High costs, boiloff issues challenge India's LNG trucking expansion
An attendant at Indian Oil’s fuel retail outlet on the outskirts of Chennai slips on a pair of cryogenic gloves and an apron as a 55-tonne Volvo-made LNG-fired truck carrying a black Delhivery container snakes its way into one of the country’s first LNG dispensing stations for a refill — the insulated gloves protect the attendant from cold burns, while discharging chilled, liquefied natural gas into a cryogenic tank fitted onto the side of a Rs 1.2 crore truck, a pump official explains.
The station has a single dispensing unit connected by insulated pipes to a 56-kilolitre cylindrical, cryogenic LNG storage tank standing on its head. The entire process takes 20 minutes, more than what it would take to refuel a diesel vehicle. One of the dispensing pipes is used to reduce pressure in the truck’s tank and the other releases the liquefied fuel.
Back