AbstractsPhysics

A vehicle powered by natural gas is becoming a prevalent trend and direction in automobile manufacturing. The thesis is aiming at analyzing the natural gas vehicle industry from its environmental effectiveness, economic effectiveness, recent status and its development in the near future with statistical data. And also it will find out the potential problems and relevant technologies. Investigation and literature research method are mainly used to fully collect the correct information and data. The main statistical sources are gathered from International Energy Agency documents. In the text, compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas are mentioned frequently. These two types of natural gas fuel are most commonly used at present. Compressed natural gas usually applies to low-duty vehicles and liquefied natural gas is more widely used in heavy-duty vehicles. The comparison between each fuel type and modern application areas has been presented in the 3rd chapter. In terms of current market status, the Asia-Pacific and Latin-America are the leading of NGV applications. In these regions, NGV has occupied a large part of market share and is continuously increasing. While in Europe, the share of NGV is quite limited. Natural gas’s utilization benefits a lot GHG reduction and other environmental issues. As for a long-term development, the governments’ incentives are becoming increasingly attractive. On the other hand, natural gas fuel has its weaknesses and is still in a developmental stage. Compared with the oil-based fuel, the biggest problem is the lack of infrastructure. In technical aspects, many new types of natural gas engines and fuel-mixture methods are under exploration.