Abstract
Keywords: alternative fuels, natural gas, CNG vehicles, economical analysis, dynamical analysis
Based on current statistics, which assume that oil consumption increases proportionally with the number of sold vehicles, oil reserves are going to be depleted till the middle of the century. A long term solution could be the application of renewable energy sources, but therefore people's way of thinking has to be changed deeply in order to get open-minded to new alternative technologies. On short term natural gas can serve as an alternative fuel.
This paper aims at demonstrating the competitiveness of CNG vehicles taking economic, environmental, infrastructural and security aspects into consideration. Both, original and converted CNG vehicles operate more economically and therefore other important characteristics of these vehicles need to be analysed. A project is currently running at our university which deals with the examination of the current situation and applicability of CNG vehicles in Hungary.
As a part of this project some simulations were carried out with models to increase the specifications of monovalent natural gas fuelled engines. The aim of the research was to analyse the competitiveness of natural gas as an engine fuel compared to other fossil or alternative fuels. Road safety of the vehicles was examined through vehicle dynamical road tests. Two passenger cars with the same framework were compared on a test track with different road-tests. One of the vehicles was gasoline fuelled; the other operated both on natural gas and on gasoline. After the tests the results were evaluated taking dynamical parameters of the vehicles, different accelerations and yaw rates and characteristics of both engines types into consideration.
Our aim is to show the benefits and the conditions of the applicability of alternative vehicles, especially CNG vehicles.