Liquid Natural Flatulence

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Peter, I'm not going to get into a fisking match with you, but I
didn't just make this stuff up, and I resent you saying I did.

At 10:26 AM -0500 3/31/04, Trei, Peter wrote:
>* Evaporating LPG (liquids do not 'sublimate') will burn at the
>interface where the proper mixture is obtains - and the heat from
>that will speed the evaporization of the rest.
>

Right.

And, uncontained, it doesn't explode, either, which was my main
point. It'll burn like hell, but that wasn't what the sanctified
idiots at the Bulletin of the Atomic "Scientists" were FUDding on
about.


As for "sublimate", when you toss a cup of boiling water into the air
at extremely cold temperatures it converts straight into a gas, all
at once. That's what I was talking about. A chemist I bumped into
with that story called it sublimation, and when I said I thought
"sublimate" was meant for solids only, he said no, that instantaneous
conversion to a gas is sublimation whether origin state is a solid or
liquid.

Go figure.

As for

>* LPGs (both butane and propane) are denser than air.
>Propane has about the same density as CO2. Butane is even denser.
>They will both travel downhill and pool in low spots.

I did actually look this up when I wrote my rant. LNG floats on
water, and, as a gas, it's lighter than air by about half the weight
of same.

Here's my source, from the US Department of Energy:

<http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:iM5Hh-010ksJ:www.borderpowerplan
ts.org/pdf_docs/DOE_LNG_accident_impact_2002.pdf+distrigas+lng+tank+ev
erett+ma+size&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8>

See pages 12 and 13:

LNG's density is 26.5 Lb/Cu.Ft. It's lighter than water, which is
65/lb/cuft

The density of Natural gas is lighter than air, at .47, with air
being 1.

"Natural gas rises under normal atmospheric conditions"

>* LPGs can most definitely asphyxiate you.

Duh?

Did I say something about breathing the stuff? No. I said something
about it pooling and causing asphyxiation that way.

I got a better idea, Peter, read my source and tell me what you
think.

Maybe we can have an intelligent discussion without you pissing on my
shoes about it.

>"Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Safe Standoff Distance Cheat
>Sheet" which reccomends in the case of an 18 wheeler LPG truck to
>keep people at least 1996 feet away.
>
>I would not want to be nearby when a tanker - or a massive storage
>tank - gets hit.

Right, and this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. In
order to lay in enough explosive make *all* of a multi-million-gallon
LNG tanker/storage-tank go up the same way you might be able to do
with C4 to an LNG truck, you would need either air superiority and a
bunker-buster nuke, or you would need a battalion of ground forces to
defend the demolition operation.

If you can't control your airspace or defend your turf against either
one of those, you have bigger problems than The End Of Boston As We
Know It, the apocryphal "blast radius from Boston to Billerica", or
whatever, as Mr. Clarke, The Boston Globe, and the Bulletin of the
Atomic "Scientists" would have us believe.

So, yes, if you could instantaneously convert *all* the LNG at the
Everett Distrigas terminal into an explosion, you'd get a big one.

And if every chinaman gave me a dollar, I'd be a billionaire, too.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'