Cure for freezing propane bottles

[hotponyshoes]

Tilt the bottle at an angle.
That will give you a bigger surface area of liquid gas and a longer run time.
When you can see from the frost line you are below the level of the valve you can turn the bottle horizontal.

I've got a 52l cylinder mounted horizontal in my van and I can draw from that continuously at 3bar without problems down to about 5degC.
Will still run at

 

[roofman]

The freezing of the bottle only occurs when its sub 10 degree C...putting them in a bin of water helps but getting water is sometimes a problem from small job to job. I constantly need to blast the bottles with the torch to keep them warm but doing this in public gets knees knocking and too many social media hounds will film it. tilting or lying the bottles on the ground is what we do when they are down to about 20% as any more and the liquid gas is above the exit valve and just steams the liquid out and not gas. As i say the tank blankets are a vast improvement so this bin can only be better hopefully...Anyway a big job starting on Tuesday at Liverpool docks, 2 lads with double headed torches will be burning the torch-on down so i will see how it goes. I will be the old man at the other end of the roof ripping the old felt off for preparation.

 

[gaz1]

but at only 150W it's a bit small.
But I doubt you run the torch at max continuously so if it is attached at the start of the working day it may just be adequate.

you can have that torch on more than you think

so when rolling out a roll you start the gun and you dont stop until near the end so for a half roll of torch on felt that gun can be on for a good 15 mins or longer depending on the length your rolling out

at that rate ice crystals form on the bottom of the gas bottle in winter and soon travel up the bottle the more that you use it

electric is not a good thing when wrapped around a gas bottle but the battery type is easy enough

im on about an electric blanket or even the thermostat wire that can be used for underfloor heating it just adds a danger to the job hence why battery power maybe a better solution

as roofman has done often people just dont like you warming that gas bottle with the torch aimed at it

 

[sardine]

Light a fire under it the Travellers way, they know what they're doing and ard highly qualified scientists.

 

[sg66]

Warm bottle with torch as has been said also as has been said insulation will just quicken the slowing down of gas production at high off take rates, you could link a couple of bottles together which will reduce the energy being sucked out of a single bottle by half.

 

[roofman]

Warm bottle with torch as has been said also as has been said insulation will just quicken the slowing down of gas production at high of take rates, you could link a couple of bottles together which will reduce the energy being sucked out of a single bottle by half.

Yea we normally use the 47KG bottles but at height its the 19KG, the 47,s rarely reduce much pressure except when down to 25% full and then they start icing.

 

[sardine]

I use Calor propane on my boat and only the last 2 winters has it frozen, have they changed the gas in some way ?

 

[brightspark]

I use Calor propane on my boat and only the last 2 winters has it frozen, have they changed the gas in some way ?

only happens mainly with big burners and high volume use small torches and smallish heaters no probs

 

[gaz1]

it happens with campers and caravans in winter so not job specific

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Problem is that a dustbin 1/3rd full of warm water could take a reasonable amount of gas/time to warm up.

Solution is to just use a bigger container of more water.

Water has a very high specific heat capacity, and very large latent heat of crystallisation, so even at room or outside temperature can act as a pretty significant heat source for the boiling propane.

Adding salt to the water would maybe not win any friends with Calor/BOC, but will both depress the freezing point and increase the latent heat of crystallisation further, allowing even more energy to be removed from the water before it freezes.

A Dutch friend builds fire displays for big events as part of his business, and his British equipment uses propane as the fuel source (because using diesel as is common on the continent risks running foul of Section 5 firearms licencing!).

Operating at draw off rates well in excess of OP's, he can keep 3 × 47kg cylinders unfrozen enough to discharge their entire contents in 4 hours, just immersing them in saltwater using an IBC with the top cut off.

 

[optima21]

how much propane are you using? it must be alot to get it down to -42c which is its boiling point

 

[addjunkie]

The best thing to prevent this happening is.
Go somewhere warm for the winter and let some young fool worry about freezing things whilst on a roof during a cold damp british winter.

I concur, or better still retire and dont come back!

 

[Barking Mat]

I've seen it happen with a space heater at work, I assumed the large debit of gas caused it, only time I've ever seen propane freeze.

 

[Erie Fred]

You know.....the proportions of the bottle when inside it's new winter jacket look familiar.....

 

[Erie Fred]

The best thing to prevent this happening is.
Go somewhere warm for the winter and let some young fool worry about freezing things whilst on a roof during a cold damp british winter.

Lot's of roof's in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile....How do you like tile roofing work ?

 

[Smallfry]

For the liquid to turn to gas, it is actually boiling, the boiling point is very low, much lower than the boiling point of water, so forget the 100 degree thing. As it is boiling, or evaporating, if you like, the temperature of the liquid drops, and the lower temperature prevents the transition in gas.

The more you turn the regulator up to counteract the pressure drop, the more the liquid chills. During the summer on hot days, this would not be so much of a problem, but once the weather gets cooler it becomes worse, as the ambient temperature is not warming the cylinder.

Insulating the cylinder will not help at all, only make it worse. The only way to overcome this, is to warm the cylinder, which is impractical, or reduce the burner nozzle size, which again is impractical for the job, or couple two or more cylinders together to reduce the rate of takeoff from each cylinder.

There are no other cures.

 

[Smallfry]

The boiling point of Butane is higher than Propane, so it "freezes" much quicker, which is why it is generally used indoors, or only in the summer outside.

It is also not suitable for high rates of takeoff

 

[Bornfree]

At one site I work on there's 8x 4ton propane tanks and in the winter when running hard the whole 8 tanks are covered in ice sometimes 1 1/2" thick. When the tanker truck starts refilling them the ice drops off in seconds.

 

[sg66]

Butane boiling point just below freezing like by a deg, propane boiling point way way below freezing.

The problem is to boil it extracts heat from the surrounding area which with gas is the bottle, butane is hotter than propane hence the lower pressure but it can't cope with cold so crap in winter

Propane lower heat hence higher pressure for given amount of energy, but -40 odd boiling point.

I can see how 19kg would start to be an issue with large offtake, multiple 19kg required to spread the load, and they much easier to lift onto roofs.

 

[Erie Fred]

Somewhere looking at weedburner torches, I saw a hi-output model that looked just like a hot air balloon
burner. It had a steel coil wound around the outside of the burner and then back up to the handle for the valve.
It ran on liquid.

EDIT: here is one of them, looks like no coiled tube though:

Liquid Torch Kits

Red Dragon® Liquid Torch Kits are designed for those applications where continuous use is required. These kits are ideally suited for colder climates where operations at sub-zero temperatures are required. The self-vaporizing torches are excellent for road repair, surface drying, preheating...

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