However, for your car the concept of a compressor
hooked to the gas tap, and topping up the car every night
with low  cost - no road tax fuel is rather attractive, and would beat
a ton of lead acid batteries by a whole  bunch - Vance

Frank van der Hulst wrote:

I suspect that (in theory) you would have to pay the road tax
separately.

We've explored the concept of home gas top-ups here in NZ. The bottom
line was that it was felt to be too dangerous. Our CNG (and petrol)
filling stations are extremely tightly regulated for safety reasons. For
example, the motorist is not allowed to connect his vehicle to the CNG
outlet... that must be done by a filling station staff member. I'd guess
that the same would be true in the US, or maybe the fear of lawsuits
would make it effectively the same. A home-filling station would need to
be equally safe.

Would my 3 HP Sears air compressor work?

Probably not. Can your Sears compressor output 3000psi?

Does the motor cause sparks? At any stage at all, like turning on/off?
Does any of the compressed gas leak out? Do you want to find out that it
does, and that your compressor does indeed spark, by discovering that
your entire house (and perhaps some of your neighbours') has
disintegrated overnight? Anecdote (which I believe to be true): A Dutch
businessman arrived home and pressed his garage door remote control. His
house, built above the garage, exploded in front of him. Wife and child
at home were killed. Seems that his other car, which was CNG fuelled and
parked in the garage, had a leak.

How about a filament wound
composite storage tank to save weight? I am also curious about how weight
efficient a bunch of long thin wall aluminum tubes would be as a storage tank.

Try thick-wall tubes. I think the cylinders we have here are 1/4" or
thicker aluminium. Obviously, the most weight-efficient tank will be the
one with maximum volume to surface area ratio... of course, that means it
needs to be spherical. A short fat tube would approximate this.

Frank.

 
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