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Originally Posted by Bazf
LPG was very big when I worked in Holland but wasn't there something about being rear ended, something about explosions and fire.
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There was an issue in France about 10 years ago. LPG was becoming popular and rougue fitters appeared everywhere fitting some very unsafe kit. There was a fire where a car that was converted by such a dodgy dealer went up taking 3 firemen wit it. This was because it was not fitted with all teh safety equipment that is standard now.
Consider the following situations,
You have a car with (as most are now) a plastic petrol tank. It contains upwards of 10 gallons of highly flammable liqued. Should that PLASTIC tank split it would leave enough petrol lying around that anyone smoking within a massive area would have to be very careful not to take the whole lot up. If it drains into the sewage system there is an untold environmental problem waiting to happen.
Now consider LPG. The tanks are tested to over 100psi. They are so tough you can take a hamer and chisel to one and it will still take you an age to make a hole in it. The tank wil only fill to 80% of total capacity to allow room for expansion and the regulator has a safety release that wil vent the gas slowly in case of emergency(fire etc). Now consider that gas. Should a tank get holed it will disperse into the atmosphere so quickly that in tests after venting over 80litres of LPG they could light matches within 2 minutes.
I know what I would rather be carrying when hit from behind thanks......
The tax on LPG is fixed by an EU directive for another 4 years such that it cannot be increased by more than the increase on Petrol. So I'm safe for now. It will take it an age to become more than a minority. Even then we only use less than 25% of teh LPG extracted during teh extraction of oil. The rest we simply burn off at teh rig as we don't have anywhere to store it.
Ian