Running on Gas. Help!

At Oxford we have a quite a fleet of power boats covering safety and committtee boat duties.   There has been a suggestion that we could make savings on our fuel bills (around £5K per annum) by converting our boats to run on LPG (gas).  Anybody out there got any experience of this? (I understand some ski clubs running big V8 ski boats have gone down this road)

All our engines are outboards with a mixture of  4 stroke and 2T types. The 2Ts are mainly oil injection. Appreciate it would not be practical to consider conversion of the petroil 2T engines. 

Areas of concern are:

* Shoreside storage.

* tank filling/transfer and safety/skills needed.

*power loss

*consumption increase vs petrol.

*weight of tanks

*how monitor content to avoid running out!

*explosion hazard(though most of our boats are open dory types)

*anything else?

*commercial availabilty of conversions and likely cost per engine.

 

Thoughts would be appreciated. Via E Mail (BOBASHBY1@aol.com) or forum.r

Hi Bob

What about the insurance side of things too?

LPG is expensive to keep on shore and requires proper underground storage which is pressurised - a massively expensive operation to fit.  It cannot be transported from a petrol filling station either as no such portable tank exists to do so.  It requires a specialist filler and the tanks in the boats would need to be fully pressurised LPG tanks, not just "open the top and fill".  Expect a 5% decrease in power and a 5% increase in fuel consumption. 

Also, engines cannot start on LPG hence you would need to have 2 tanks - one with petrol for starting and one with LPG for running.  In short it is highly impractical!  Best buy new 4 stroke engines, as has been said they are cheaper to run and last longer. 

You must spend a shedload of cash on fuel if you reckon you can save £5000 by running lpg!

It probably wouldn't be worth it though. You'd need to install an LPG pump on site and typically a car costs £3000 to convert. I reckon you'd be looking at about £900-£1250 to convert boats. Plus you wouldn't be able to claim back the government powershift grant. LPG will increase in price soon anyhow.

If this is a genuine area of concern, I think it would be worth investigating diesel engines and running on red diesel.

The easiest way to get the fuel bill down is to bin the 2 stroke outboards - they are impressively inefficient, particularly the larger ones!

I don't think the storage or transport of gas would really be a problem - it's only the same stuff you use for caravan cooking or gas barbeques.

I think your main problem would be the conversion of the outboard engines! There wouldn't be enough room under the lid to put in all the extra injectors pipes etc - it isn't just a simple matter of swapping the petrol pipe for a LPG pipe.

If you reckon you can save £5000 per year by using LPG, this must mean you're spending about £200 per weekend on petrol which is about 10 of those large red fuel tanks, which must mean your boats are fairly large.

I can't speak for your club as I haven't been there for many years, but I often think inland clubs have rescue boats which are way over the top for the conditions they operate in. One of those orange Jennaeau plastic things with a tiller driven 20hp 4-stroke is capable of 20+knots, will plane easily 4-up and can tow any sailing dinghy in all likely conditions. That's more than adequate, and I doubt you'd get anywhere near using half a fuel tank of petrol over a busy weekend.