Economic Analysis of Storage Systems of Natural Gas Vehicle

Natural gas may be stored by liquefaction, compression, or adsorption. For use as a transportation fuel, liquefaction is limited by practical difficulties and compression requires high pressure and an expensive multi-stages compression facility. The high cost of fueling station of CNG is a major obstacle to growth of CNGVs in the vehicle market of north America. The volumetric storage density of ANG can be 3/4 of CNG at 1/6 the gas pressure in laboratory research. The search for a suitable porous material in terms of further improving ANG storage volumetric energy density and lowering the adsorbent cost is currently an active area of research. This paper addresses the question of economy of the storage technologies for natural gas. Comparisons are made between storage system for adsorbent, liquefied and compressed natural gas as well as a couple of proposals are made.