POST 00821E : KEROSENE VERSUS LP GAS

POST 00821E : KEROSENE VERSUS LP GAS Follow-up on Posts 00803E and 00813E 9 August 2005 _____________________________________ Both Sibbele Hietkamp (mailto:[email protected]) from South Africa and James Patterson (mailto:[email protected]) provide answers to questions asked in Post 00813E. Serge Ganivet (mailto:[email protected]) also gives us a source of information on natural gas at www.pinnaclecng.com _____________________________________ CNG is compressed natural gas. This means it is methane that is put in a pressure container at very high pressures (several hundred bar). The physical reason is that it is not possible to condense methane at room temperature into a liquid phase regardless of the pressure. The supply is not limitless as the USA have experienced. You are correct in saying that pipelines are used for its transport e.g. from Siberia to Europe. Nowadays much is also transported as LNG (liquefied natural gas) which is cooled down to -164 C. It is a clean burning fuel. The use of small amounts in isolated places relies on high pressure containers. With LPG much lower pressure is required and therefore the containers are much lighter and cheaper. Regards Sibbele -------------------------- CNG is "Compressed Natural Gas" and LPG is "Liquefied Petroleum Gas". The later is a product of refining gas or "fracturation" from natural gas. Both can run vehicles and absorption refrigerators and while there are merits to each, as far as I understand, each requires a slightly different adaptation to function correctly (so you cannot swap between LPG and CNG on the same vehicle or fridge). To the best of my knowledge, all of the WHO-approved vaccine refrigerators listed in their product information sheets run on LPG as standard. As an aside, there has been advocacy for using LPG in vehicles in India and in fact it is a legal option and is available in several pilot areas. Production capacity, as well as environmental, efficiency and safety concerns figure prominently in this debate. I'm glad you were pleased with the LPG-fridges in East Timor. After the crisis in 1999, we had to replace the destroyed kerosene-powered (Indonesian) cold chain system. Advice received from this listserv was extremely useful in coming to the conclusion for the change to LPG -- in fact the remaining kerosene-powered fridges were all shifted to locations with adequate electricity supply (most LPG and Kerosene fridges can switch to an electricity powered heating element). In India, I also share your belief that in locations with poor mains electrical supply (under 12 hours/day), Kerosene/LPG/Solar might be appropriate. Towards that, I recently compared estimates of one year running costs of a 5kVA generator 12/hours/day to power an ice-lined refrigerator / deep freezer to the estimated cost of purchase AND running costs for an LPG refrigerator for 1 year. I found that the cost of an LPG fridge (around $1000 - 1500) plus the running costs (around $200-300/year) was significantly less than just the running cost of a generator (~$2,500/year) -- based on India-subsidized diesel and LPG prices. Over time, the gains would be even greater. However in India and perhaps elsewhere, two other concerns figure prominently. First, capacity. Ice production capacity in particular and even to a certain extent vaccine storage capacity is much lower with a typical LPG fridge. If a cold storage point was serving a population of just 20-30,000 this would not pose a major problem. But in fact in the places in India where LPG might be considered (e.g. Bihar), the population catchment of current cold storage equipment is over 100,000 and in principle weekly immunization sessions would require 100-125 ice packs in a single go. That is beyond the capacity of any WHO-approved LPG fridge/freezer combo (or even two). Personally, I would be curious to know of experiences (and fuel consumption) of LPG power chest freezers. Alternatively, as is currently the case, ice production is out-sourced to private ice-making companies or the number of cold storage points is increased... Unit costs for all types of fridges and cost of spare parts is indicated in the WHO Product Information Sheets for other types of comparisons. The second concern is logistics. In India, LPG is widely available in nearly all district headquarters making it a reasonable choice. However in the roll-out of LPG fridges in East Timor, extremely remote areas reachable only by horse-back / foot expressed strong preference for kerosene as moving an LPG bottle by donkey was too difficult. Besides this, LPG is a commodity that 'might' be more easily guarded against casual theft. For example by purchasing LPG gas bottles with special markings, they are more difficult to exchange with domestic use bottles. Hope this helps James ______________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________ Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features. ______________________________________________________________________________ To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[email protected] Leave the subject area BLANK In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E ______________________________________________________________________________ The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. 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