I got a 250 gallon propane tank for free on Craigslist and was thinking of plumbing it into my natural gas line so that I can charge it with cheap natural gas during off-peak hours that I could then use during peak hours.Since it was free and I already have the pipe and fittings, I could realistically be saving 10s of dollars a month in my gas usage.It’s already in my basement near my main gas line.I haven’t heard this done before, but it seems like a good idea, let me know the pros and cons or if you’ve done this before
>>2882368>compressing a flammable gas without experienceyou clearly havent watched enough 3rd world liveleak videos >conslikely illegal and would get your gas disconnected if caught>prosnearly nothingalthough the crater where your neighborhood used to be might become a tourist attraction
>>2882371They transport natural gas around on ships all the time, LGN, propane tanks already hold liquid propane, I don’t really see the difference.And how would it be going against code? It would be plumbed in after the meter. Seems like a win, win, fill up my propane tank with liquid natural gas when cheap, then use it when I need it.
>>2882373the storage isnt the issuecompressing a hydrocarbon with a phase change involved is less than trivial. lots of trapped energy looking for an out
>>2882374Does natural gas not come in liquid and expand in my furnace and gas stove? I was sure it would be a fluid for convenience sake
>>2882368Gas service is typically 1/4 pound of pressure and appliances + furnaces are low pressure as well. Propane that's delivered to the tank you have in picrel is liquid/high pressure, 150lbs-200lbs psi. The tank in picrel has a pressure regulator on the outlet side. If put the tank in line with your gas service, every time you use it, your meter will still run. If you put a shut off valve on the inlet side and close it once the tank is full, the tank won't have enough pressure for the appliances to run reliably. If you get caught, the gas company will terminate service. This idea is no bueno.
>>2882380Why does LNG exist if that’s not what’s delivered to my house? Should I hook up my compressor to the line to condense the supposed ‘gas’ of natural gas to make it fill the tank better? It’s just a few more fittings and a hose.
How stupid can you be? If you don't know that natural gas comes in as a gas and at a low pressure then hold your retard mouth shut. Compressing it won't liquefy it either.
>>2882382Why would some stoves be rated for propane or natural gas. It must mean they’re the same. No hate, just observation
>>2882381LNG is how it's stored and transported in bulk. What your utility provides to your house is not LNG, it's low pressure natural gas. If you disconnect a 1/2" gas line in your house for a repair, you could literally hold back the pressure with your thumb.
>>2882381>Should I hook up my compressor to the line to condense the supposed ‘gas’ of natural gas to make it fill the tank better?LNG isn't compressed, it's cooled. You don't live in Morris County, NJ do you?
>>2882381lng is strictly for transportationnatural gas will not liquefy under pressure without external refrigeration. propane behaves much differently and will pahse change much more easilytransport tankers are cryo dewars to keep the liquid insulated so it can stay cold. they are usually low pressure vented and constantly bleed off gas as it boils offnone of any of that infrastructure is /diy/
>>2882368this thread is full of idiots.Op what you probably imagine is you will go down there on "off peak" and open up a valve and "fill" the tank up with gas.then "on peak" you will go down and shut the main gas line so that your house now runs from the tank.the problem is that the tank is too small to store a usable amount of gas at the pressure that comes from the city. So you would have to compress the gas. but even compressed to the maximum safe pressure for the tank, you will still not have enough storage. the reason propane tanks work is because the propane is stored in the tank as a liquid. and then it uses some thing on the pipe to convert the liquid to a gas. and when you convert almost any liquid to a gas, you get like a shit load of gas per gallon of liquid
>>2882383Changing from propane to natgas requires changing the orifices in a stove. The propane also comes in as a low pressure gas, that's what the regulator on a propane tank is for. Tank is full of liquid, drop pressure and it's a gas now.
>>2882368Just use this shit with an air compressor to make a huge tank to run any kind of tool, or make some kind of redneck smoker/grill
I really don’t think any of you are right. LNG is LIQUID. What is it not liquid at my house from the utility????NO answer to this, none, zip, zilch.
My suggestion is to use the propane tank to store diesel or kerosene. Also keep in mind the people that sell propane often will install a "free" tank if you agree to buy so much propane. So the tank itself has little value.
Do you really have peak hours for natural gas usage where they bill you more? I have heard of this for electrical, but never natural gas. And yes the natural gas delivered to your house is at like 1/2 of a psi. So no your retarded tank idea won't work. And no you won't be able to compress it into the tank to make it work, because you'll probably just blow yourself up.
>>2882401>LNG is LIQUID. What is it not liquid at my house from the utility????Because to be liquid, it has to be FUCKING COLD. We can't afford to insulate thousands of miles of pipes. So you get gas phase natural gas at the environment's temperature.Propane can remain liquid at room temperature but a few hundred PSI. So, heavy steel tank and a regulator to drop pressure and change it to gas when you need it.
>>2882427Okay, so say it’s not liquid, so what, I still have 250 gallons of gas to use that I stored from cheap times. That must offset something. Maybe 1s of dollars a month from my bill??
>>2882381>should I hook up my compressor to the lineYes
>>2882368Anon, be sure to film this. I want to see CNG at 3,600 psi stored in a propane tank designed for 250 psi.
>>2882430>I still have 250 gallons of gas to use that I stored from cheap timesNo, you don't. You have the whatever the difference is between a 250 gallon tank at atmospheric pressure is and a 250 gallon tank at a few inches of water column (or a fraction of a PSI). That's almost nothing. Enough to run a heater for mere seconds, unless you pressurize the incoming gas. That isn't a stupid idea necessarily, but it would be stupid for you, in particular, to try.>this thread is obvious bait, IDGAF
>>2882368
>>2882373in one post you provided a prime example of:anything you don't understand must be easy, and totally safe to do.
>>2882381have you priced an LNG compressor my young and dumb fren?
>>2882383jesus fucking christ. they are not the same. LPG and NG have different energy content, they have different gas regulation. jesus at least go read up on them at wikipedia before you kill yourself.
>>2882388>and then it uses some thing on the pipe to convert the liquid to a gascalls everyone idiots, but doesn't know how gas is taken off in a LPG bottle.
>>2882401>What is it not liquid at my house from the utility????you total fucking moron. there is no liquid in the gas line to your house.
The pressure at the burner manifold of your appliance is a little over three inches of water column.The pressure after the meter to your house is usually ~ 8" WC. Appliances have regulators to reduce the pressure.If there is a hole in the gas line and it's in a ditch with ten inches of water in the ditch, water will go into the pipe instead of gas bubbling out!(ask me how I know)
>>2882542Do you honestly think there is a significant difference, or are you just a braindead millenial scared of everything because youre the most pussy online generation with a quarter of you "working" in work safety and the rest "working" in a home office completely disconnected from reality?
>>2882561>Do you honestly think there is a significant difference, or are you just a braindead millenial scared of everything because youre the most pussy online generation with a quarter of you "working" in work safety and the rest "working" in a home office completely disconnected from reality?NTA, but they are completely different gasses with different properties. Liquid Propane is very easy to store in its liquid state. Liquid Natural Gas is not something that is easy to store in its liquid state or you would see it done more often... Is that dumbing it down enough for you to comprehend?
Oh and OP, you could compress the NG coming to your house up to 10 bar, which will give you 8 times the volume. However, you will have a cubic meter of 10 bar compressed flammable gas in your house, and if something happens insurance will sure as shit not cover it. Not a risk I would personally take, so I do suggest you make some calculations on how much you can actually make off this venture. If you have oxygen leak in to the compressor, it can easily create an explosive mixture and blow the whole thing up. And not any air compressor off craigslist is meant for flammable gases, you will need a refridgerator compressor. You probably should automate it for any actual benefits, which requires programming a circuit board like an arduino or something, and it needs to fetch price data from gas provider and do some calculations on when to compress. You need a safety shutoff valve, and a vent pipe outside. At this point the project is becoming so big, itll cost you a pretty penny. If it really was worth it compressing the gas for gaining off price fluctuations someone would do it in large quantities with a professional setup.
>>2882573He said LPG and NG. Which after the pressure regulator are actually almost completely interchangeable. You are not reading what he is saying, or you are purposefully being a contrarian moron for the sake of feeding your ego.
>>2882581I'm talking about the basis for the entire thread, storing compressed gas in (possibly) a liquid state in order to buy it at lower prices and then use it during peak prices... Vapor propane and Natural Gas when delivered to your house at low pressure are both similar, yet still require different orifices in the appliance to utilize them properly.
>>2882368You'd need to compress the natural gas. The faggots in this thread will give up there and tell you to stop, but when there's a will, there's a way.A 5 second google search brought up this industrial natural gas compressor for refueling stations.
>>2882613W... would this work for oxygen? Imagine getting an oxygen concentrator and this thing and filling your own oxygen cylinders. With that and using an oxy-propane torch you'd basically unlock unlimited cutting!
OP the most important thing is to get a 24 hour camera so you can upload the explosion when it happens.
>>2882623>Imagine getting an oxygen concentrator and this thing and filling your own oxygen cylindersI would be very hesitant to use anything other than a dedicated oxygen compressor for the job. Oxygen just gets more and more reactive as pressure goes up. The oil used in most compressors starts to look like a really good fuel at the pressures used in compressed gas storage, even at room temperature.Unless you really want the extra portability of the tank, there's not much reason to do this, either. You can just run your torch off the concentrator directly. That's what I do for my oxy-propane torch.>>2882613>this industrial natural gas compressor for refueling stations.CNG systems are 3000-3600psi. That compressor specifies the same. At minimum, he'd be wasting a shitton of the compressor's capability (and, by extension, cost) by limiting it to propane tank pressures. There may also be legal issues with storing it in a propane tank, too, even if there's nothing technically unsafe about it.Moreover, if OP is asking questions indicating that even his understanding of basic physical properties of gases is dubious, he probably just shouldn't be doing this.
>>2882368We need to find the guy who got rid of the tank and show him this thread
Your idea is genius, don't listen to the haters. The first rule of pressure vessel safety is to have fun
>>2882613>buy a $4k compressor to save $40 a monthgood idea
>>2882667>I would be very hesitant to use anything other than a dedicated oxygen compressor for the job. Oxygen just gets more and more reactive as pressure goes up. The oil used in most compressors starts to look like a really good fuel at the pressures used in compressed gas storage, even at room temperature.I've tried searching for oxygen compressors and the closest I have even seen was some guy on youtube using an oilless compressor to pump oxygen up to 150psi. Everything else in the search results is oxygen concentrators. What size of oxygen concentrator do you have, and what kind of pressure and flow does it put out? Yes ideally it would be nice to have the portability of a tank, but even if i just had a concentrator at the shop to do the majority of my cutting that would be very beneficial as well. I just took two K size oxygens, two S size oxygens, a K size 75/25 argon/co2 shielding gas mix, and one acetylene in to get swapped out today. At least oxygen is still a relatively cheap industrial gas. I didn't look my receipt over yet, but for all that and 40' of 3/8 hot rolled round it was $395. Most of that was probably the shielding gas and acetylene...Also used a 10% off Christmas coupon that the local metal supplier sends out every year.
>>2882373>fill up my propane tank with liquid natural gas when cheapIt's not transported to your house as a liquid you nutsack
I let AI calculate it, OP.If you fill the tank with natural gas without any pressure you'll have the Energy equivalent of 1 litre oil in it. The tanks are usually rated for 15 bar pressure. At 15 bar pressure you can fit the energy equivalent of 13 litre oil in it. Fit comparison: Natural gas cars and trucks have tanks that Run with 200-300 bar. The gas compactors that do this cost around 5-20.000 bucks in a small size due to several stages and gas cooling after each stage. It won't Work, OP.
>>2882810>the closest I have even seen was some guy on youtubeTry "high pressure oxygen compressor". Turns up stuff like:https://www.ultracontrolo.com/products/ultraceco-hpthttps://rockymachinery.en.made-in-china.com/product/nZptUOwCfFrR/China-Hospital-Oxygen-Filling-Oxygen-Concentrator-High-Pressure-Gas-Booster.htmlhttps://amcaremed.com/products/oxygen-booster-compressor/...all horribly expensive, of course.>What size of oxygen concentrator do you have, and what kind of pressure and flow does it put out? Something from outfit called "Extreme Oxygen" or something like that. No idea if they still exist, I got the thing off craigslist. It's a modified Millennium M10 medical concentrator. They just crank up the regulator and disable the pressure alarms, far as I can tell. It doesn't really have enough output for cutting. Pressure might be high enough, but I don't think 10l/min is going to do much. 2 of them might do it.Invacare makes a booster pump that hooks up to a concentrator that CAN fill tanks to 1800/2000psi with their "home fill" system. No idea if anyone else has compressors geared toward consumer medical use like that. The fuckery involved in re-doing the plumbing to hook it up to a larger tank would be simple, but I have no idea if there might be some legal bullshit around that. Try at your own risk on that one.
High pressure oxygen compressors are a nightmare not worth dealing with. With multiple stages and fluorinated oil it can be done. Industrially it's much easier to use liquid oxygen, pump the liquid up to a high pressure, vaporize it, and then fill bottles.
>>2882379No, it is methane gas in the lines at up to 100+ psi outside of the meter. The critical temperature of methane is -117dF, so it can't be liquid unless you refrigerate the heck out of it.
>>2882368the worst part of this post is that you won't do it.
>>2882381>Should I hook up my compressor to the line to condense the supposed ‘gas’ of natural gas to make it fill the tank better?The rules say I should say "no, absolutely not, are you insane?".But oh boy do I want to have a slight smirk on my face when I read about the inevitable outcome in a small column on page 4 while I sip my morning coffee.
>>2882585Moving goalposts because a lack of reading comprehension caused you to embarass yourself then.
>>2882368that thing looks explody
>>2882386Not that anon but what's special about Morris county (I live near there)?
>>2883034You really want to argue the semantics faggot? He specifically said liquid propane and natural gas. So yeah they would be completely different animals. I know of no home appliances set up to run off of liquid propane. They all run off the propane vapor. Go ahead and move those goalposts some more now! You have added nothing of value to the entire thread other than being an autistic "um acktually" annoying piece of shit. And yet you couldn't even do that properly...The whole basis of the thread was storing natural gas in any useful amount within a 250 gallon propane tank. It is not a feasible thing to do.
>>2882368pros>Will look really cool when your house explodes>Probably will get your name in the local news>Parents/wife/kids will probably get a nice life insurance payout>Save five bucks a year on averageconsCan't really think of any
It's probably not very helpful to call OP and idiot.Why don't you show him why he's wrong instead of why you're too scared to try anything cool?>nooo don't swing a hammer OP, you'll bust up your thumbs!>nooooo you can't just wire that receptacle yourself! do you want a housefire????Is this /diy/ or /osha/?I mean I don't think it's a great idea either but holy shit you guys are insufferable
>>2882368>I can charge it with cheap natural gas during off-peak hoursPost evidence of the difference in peak and off-peak rates for natural gas to your residence.I'll wait...
>>2883101based
>>2882656It has to be a live stream, because when the explosion happens he won't be around to upload anything anymore.>>2883097forklifts run off the liquid but yeah they're not home appliances for most people, unless they have really fat people in the house
>>2883193>forklifts run off the liquidI mean, if you wanna be technical, still not really. No idea if newer/larger models run off direct liquid propane injection, but older/smaller forklifts still run the engine off vapor. They just have a special pressure regulator, heated by engine coolant, to provide that vapor.
>>2883200Yup, they pull liquid from the tank but once it gets to the regulator it is vaporized by hot engine coolant before going into the mixer and being burned by the engine. I do have some liquid propane weed burners but once again, not a common household appliance, and also they run the liquid propane through a coil heater by the flame so it is rare to have it actually spitting out liquid propane at the burner.
>>2882368Wouldn't work, the tank would never exceed line pressure and once you switch to the tank the pressure will quickly drop to an unusable range. You might as well run an extra 100 ft of pipe around the outside of your house, it'll do the exact same thing.There is a non retarded way to do this. You need a pressure regulator on the outlet of the tank and you'd need to have someone deliver and fill your tank with compressed natural gas.
>>2883097What the fuck are you on about?Read this post you stupid nigger faggot, read it a hundred times until you understand the meaning of every word in it.>>2882542And now that you have, and didnt understand because youre inbred I will in vein try to explain.He is saying they have enough of a different energy content and different gas regulation that they are not interchangeable when in fact they are. Energy content by mass is within 10%, and by volume even closer. Supply pressure on both of them is around 2.75kPa, and the exact pressure is NOT that accurate, because everything powered by it has a regulator valve that can be adjusted. Your boiler, your stove, your heater, a god damn engine running on gas. The only thing your NG supply cant run is your LPG refridgerator, because it needs liquid form to harness the coldness from the phase change. It is not dangerous to interchange them, like the scaredy ass millenial faggot who is afraid of everything he doesnt understand said.
>>2882693>The first rule of pressure vessel safety is to have funI must have missed that rule somewhere in the regs, but they install psrvs for a reason so fuck it
>>2884010lol homemade pressure pot blaster go brrrrr
>>2883963>Acktually!!!! Lol. There you go again... Fuck off loser. Nobody is going to read your novel.
>>2883963>Energy content by mass is within 10%, and by volume even closer.Not that guy, but their volumetric energy density is wildly different. Gaseous propane is roughly 2.5 times as dense as natural gas (methane) at the same pressure and temperature. That's why their stoichiometric ratio by volume is different.Pic related, also see chart at: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gas-density-d_158.html
>>2882368i'd be tempted to do something similar but on a small scale if it was cheaper to use gas at certain times . I wouldn't go as big as using a tank like in the picture . i'd find another use for the big tank . firewood storage or redneck outdoor bath , boat , submarine kek etc try filling 15kg propane or butane tanks instead . and look into biogas collection and storage for ideas . make sure its safe . if you could fill tanks you could run a gas cooker or heater .
as long as we get a video of the BLEVE
>It’s already in my basement near my main gas line.how the fuck did you get that in your basement?
>>2882851>100+ psi outside of the meterDude what. The pressure is so low that it's measured in WC instead of PSI. The line coming into your meter is probably 5 PSI at most. Less than 1 PSI after the meter. OP will need a compressor to store any meaningful amount.
this thread is hilarious
>>2882368In the oil patch we'd call it a drip tank. If its after the meter, they can't do much. It will be not cost effective to fill such a large tank at regulated pressureThe cost of a natural gas compressor will never pay for itself with this workflow.Go find something better to do, like make a submarine, a pig smoker, or some cool as go cart
>>2882368that wont work but you can paint it like a bit watermelon!
>>2882693Awesome image, made me chuckle.
cooling it to ~ -160C seems like it could worknote: liquid nitrogen is -195C at 1atmenjoy your bomb
>>2882693this is why /diy/ is the best hidden gem on the internet lmfao
>>2882388>something on the pipe to convert into a gasIt'll convert into a gas on its own. Even in winter if you use non winter gas canister on a hiking stove as long as you turn the cannister upside down with a line up to the stove it'll turn into a gas
>>2882368OP you can compress gas LNG into liquid if your compressor can so in excess of probably 20,000 psi. Your tank needs to hold that too. LNG is around 5-6000 psi at 20 celsius as a liquid, and compressing the gas will heat it up so you need even higher pressure and can wait for it cool down. Your propane tank is max 200 psi.
>>2882368Why not cut off the top and turn it into a hot tub and use incoming gas for relaxing bubbles.
>>2886052>It'll convert into a gas on its own. Even in winter if you use non winter gas canister on a hiking stove as long as you turn the cannister upside down with a line up to the stove it'll turn into a gasIf it gets too cold it will stay liquid... pic rel is a glass of propane at super cold temps.
>>2884306I'm not shitting you; its high pressure outside the meter. Just google it. Piping natural gas around would be unrealistic if it was low pressure.
>>2887445https://energyknowledgebase.com/topics/gas-distribution-system.asphere.It depends on the flowrate though the system and how far downstream you are.
>>2887445>I'm not shitting you; its high pressure outside the meter.It is now. Used to be low pressure in some places, but most have upgraded to 50 to 100 psi distribution by now. They installed regulators ahead of the meters.If my memory serves me correctly, one city missed a few services when they did the changeover. Houses go boom.
>>2887292>the forbidden wine
>>2882368Propane, also know as liquefied petroleum gas is stored as a liquid at ambient temperature. The vapor pressure of propane is only 120 PSI at 70°F. The vapor pressure of natural gas (methane) is around 2400 PSI at 70°F. Unless you have some way of cooling and keeping that giant tank at -258.7°F, you're not going to be storing liquefied methane in it.
>>2887715OP wants to store pressurized gaseous methane from the gas pipeline which delivers pressurized gaseous methane.
>>2886053>LNG is around 5-6000 psi at 20 celsius as a liquid20C is more than 100C above natural gas's critical temperature, the temperature above which it is incapable of liquefying regardless of the pressure it experiences. You can compress it to the density of a liquid, but it would be a supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids have a number of interesting properties, but one which is relevant here is that they really want to explode. And if it comes out to play, it will explode like a bomb rather than propane's vigorous boiling-off.
>>2887292>super cold temps-40s is pretty cold, but you don't have to go to the poles to find it.
>>2887780ok miami bro, you visited toronto during a -10deg c cold snap and now you think -40 is not super cold?
>>2887780>-40s is pretty cold, but you don't have to go to the poles to find it.Cold enough that I don't want to be around it at all. We've had -20 degrees F here a few times and it is not pleasant.
>>2887895>>2887906Pic related is a map of average annual low temps in the US. This is an average, mind you. I live in a 4b zone, and it gets ten degrees below the listed temperatures every few years, with ~-40 being the coldest I personally remember. Cold-temp records are usually about 20 degrees below the hardiness zone reference temps. So yes, a glass of liquid propane is something that people in the continental US can do most years in the Northern Midwest. California, New Mexico, and New York state have places you can do it on record-cold years.
>>2887909How do more rural places in the upper parts of the US do heating? Like North Dakota? If it gets that cold, you clearly aren't going to be able to extract propane from an outside tank without engineering trickery.I'm more familiar with the southern US where you either have natural gas (pipeline), or propane tanks for more rural areas, or the NE where you have fuel oil delivered.
>>2887909Youre such a fucking retard. Honestly go hang yourself. Dumb shit. We get it, youre a badass motherfucker unphased by cold. I cant, i fucking cant grown ass fucking man get a fucking life loser.
>>2887936>How do more rural places in the upper parts of the US do heating?Typically propane.>If it gets that cold, you clearly aren't going to be able to extract propane from an outside tank without engineering trickery.That's overnight air temperature on the coldest day of the year, not the temperature that hundreds of gallons of propane in a tank actually reaches. The tank absorbs heat over the day, and especially in sunlight. Apparently it's not a problem in places where people actually live, with the tank sizes and heating demands people typically have (houses built for cold winters are well-insulated). But the more rural you go, the more people use wood/pellet burners. They're more of a hassle than propane to operate, but they're quite viable. The ability to run wood heaters from local resources makes them (to my knowledge) favored in really remote areas.
