from the town supply to fill their cylinders but you would want to have the cylinders stored a bit away from the house in a fairly stout shed if using dodgy ones.  Cheers.

[mike90045]

When gasoline spills, it just sits there, and slowly evaporates.    

If CNG spills, it sprays out of the crack in the pressure vessel, turns to explosive vapor in an instant, and could likely lite itself off from it's own static electricity.
If a tanker lost a tank in an harbor, or offshore, the CNG would likely flash freeze a large hunk of water, vaporize itself, and unless the moon was in the right phase, it's most likely going to manage to ignite itself.

The gas line leak South of San Francisco  a couple years ago, took 2 minutes for the vapor cloud to find a way to ignite itself.

I don't see a large leak ending well.

[Simtech]

Perhaps catalyze the natual gas to a liquid fuel?  Natural gas ---> syngas ---> methanol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids

Might be a bit beyond a backyard experimeter though.

[fabricator]

That is how almost all methanol is made now, and I like it, I use methanol in the bio diesel process and the price has actually been coming down a little since they have been finding more gas.

[Frank S]

As usual I kind of named the thread wrong
  then it took on the appearance of the gloom &  doom of what if  explosions.
My original thoughts were more along the lines of instead of just dumping or wasting the excess electricity produced with a wind turbine or solar panels with a dump load device such as an induction heat coil or something like that to use the excess to power a compressor or possibly an O2 intensifier+ a compressor, or to power a compressor to compress any combustible gas IE natural gas if you have a line for use during curtailment periods. or gas from a gasifier or even non combustibles like regular air.
  Obviously any form of stored energy is better than dumping it then that stored energy can be used to power what ever the need may be, Be it a generator  to produce electricity in times when wind or solar can not provide enough or as a fuel for heating , cooking or what ever.
I mentioned cryo simply because gas stored in its liquidfied state can take up less space and actually in most cases be a safer way to store but the down side is the equipment it often takes to keep flammable in gas its liquid state is really energy consuming.
SO the better idea would be to store and forget without the need for constant replenishment.

[quinnf]

I like the idear of polymerizing methane.  Two gets you ethane, three, propane; four, butane.  Boiling points come down, as do storage pressures as you add each monomer to the chain until you get a liquid around 4-5 carbons.  Keep going and when you get to around 15-18 and you've got, essentially, Rudolf Diesel's fragrant elixir!


Edit:  oops, forgot the reference:  http://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/32_3_NEW%20ORLEANS_08-87_0260.pdf

[Mike]

Another option, that I heard about quite a long time ago,  could be to get the largest 2nd hand Propane Gas tank you can find and fill it with very fine activated carbon.  Due to some sort of surface effect, nano holes in the carbon, can hold huge amounts of methane, at a much lower pressures than would be required without liquification.   From memory, pressures in the region of 150 psi, but I might be wrong about that.

Since most of the methane is trapped in the holes in the carbon,  the vessel when punctured will only release the contents slowly and will not explode.

I think some Department was running a competition with a reward for the first person to get the gas density up to levels similar to liquid fuels, and they where getting about half way there.

I think corn cobs where mentioned as a good source of carbon, then heated using the destructive distillation process.  I can't remember if the charcole was then pulverized or just smashed into little pieces.


We could try a test  9 liter gas bottle to see if it works,  at say at 75 psi.  I would be interested to hear how it goes.

Food for thought in any case.

Mike