Compared to gasoline and diesel, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is one of the most cost-efficient and clean alternatives to fuel power vehicles.
Can you help us to find a disruptive solution to reduce the required investment in gas stations to serve CNG to vehicles?
The Challenge’s Background
The natural gas (NG) is supplied at the gas stations through pipelines at a standard service pressure of 8 bar. However, in order to use it in vehicles, the NG must be compressed to be supplied at 200 bar.
In order to compress and supply GNC to any vehicle in a reasonable time (4 kg/min, on average), it is required to make a high initial investment in equipment and facilities.
Currently, there are some available solutions in the market that are costly or do not comply with the ISO 16923-2018 European safety standard and the CE marking.
What NATURGY is looking for
For this reason, NATURGY is looking for disruptive ideas that substantially reduce both the initial investment and operational costs per facility.
The ideal solution must be flexible regarding installation (minimum or no civil work), and scalable or modular to adapt the supply capacity to the demand. These conditions are indispensable to solve the challenge.
Several additional conditions might be considered also to properly fulfill the challenge.
Evaluation criteria
The solutions will be evaluated according to these criteria in the following order:
- Lowest initial investment (CAPEX),
- Lowest operational cost (OPEX)
- Shortest vehicle tank-filling time.
- Largest concurrent supply capacity.
- Highest scalability and/or modularity
- Highest ability to be portable (quick installation and removal)
Timeline
Round 1 – 6 weeks + 2 weeks for evaluation
Round 2 – 3 weeks + 1 week for evaluation
Prize
The participants that submit the best solutions from Round 1 will share 5,000 € as long as they continue participating and deliver detailed solutions in Round 2.
The best solution from Round 2 will be awarded 20,000 EUR + 10% IP rights.
If the CAPEX+OPEX of the awarded solution are lower than the target values set in the challenge, an additional bonus of 10,000 EUR + 5% additional IP rights will be awarded.
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