Our discussion of what happens when pressurized propane is ignited..


http://www.exponent.com/multimedia/cases/propane.html

For those of us considering propane in our vehicles.

This is not to say gasoline is not equally hazardous.... But, this is quite the eye opener.

I guess you missed this part,

"Exponent's investigation of the incident revealed that the cylinder had been significantly overfilled, and that this was a major contributing factor to its venting

It just Darwin at work. :rolleyes:

hhhmmmm.. and it just hapened to have occured in cali...
lol... well i guess one way to look at it is thats one less stupid californian that might move up to washington..

Originally posted by Old Scout
I guess you missed this part,

"Exponent's investigation of the incident revealed that the cylinder had been significantly overfilled, and that this was a major contributing factor to its venting

It just Darwin at work. :rolleyes:

I was less interested in the cause, than the result. The cause, for me, would be puncture. Of course, there would need to be an ignition source as well. venting propane does not just catch fire on its own (but then neither does gasoline). Also, it looks like it vents pretty fast. Perhaps that is an advantage with propane. A large puncture will vent out, and barring ignition, will then dissipate, vs gasoline which will evaporate, but which will take longer to do so.

Hasn't change my mind on the propane at all. But it did open my eyes to how big the fire blast can be.

I used to pump propane back in the day...
We had once close call - we were filling a tank on a conversion van and somehow we got a little leak going and it ignited on something off the bottom of the van and made a big enough "woosh" to scare the crap out of everybody in a hurry. But once we threw the shut off switch everything was fine. Assuming the tank is sealed with the proper releif valve a hpse blowing or something like that shouldn't blow the whole system.... But then a catastophic puncture might send you sky high..

Originally posted by uglyscout
I used to pump propane back in the day...
We had once close call - we were filling a tank on a conversion van and somehow we got a little leak going and it ignited on something off the bottom of the van and made a big enough "woosh" to scare the crap out of everybody in a hurry. But once we threw the shut off switch everything was fine. Assuming the tank is sealed with the proper releif valve a hpse blowing or something like that shouldn't blow the whole system.... But then a catastophic puncture might send you sky high..

so, a hose should light off like a flame thrower, but it should not run back up into the tank? Same with a reasonably small puncture.

It is going in my bed, I have determined, so the likelihood of a puncture is minimal in any case.