Appeared like a monster for the first time in 1999 and threatened all Egyptians, it was huge, dangerous and cruel. So the Egyptian government declared the war against it, and started to take serious actions. Now its 2009 but no change, it’s still there darkening the skies of Cairo from October to December causing a lot of environmental and health casualties. Apart from the gray looking skies and awful smell spreading in cities, the Monster causes Respiratory problems. Mahmoud Abdel Majeed, head of Abbasiya Chest Diseases Hospital, said,” People suffer from breathing difficulties, coughing and sometimes respiratory failure which requires artificial respiration.” Adding that children and the elderly were the most at risk. Most of you now know who the monster is, it’s the BLACK CLOUD. Funny enough that it’s not a natural phenomenon but it is mainly caused by us!! According to some statistics it’s said that 40% of the pollution is from the burning of rice straws, another 23% from vehicle fumes – as Cairo now has about 4.3 million vehicles in its streets. Factory emissions also cause 23% and 6 % from burning of wastes. We need solutions!

One of the solutions is to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a fuel for cars instead gasoline. Natural gas cars are not different from gasoline fuelled cars except that the natural gas cars are fuelled by CNG not gasoline. And its mechanism is so simple; when u start your engine, the CNG enters a regulator that reduces the pressure before entering the fuel-injection system. The gas is then mixed with air and injected into the cylinders of the engine where it’s ignited by a spark plug resulting in an explosion which is used to drive the piston. CNG is not only good for the environment but also as for individuals there are other benefits. Using CNG is a new revolution which has economical, environmental and technical pros, yet not all people use CNG as a fuel for their cars for different reasons.

CNG is quite economical; it’s about third of the price of regular gas, good news for the low paid and taxi drivers. Also people who own a natural gas car will have some tax incentives; the government makes them pay fewer taxes as a reward for contributing in protecting the environment from pollution. Further more, the cost of maintenance of natural gas cars is very low in long term compared to that of gasoline cars. From all sides, CNG is quite more economical than gasoline.

The main advantage of using CNG as a fuel is because it’s environmentally friendly. Since it is the cleanest burning fossil fuel, as methane burns cleaner than petroleum fuels.

According to a report by the Air Pollution Research Department at the National Research Center in Cairo, it was found that, “compared to petrol, CNG has a vital potential to reduce carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide concentrations in exhaust released from electronic fuel-injection and well-carbureted engines by an average of 73 percent and 66 percent, 39 percent and 31 percent and 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively.” With these figures, CNG became a friend to the environment and people as well, since it causes no or less negative health effects than the petroleum or gasoline.

Using CNG also has some technical advantages. CNG gives a high compression ratio, which means that most of the fuel is burnt. The advantage of high compression ratio is that it gives the engine a higher horsepower ratio resulting in a high performance engine.

One of the best things about CNG is that u can convert your car to be natural gas fuelled. The conversion process is an easy process; it is simply fitting storage tanks in the trunk of the vehicle and installing injection nozzles in the engine. After this u will have a bi-fuel vehicle!

Bi-fuel vehicles have the capability to switch between using gasoline and other fuel like CNG manually or automatically to run the car, what do we need more!!

But what makes some people refuse or afraid to convert their cars to natural gas cars?

Well, like everything in the world, CNG has some disadvantages too. First, the conversion process can be costly as he/she will have to buy the conversion kit and pay for the mechanic who will convert it. Yes CNG is cheaper in price, but this is when you refill your car but when it comes to conversion, it can be costly. Another disadvantage is…