Charging the camper battery while driving?

tony lee wrote:

I just do not believe if I burn 5 gallons of propane, it will produce 5 gallons of water. That is a lot of water, and should be running down the walls.

Pretty easy to verify. Just search using Google.

Not many situations would require 5 gallons of propane to be burnt in an unflued heater in one day so the actual amount of water vapour isn't going to be anywhere near that. That isn't the only source of water vapour either. What is breathed out by humans is significant, plus cooking and showering all adds up.

I have verified this by attempting to heat my shop one winter with unvented propane heaters. And yes, water was running down the walls.

I don't like chemistry much, but this is simple high school stuff:

Propane is C3H8. When it burns each carbon atom picks up two oxygen atoms to form CO2. Each pair of hydrogen atoms picks up one oxygen atom to form H2O. From the periodic table the relative weights are:

H = 1
C = 12
O = 16.

So a propane molecule is 3 x 12 + 8 x 1 = 44 units of mass. For burning each of those you get three CO2 molecules at 12 + 2 x 16 = 44 each, or 132 units of mass. You also get four H2O at 2 x 1 + 16 = 18 each, or 72 units of mass.

Burning 44 lbs of propane will yield 132 lbs of CO2 and 72 lbs of water. This is why the global warming people are against the idea. In terms of volume, propane is about 4 lbs/gal while water is about 8, so 1.64 lbs water/1 lb propane converts to 0.82 gal water/ 1 gal propane.

More than you ever wanted to know!