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What is Liquefied Petroleum Gas?
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (also called Liquefied Petroleum
Gas, Liquid Petroleum Gas, LPG, LP Gas, or autogas) is a mixture of
hydrocarbon gases used as a fuel in heating appliances and vehicles, and
increasingly replacing fluorocarbons as an aerosol propellant and a
refrigerant to reduce damage to the ozone layer. Varieties of LPG bought
and sold include mixes that are primarily propane, mixes that are
primarily butanes, and mixes including both propane and butanes.
Propylene and butylenes are usually also present in small concentration.
A powerful odorant, ethanethiol, is added so that leaks can be detected
easily. LPG is manufactured during the refining of crude oil, or
extracted from oil or gas streams as they emerge from the ground.
At normal temperatures and pressures, LPG will evaporate. Because of
this, LPG is supplied in pressurized steel bottles. In order to allow
for thermal expansion of the contained liquid, these bottles should not
be filled completely; typically, they are filled to between 80% and 85%
of their capacity. The ratio between the volumes of the vaporized gas
and the liquefied gas varies depending on composition, pressure and
temperature, but is typically around 250:1. The pressure at which LPG
becomes liquid, called its vapor pressure, likewise varies depending on
composition and temperature; for example, it is approximately 2.2 bar
for pure butane at 20 °C, and approximately 22 bar for pure propane at
55 °C.
First produced by Dr. Walter Snelling in 1910,
LPG and the first
commercial products appeared in 1912. It currently provides about 3% of
the energy consumed in the United States.
LPG is widely used as a "green" fuel for internal combustion engines as
it decreases exhaust emissions. It has a RON that is between 90 and 110
and an energy content (HHV) that is between 25.5 megajoule/liter (for
pure propane) and 28.7 megajoule/liter (for pure butane.) Toyota made a
number of LPG engines in their 1970s M, R, and Y engine families.
Currently, a number of automobile manufacturers -Citroën, Daewoo, Fiat,
Ford, Hyundai, Opel/Vauxhall, Peugeot, Renault, Saab and Volvo- have OEM
bi-fuel models that will run equally well on both LPG and petrol.
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