BTU per pound Propane vs ULSD

FWIW, LP is 2488 btu/cu. ft., depending on what chart you look at, so you can figure the usage if that patio heater has a btuh rating on it. Craig

$3.22 worth of LP gives you the same btus as 1 gal. ulsd at those prices. Craig

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:


OK ULSD has more heat value per gallon.

ULSD is almost $4.00 gallon

LPG is $2.13 gallon

Which is the most economical fuel for heating?

Simple math says:

At those prices, based on BTU content only, clearly its LPG.

It costs a lot of money to refine the sulfur out of diesel fuel. With LPG it's generally not an issue. I don't currently know about Mexico, but here in the USA, there are considerable additional road taxes added to the price of diesel fuel. That makes LPG the winner in your example.

Now back in the old days with $.25/gal. rot gut dirty/stinky Mexican diesel fuel, (the kind you had to pre-filter before filling your tank) the situation would be reversed.

Chum lee

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

How could Sinclair hope to retail products with an image of slime on it's signs?

I knew about the dinosaur gig. Now please tell me where coal comes from?

Oil doesn't come from dinosaurs, never did, just a marketing myth
Created when oil and some fossils were around in the same shale deposits

Fill up with Brontosaurus

Or

Triceratops

Sir?

OK ULSD has more heat value per gallon. Algae, septillions of tons of it. But why the regional concentrates of natural gas, coal or (that's the big question OR not AND) crude oil?

ULSD is almost $4.00 gallon


LPG is $2.13 gallon

Which is the most economical fuel for heating?

JaxDad wrote:
Well if you want to get technical about it, the LIQUID gasoline, diesel or propane doesn’t burn either, just the vapour it produces.

Water vapor doesn't burn either. Water is what you get when you burn hydrogen and oxygen, its already been burned. In order to get usable fuel out of water you must put energy into it to break the chemical bonds back down, typically electrolysis.

In this sense hydrogen-oxygen combustion is more a like a battery since it cannot be found in nature in large quantities unlike hydrocarbons. You use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then compress the hydrogen, put it in a car and burn it turning it back into water, essentially a electric powered car.

Hydrocarbons such as propane or diesel are just energy storage too, we are just taking advantage of solar energy that plants stored millions of years ago using photosynthesis which turned into oil and natural gas in the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion

kellertx5er wrote:

JaxDad wrote:

kellertx5er wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Since LPG has a weight per cubic foot density similar to diesel it would make sense that BTU specs would be the same. However substituting LPG as a motor fuel reveals a drastic sum difference in economy. This is curious.

Water has 20% greater density than diesel, but I have yet to find a way to burn it!

They’ve been doing it since the 1800’s.

Google “oxyhydrogen generator”.

Wiki entry for Oxyhydrogen

A Canadian company developed a process a few years back where they added a device to transport trucks that converted distilled water into Oxyhydrogen and injected it into the engine when the turbo came on as a power booster of sorts. It works quite well, far better overall than propane injection.

This process involves the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen gasses. I was speaking of the LIQUID known as 'water'.

Well if you want to get technical about it, the LIQUID gasoline, diesel or propane doesn’t burn either, just the vapour it produces.

In general hydrocarbons produce about the same amount of heat energy per unit of WEIGHT. Comparing heat energy per volume can be rather meaningless. Hydrocarbons vary in density according to how many atoms of carbon are in each molecule. The heavier (more dense) hydrocarbons will always have more heat energy per gallon or liter. When working with very large volumes as when I used to load 20,000 barrels of heavy fuel for my ship, the temperature of the oil is also a factor in how much product you are actually receiving in terms of heat value. Oil expands a lot with increase in temperature.
-Mark, retired Marine Engineer.

Different fuels produce different amounts of heat energy when burned. For example one gallon of kerosene will produce 134,000 Btu's of energy when burned, one gallon of propane 91,600 Btu's, and a thousand cubic feet of natural gas one million Btu's of heat energy.