Water in Natural Gas

mike parnell

Hello Wallies,

Its been awhile, I was told the other day that they put water in Natural Gas as a filler, Is  this for real ??If so why and how much might be in a Cubic ft??

Thanks



Mike in Hopkinton..

bob_46

Water

No they don't .

Gordo

I Was Told in Gas Class

By the "old guys", that they used to shoot steam in the gas mains every once in awhile to help keep the hemp packing moist in the lead and oaken cast iron joints to keep them sealed.  That stuff is still under our streets today.



I've seen "drip pots" in the older homes in B'more to catch the liquid that resulted from these periodic steam blasts.  Nasty stuff, I was told. These drip pots were upstream from the drip legs on the piping to the various gas appliances.



Folks talk about how our electrical grid is antiquated.  It's nothing compared to our gas system.

SWEI

no need to add water

Burn a pound of NG and roughly 2.25 lbs of water vapor is produced.

Mark Eatherton

There's water in the gas in Denver...

and there's not SUPPOSED to be water there...



http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/291302/346/Search-on-for-natural-gas-water-leak



I have a pretty god idea of how the "leak" is occurring, but I'm just a lowly master plumber....



Heck, I could teach every woman in my life how to do it with one quick trip to Home Depot, and they spend less than $20 for what they'd need to do something this stupid...



NO, There is NOT supposed to be water in gas. I'm sure there are some condensable in NG, but most gas mains are deep enough to avoid the temperatures necessary to condense fluids out of a gas.



But you are correct. Our NG distribution system is a ticking time bomb with multiple fuses, numerous of which have gone off. That is one of the primary reasons why trying to use the NG system to distribute hydrogen is discouraged. It's so porous that the Hydrogen molecules can slip right between the metal ones ;[



To contain hydrogen requires spun fiberglass pipe with certain resins to contain the hydrogen.



Stress plays a big factor with it. And the lack of forgivingness ...



Lot's of government infrastructure work... Now would be a good time to be in the pipeline replacement business,

icesailor

Gas Class:

Did they tell you in gas class that the reason for that steam injection was because they "manufactured" the gas and the manufacturing process used high pressure steam to "crack" other liquids like Naptha to separate the carbon which they burned off and trapped the gas? That's why they all had those "gas holders", the bottom tank with a moat with the upper tank going up and down to give them a place to hold the gas as they made it and to give pressure? They had drips all over in the streets. When they had them in the streets, I remember a gas guy going around and pumping out the smelly water drips.

With wellhead gas, there is no need to manufacture gas anymore.

They are required to deliver gas with a legal gas level. We know that the gas providers would NEVER deliver gas at a higher BTU per therm than required, but they must be watched that they don't deliver it at a lower rate. If the gas is higher, they blend air with it. If it is low, or the pressure is low, they jazz it up with Propane or some other liquid compressed gas with air doing the final adjustments. Air has moisture in it. Mother Nature says that when the dewpoint and the temperature coincide, water vapor will form. You need gas water drips. And it happens inside pipes under the cold, cold ground.

But do you need them for LPG? I've never seen any moisture in a LP gas drip. Just that nasty oil with the Mercaptan in it that if you get it on your clothes, will never come out.

Did they tell you that in gas class?

They haven't told me that, yet. That's my experience.

I'm waiting.

SWEI

Town Gas

Stinky stuff - I've read stories about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

mike parnell

Scary Mains

Thanks guys,

 I have worked on some scary gas mains under our streets,doing new services and running new mains, the guys that are nuts are the welders welding a new tap onto some very old and rusty mains. Operating an Excavator and ripping up an unmarked gas main or service scares the crap out of me, But then to find out its been abandoned,with the Gas Co. present finding services still isnt easy, Ive had one guy tell me to pull out the steel two inch pipe, we pulled out over 140' and the just cut it ,He had no clue where it can from or went....They are doing some Gas work in my Area, no gas in my Street yet, but if it gets here ,Im not sure I want to hook up, but oil is getting higher everyday....3.56 a gallon  today...

thanks again      Mike in Hopkinton

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

Just Curious

Hopkinton, MA, NH, RI, IA or NY?

Tim McElwain

I am so glad we have all

these gas experts here at HeatingHelp it makes my job so much easier (tongue in cheek).



Ice I think you missed something in those classes you are attending in Mass. You never cease to amaze me!

mike parnell

Scary Mains

You were right first,, Hopkinton Mass....

icesailor

Classes:

What's your question?

Where I used to live and I still work, they made manufactured gas. I used to do work on the generating station on the diesel generators and in the gas plant. They had a gas generating facility to deliver town gas. I was told how the gas was made. They had two high pressure steam boilers to assist in the process. The first part was to take naphtha and burn it off in a big refractory lined boiler/furnace. They burned it off and the byproduct was  soot or unburned carbon. Then, after extracting all the carbon from the naphtha, they heated off the carbon into a gas. It was at most, 450 BTU's per cubic foot. People would go off island and buy new gas stoves. You had to drill out the orifice to huge amounts to get the things to burn. When they stopped the manufactured gas, what didn't get switched to electric, went to LP. I am still aware of old gas appliances in cellars that could be a problem if anyone tried to use them on LP.

I didn't learn that in any class, I learned it like a lot of things I know. Doing it, observing it or asking questions. I'm not proud. If someone doesn't want to tell me, I'll find out somehow.

Its a lot easier doing something if you understand it. Right or wrong. Being wrong is like a mistake. Its only a mistake until corrected. I've fixed a lot of mistakes. Mine and others.

Years ago, when I was 19 YO, I bought a Labrador retriever puppy. My mother gave me a book on training retrievers that had just come out. In the book, which was revolutionary in the techniques because you started the dog so young, the author stated that if you teach a young dog to learn, it will enjoy learning its whole life. She loved to work and learn.

I love to work and learn. Every day of my life is an enjoyment and I love my work.

Being a pediatric cancer survivor, there was a time that I wasn't supposed to live past my teens. So every day past that is a gift.

SWEI

love to work and learn

what keeps me going for sure.  Thanks for expressing it so well...

Gordo

They Still Have Water Drips

At the 4100 block of North Charles St. in Baltimore, Md.  there is a 60+ gallon water drip on the gas main still in service and still requiring periodic pump-outs. By hand.  When it fills up, it blocks the flow of gas into one of the condos on that block.  I was the one who got that call a few years ago - "no hot water".



The water mainly gets into the 12" cast-iron pipe (installed in 1911) through the hub and spigot joints.  I was shown the map by the gas man the night they had to come to pump it out.  Every hub, every patch, every repair was marked in exquisite detail.  It was an eye opener.  Because the line has a pressure of only 14" H2O max, a heavy rain will push its way in through small flaws in the pipe and joints, I was told.



When it gets really cold, the pressure drops to 5".  Why?  Because every huge apartment complex along that street for blocks around has gas pressure booster pumps sucking gas out of that line.  There are low pressure cut-off switches (or should be) on those pumps, or they would suck that line down to a vacuum.  This is five blocks north of Johns Hopkins University.



Manufactured or City gas didn't need steam injection into the pipes because it had a lot of moisture in it due to it being made with superheated steam (2000*F or some really scary temperature) shot into containers of coke or coal.  The result, if my basic chemistry holds true, was H2 gas and CO gas. (H2O + C = H2 + CO)  That's why folks could stick their head in the oven and end it all in the old days.  The LD50 (lethal dose 50%) of today's gas de jure -methane-CH4- is much higher and therefore that method of suicide not nearly as effective as before. 



"Well-head gas"  -aka mostly methane- is dry and caused the oakum to dry out, shrink and leak.  Hence the need for periodic steam injection until they found other methods of sealing the pipe from the inside.



Our electrical grid is bearly out of the Model-T era.  Our gas supply grid is horse and buggy.

icesailor

Water in gas mains:

There was a huge gas explosion in Springfield, MA. It blew the snots out of a bunch of buildings. The cause? It is being blamed on a gas company employee who supposedly "punched" a hole in a steel gas pipe (2" I think) that was unmarked and not found or located by Dig Safe. Supposedly, the gas company employee, punched a hole in the pipe with hid hand probe locater and that started the gas flow.

****!!! I would usually write B.S. but that is too outrageous to minimize.)

It was an old rotten steel pipe that was long ago abandoned and not disconnected. Deleted from newer maps and that is that. I have a Milwaukee "Thunderbolt" Rotary hammer/drill. I couldn't punch through a piece of 2" pipe if I had to. Unless it was so rotten that it was either already leaking, or was about to leak.

If you want to see how it happens, look at a "dry" automatic fire sprinkler system. It has an air compressor pump to keep the air pressure up in the system and if a head opens, the compressor can't keep up with the air loss so the water valve opens and floods the system.  You need low points for drum drips so you can collect the condensate water put into the system from the new air. The more air needed to overcome small leaks, the more moisture will go into the system.

In 1962, the only pipe that went into a fire system was schedule 40 pipe. You could use galvanized pipe in outside exposed locations.

The cheep-skates pushed for speed and cost and got Sch. 10 pipe and rolled pipe and fittings Victraulic fittings. The water lays in the bottom of the pipe and rots holes in the bottom. The problem has gotten so bad, a lot of replacements are now Sch 10 galvanized. But when you roll the pipe, the galvanized coating comes off and there is where most of the leaks are. I had an account for years where I used to hear the air leaking ( I have extremely sensitive high pitched hearing) and I would report it to management. After burning out a couple of compressors, the low bid (then) sprinkler service company chose to install a second, larger compressor to solve the leak problems. The building is undergoing a large renovation and almost the entire system is being replaced. The Sch. 40 pipe is still OK after over 50 years. It's the sch 10 that is the problem. And its being replaced with Sch 10 Galvanized pipe.

Why is this related? A lot of the gas piping in the ground is older than anyone here and some newer pipe is older than a lot here. Transmission gas leaks are a huge problem in this country and any excess money that the gas companies have, goes to stockholders instead of going to upkeep of the transmission system.

The fact that the gas providers inject air into their systems to maintain the legal BTU content of the fuel gas will ensure that there will always be moisture in the gas system. If a cubic foot of gas is supposed to contain 1,000 BTU's, it is illegal for them to sell gas at 950 BTU's when they would make more money. They inject Propane etc. If the gas is over 1,000 BTU's the regulators don't really care but the provider is loosing money. How many of us have been driving somewhere and smelled gas. And no one cared. I stopped to spend the night in a hotel in Rocky Mount, NC last June, 2012. I smelled gas in the building. I got 8 PPM of CO on my personal meter. I reported it and was encouraged to report it to the city inspectional services. I did but never heard back from them. Last November (2012), I stopped at the same hotel. I still smelled gas.

No one gives a rats behind.

The bridges are falling down, the roads are falling apart, and the gas transmission system is failing. But no one in management cares. Blame us for poking a hole in an unmarked, unknown/forgotten rotten pipe.