Natural gas technologies at Kennedy Space Center
In 1994 Kennedy Space Center`s local gas distribution company (LDC), City Gas Company of Florida, undertook the construction of over 25 miles of high pressure natural gas piping to provide natural gas service to Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The Space Center, originally constructed in the 1960`s had used various grades of fuel oil throughout its history. But in the 1990`s concern about sulfur oxide emissions from hot water boilers, fuel spills, fuel prices, energy security, and federal mandates to use alternative fuels prompted KSC to investigate using natural gas as its primary fuel. Since completion of the pipeline in mid 1994, almost 4.5 million therms of natural gas have been used, displacing 2.9 million gallons of No. 2 fuel oil, and avoiding over 140 tons of air pollution. Another indicator of KSC`s effective switch to natural gas is that in 1993, KSC was by far the largest single consumer of petroleum fuel in NASA consuming 341 billion BTU`s, over 37% of all the petroleum fuel used by all NASA sites combined. In 1995, KSC petroleum fuel use had dropped to only 29 billion BTU`s while natural gas consumption was 308 billion BTU`s. These successes have encouraged KSC to explore other options for the use of natural gas at the Space Center. Under study at the present is natural gas cooling, fuel cells, and off road equipment fueling.
- OSTI ID:
- 478230
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-961173-; TRN: 97:002008-0053
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 19. world energy engineering congress, Atlanta, GA (United States), 6-8 Nov 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Energy business and technology sourcebook: Proceedings of the 19th world energy engineering congress; PB: 708 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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