Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/119539
maintenance | by Tom Jackson TJackson@randallreilly.com Natural gas engines in construction trucking applications The Freightliner 114 SD uses a Cummins Westport ISL G that runs on compressed natural gas. R emember when diesel was $2 a gallon and you could drive your big trucks without gasping at the cost of a fill up? Those days may be coming back, although it won't be diesel that's costing $2 a gallon but natural gas. Thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling techniques developed in just the last decade domestic petroleum sources have grown so much that last year the United States produced more barrels of oil than Saudi Arabia. Many experts think that the United States will become totally energy self-sufficient by 2020. This new drilling technology has also uncovered a bonanza of natural gas. As with any commodity when supplies increase, prices decrease. The sudden drop in natural gas prices has opened up an intriguing prospect for contractors who run fleets of trucks – everything from half-ton pickups to Class-8 heavy haulers and vocational trucks. Natural gas engines and retrofits are not cheap. Prices range from $5,000 to $11,000 for light- and medium-duty pickups to $30,000 to $40,000 for a Class 8 truck. But the key question is not cost but your return on investment (ROI). Does it pay to run a truck or a fleet of trucks on natural gas? The answer depends on the price of natural gas and right now that price is trending at about $1.50 to $2 per diesel gallon equivalent (right). The other key metric fleet managers are watching is the difference between the DGE price of natural gas and the price of diesel. As long as that difference stays in the $1.50 to $2 range, natural gas trucks can make financial sense for your fleet. And most experts, including Joel Feucht, Caterpillar's director for gas engine strategy, predict that the $1.50 to $2 price spread is here to stay. Right now What's a diesel gallon equivalent? Natural gas does not have the energy density of diesel. It takes about 1.4 gallons of natural gas to equal the energy output of 1 gallon of diesel. So rather than make you do the math, the industry uses the term diesel gallon equivalent, or DGE to compare the two. A DGE of natural gas has the same energy content and will do the same amount of work as one gallon of diesel fuel, even though a DGE of natural gas will be larger in volume than a gallon of diesel. EquipmentWorld.com | April 2013 35