Contaminated Propane

[d2reid]

I got a call last night from a fellow skier who has a Solitude. It was 9pm during a stong winter storm, around 15f with stong winds. His furnace quit working. He's a retired EMT/firefighter so he knows some stuff. Kind of chased it down to the limit switch going bad, but not exactly. Then he mentioned he had gotten a headache. I had him light his stove up. Flames had a lot of yellow in them, would sparkle, and had a bad odor. Fortunately he had a new spare tank. Out in th blizzard chaning tanks, yea, one of my favorite things. At least it wasn't 3am. After switching tanks he reported back that the furnace was running normally, the stove had nice blue flames, no orange, strange odor was gone, headache cleared up.

We concluded that the one tank had become contaminated. He mentioned that it had set in his garage for over a year. I have never run across contaminated propane before. Any one else having bad gas?

[Country Campers]

I have not had nor heard of this before, interesting though as it would explain some of the recent cold weather furnace issues that I have seen/read about.

Brian

[Cate&Rob]

What we generically call "propane" is usually a mixture of propane and butane to match the expected ambient temps. More butane in the southern warmer areas. Filling a tank in Florida and taking this tank to colder climates can cause fuel pressure problems but this is still not likely with vapor regulators running at 11 in H2O (about 0.4 psi). The most common contaminates in propane are compressor oil (as it is pumped as a liquid with old pumps) and "plasticizer" leached from hoses. These two contaminates do not vaporize and can plug small orifices in vapor pressure regulators.

Rob

[TucsonJim]

I had two bottles filled several years ago at a remote gas station that didn't get a lot of business. Right after filling, I ran into propane system problems. Both tanks were completely contaminated with oil like Cate&Rob mentions above. I had to take the tanks to a large propane supplier who drained and cleaned them. But I still had to replace several components in the propane system due to significant oil contamination.

Jim