Mak3es sense Dan, Thanks for the explanation.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dan Rossi Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 21:37 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [BlindHandyMan] Re: Propane gas. Bill, You get condensation on the tank for the same reason that you get condensation on the outside of a glass of iced tea during the summer. As the tank empties it is chilling down because of the vaporization of the propane from a liquid to a gas. This chills the surface of the tank, then the warm, moist air that is in contact with the outside of the tank cools and drops below the dew point and you get condensation. In summer or winter, if you release the gas fast enough, you can get icing on the surface of the tank. As long as the surface of the tank gets below freezing, the condensation will freeze on the surface. In winter, the surface of the tank may already be pretty cold, so it won't take much to drop it below freezing. Along all these lines, I have a couple of different types of stoves for camping and backpacking. One uses white gas, actually it will burn a number of fuels but I usually use white gas. Anyway, that one you have to pump it to keep it pressurized. The fuel flows through a loop of tube that is actually in the flame, that vaporizes the fuel so that it burns like a vapor, much hotter than the liquid fuel. You have to prime it by burning liquid first. I like that stove for winter camping because it works quite well even in cold temperatures. I have a canister stove which is simply a burner on top of a sealed canister of a mixture of isobutane and propane. Damn light and works great, but sucks in the winter. I actually had the condensation freeze the canister to the rock I had it sitting on. As the canister, and the fuel within, gets colder, the flame burns cooler, and it takes forever to boil your water. I eventually learned a slick trick. You heat up a bit of water, not to boiling, but pretty warm, then sit the canister in that warm water, and it is amazing how the flame takes off. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: d...@andrew. <mailto:dr25%40andrew.cmu.edu> cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-9081 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
