Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hie a Marshal Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: when you're buying gas appliances, why do you always have
Speaker 1: to specify whether you're using LPG or natural gas? If
Speaker 1: you've ever shopped for a gas grill, gas fireplace, logs,
Speaker 1: a gas stove, or a gas dryer, you know that
Speaker 1: you're always asked to specify whether you plan to use
Speaker 1: it with natural gas or LPG, also known as liquefied
Speaker 1: petroleum gas. The reason you have to get it right
Speaker 1: is because LPG and natural gas have very different properties.
Speaker 1: Natural gas is just that it's natural. If you sink
Speaker 1: a well in the right spot, natural gas flows out
Speaker 1: of the ground. It's mostly methane or H four. Liquefied
Speaker 1: petroleum gas, on the other hand, is a product of
Speaker 1: crude oil distillation. It contains mostly propane or C three
Speaker 1: H eight. Propane has a very nice property that when
Speaker 1: you can press it, it easily condenses into a liquid.
Speaker 1: This means that it's much easier to store in a
Speaker 1: tank than natural gas, which doesn't compress easily. You can
Speaker 1: see the difference between natural gas and LPG. Most easily.
Speaker 1: When you buy a gas stove, normally you're supplied with
Speaker 1: two sets of jets, one set for natural gas and
Speaker 1: one set for LPG. You install one jet in each burner.
Speaker 1: The jet is simply a little screwing cap with a
Speaker 1: whole drilled in it. The difference is that the hole
Speaker 1: in the jet for natural gas is bigger, about twice
Speaker 1: as big as the whole in the jet for LPG.
Speaker 1: The reason for this difference is because LPG contains much
Speaker 1: more energy than natural gas does. A cubic foot of
Speaker 1: natural gas contains something like a thousand btu of energy.
Speaker 1: A cubic foot of propane contains maybe two thousand five btu.
Speaker 1: You can see that if you take a gas appliance
Speaker 1: set up for natural gas and you run it on LPG,
Speaker 1: the apply this is going to run hot. In some appliances,
Speaker 1: that extra heat is a fire hazard. In others, like
Speaker 1: a gas grill, it means that the grill is either
Speaker 1: going to be way too hot or way too cold
Speaker 1: if you use the wrong jets. Do you have any
Speaker 1: ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send
Speaker 1: me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
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