Uses of Natural Gas
Natural gas is a highly useful fossil fuel, which is used in various sections of society ranging from residential, commercial, industry and transport.
In the home, natural gas is often used for heating and/or cooking in the form of gas central heating and gas ovens. Gas central heating is one of the most popular forms of heating in the home. Approximately 51% of homes in the US use a gas central heating system, which works out to be almost 50 million households. As well as natural gas powered central heating, natural gas can be used to power air conditioning units.
Commercially, natural gas is used in a very similar way to in the home, but on a larger scale. Rather than using natural gas to power one domestic cooker, the food industry will use natural gas to power several industrial sized cookers as well as using it for heating, cooling and water heating.
Natural gas is used extensively in the industrial sector, with 43% of all natural gas usage in the US being used in industry. Natural gas usage in industry as an energy source is second only to electricity usage. Lighting is a main use of natural gas and it can be used towards creating plastics, fabrics and fertilisers on an industrial scale.
Natural gas powered vehicles are a large growth area and the public now have a wide choice of vehicles that run on LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) and in the public sector some areas run gas powered buses and taxis. LPG is formed from crude oil and natural gas. Although there is an increasing choice of LPG powered cars, they tend to be more expensive, refuelling can be problematic and performance is not as strong as petrol based vehicles. However, depending on your point of view, these points can be dismissed due to the very environmentally friendly nature of gas powered transportation when compared to standard petrol powered vehicles.