Propane and Natgas - any FUEL-related issues ?

[grsthegreat]

500 gallons of propane in two or three days? I heat my house in the dead of winter 0F for a week and use maybe 10 gallons..

I have a gas generator, I turn it on and off as needed.. The longest I have ever been without power is 5 days and I have never seen roads closed for more than two days..

I am not sure where he gets his 2-3 days. I heat mainly with propane... use wood when I feel like it and not too lazy... and fill my 1,000 gal tank 1 time a year in summer when rate for fuel is least expensive.

 

[3930dave]

my 22 kw uses an average of 2.2 gal per hour. Then again I do not have any Wells or other large motor that can ramp up demand on my unit. I ran it under load with known volume tank to determine this.

A heavy loaded unit can run up to 3.9 GPH.

I have an underground 1,000 gal tank. Also I do not run it at night while I am sleeping... unless it is 20 below when power failed. I could get along for quite some time if I had to. Also have propane and wood heat.

So 400 hours or so - nice capacity.

Rgds, D.

 

[atsah]

I am not sure where he gets his 2-3 days. I heat mainly with propane... use wood when I feel like it and not too lazy... and fill my 1,000 gal tank 1 time a year in summer when rate for fuel is least expensive.

2-3 days and 500 gallons is gone, he must be supplying the town..

 

[Diggin It]

Carrying that over to a house, a 500 gallon LP tank running a generator will empty itself rather quickly, probably no more than two to three days. If you heat and cook with LP, where are you if the roads are closed and there are no LP trucks running?

my 22 kw uses an average of 2.2 gal per hour.

A heavy loaded unit can run up to 3.9 GPH.

3.9 GPH is over 90 gallons a day.

I am not sure where he gets his 2-3 days. I heat mainly with propane...

If you heat and cook with LP and your WH uses it, all those need to be added in. Most people with installed whole house gensets do it so they don't have to turn it off at night. They want seemingly normal power availability.

Most LP tanks should not be drained below 5% and are almost never filled over 80% unless you sweetalk the driver. Now you're talking about 75% or so of 500 gallons so we're in the area of under 400 gallons available IF you had it filled just before the outage. 90 gallons a day at 400 gallons available gets you around 4 days at the most.

 

[aczlan]

Not sure where you are going with this... we are rural so our whole house is propane. Emergency generator, too.

There are no downsides, especially none on your list.

Actually, contamination can be an issue. We have a bunch of propane forklifts at work and one of the items on the preventive maintenance schedule is cleaning out the filter on the vaporizer. It is amazing what kind of crud is in there. However for a backup generator, that should not be an issue as you will not have the run time needed to cause that.

-40 is one issue oft cited, as the vapourization point for propane is about -44F. Re-supply during emergencies/shortages is another concern.

Pros and cons came up in that other thread, so I wanted to ask for feedback here, from people using either gaseous product.

Rgds, D.

it is possible to get around the temperature issue if you have a liquid feed and a heated vaporizer, the forklifts at work had that and they don't care what temperature it is, they pull liquid propane out of the tank and vaporize it, then right through a regulator. Both the vaporizer and the regulator are heated by the engine coolant.

Aaron Z

 

[CADplans]

We had a hurricane in Roanoke that knocked out much of the electricity,,
many of the guys I worked with had their homes set up so that they could still heat their homes with natural gas, even when there was no electricity,,,

That sounds good,, no electricity, use natural gas,,

Well,, it turns out that natural gas pressure is boosted for the entire system ,,, with electric pumps.

One day after the electricity went out, the natural gas pressure fell to an unusable pressure,,,

 

[Diggin It]

^^ That was a problem with gas stations that couldn't pump gas, stores and banks that couldn't operate cash machines or CC terminals, cell phone systems and a number of other things that didn't think ahead to have diesel generators on hand. Many of those places learned their lesson and now have them. I would certainly hope that NG pumping stations would have one ... or several.

 

[aczlan]

^^ That was a problem with gas stations that couldn't pump gas, stores and banks that couldn't operate cash machines or CC terminals, cell phone systems and a number of other things that didn't think ahead to have diesel generators on hand. Many of those places learned their lesson and now have them. I would certainly hope that NG pumping stations would have one ... or several.

A natural gas pumping station will have a bunch of big compressors (think hundreds of horsepower), it's not feasible to have that much generator capacity on hand.

Aaron Z

 

[3930dave]

Both the vaporizer and the regulator are heated by the engine coolant.

Aaron Z

Never used one, but knew of propane filters, so figured they had reason to exist.....

Once things are up and running, then you can steal heat from coolant. Bootstrapping to that point may be "interesting", if it's cold enough, and you park outside.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

We had a hurricane in Roanoke that knocked out much of the electricity,,
many of the guys I worked with had their homes set up so that they could still heat their homes with natural gas, even when there was no electricity,,,

That sounds good,, no electricity, use natural gas,,

Well,, it turns out that natural gas pressure is boosted for the entire system ,,, with electric pumps.

One day after the electricity went out, the natural gas pressure fell to an unusable pressure,,,

Interesting...... seems I need to learn more about compressor stations. Maybe that's the new-school approach, the one article I'd seen 10+ years back was about a turbine (gas fired) compressor.....

Might be easier to install/spin-up electric pumps, but it's hardly Progress if the natgas lines go down with the Elec Grid..... Wouldn't be the first time Because It's Cheaper lost a battle.....

Rgds, D.