Methane/Natural Gas...

[BCB]

Are these two substances the same?...BCB

[13Echo]

Natural gas straight from the ground is mostly methane with a mixture of other things such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, water vapor, etc. By the time it gets to your stove it is pretty pure methane with a bad smell added.

Jerry Liles

[MT Gianni]

Methane has a wider specific gravity range. Nat. Gas is a gas straight from the wellhead, hence "natural" with a specific gravity of 0.60 + or- 5% and turns liquid at -232 Farenhight. It's btu content runs around 1000 btru per cu ft but can vary from 800 to 1150. Methane can be picked up as a trace from the sewer and still be called methane. Like orange the color has a wide spectrum but orange the fruit is more specific. Gianni.

[BCB]

O.K. now let me see…Natural Gas is methane but with a few impurities thrown in? Natural gas is at a well head and methane can be found at sewers and landfills? Methane is odorless, and natural gas has odor (at the well head) because of the impurities and at my house because of additives? And finally (I think!) since they are the “same” compound, a liter of natural gas will mix readily with a liter of methane? Thanks again…BCB

[Four Fingers of Death]

They put the smell in so that you know when it is leaking. Mick.

[felix]

There are or were some wells in LA the state that produce up to 20 percent propane or similiar hotter burning gas. This gas, being more valuable, is stripped out of the natural gas. The hotter gasses are responsible for the variable burning range of natural gas which is marketed as such. ... felix

[C1PNR]

Years ago I worked for Intermountain Gas in the Boise main office where reports of leaks are taken very seriously.

We began getting a number of leak reports from a rather rural area where the Service technicians could not pin down the source. After several such reports, with no source found, someone started putting pins in a map of the area. Someone else noticed there was an odorizing station in that same area.

Sure enough, while servicing that station, someone had dropped a pint can of the odorant (Mercaptan or some such product, I've forgotten now). Over time the can began to rust and eventually to leak. This stuff is VERY concentrated so only a few ppm are needed to give the gas it's odor, but the breeze blowing by carried the odor a long way in what ever direction. No more leak calls!

[StarMetal]

I had a very good friend that was a fighter pilot in WWII. He flew just about all of them, the P-38, the P-39, the P-47, and the P-51. Had more then one close call, even had to land on a German airfield in a P-51 because he was out of gas and it was literally right at the end of the war, the word had only gotten out by an hour or so. Our command notified the German airfield and they said tell him to land, we'll greet him and refuel him, which they did. Old Red wasn't to happy at first about it, even had his 45 ready when he landed. He got alittle cut up in that war. Then come home and later on got a post office job, that's where I met him. He cut off his one leg with a chainsaw and they were able to put it back on, kinda had a limp after that, but not real bad. Well you would think with all that, maybe he could live a happy old age....nope. One day the pilot light went out on his gas furnace. Red, his son, and his son's best friend were working on it and Red said the thermocouple was bad and sent his son to get a new one. Red and his son's friend reminded behind. Someone lit a cigarette and boom, the whole house went and so did my friend and his's son friend.

Joe

[MT Gianni]

The thermocouple is designed to produce 30 millivolts of electricty to hold an electro magnet open. It is heat reactive no heat no voltage, applied heat gives you voltage difference. The valve apparently stuck open and the odorant was not strong enough to be noticable. It takes good ears to hear the flow when that happens.
C1PNR pm coming your wway. One of my duties for Intermountain Gas in the 80's was filling thte odorizers in the Soda Springs district. Gianni.

[StarMetal]

MT Gianni,

It's been alot of years ago, but I believe they were all out and came home to find they had a gas leak.

Joe