Ice on Propane Bottles

So this is only our second cold weather trip. It is only getting down to the mid thirties at night but my propane bottles have a layer of frost and ice on them.

Should I be insulating them or putting some kind of heating blanket on them?


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I certainly wouldn't put aa heated blanket on them. I think you're ok but I'm sure an expert will chime in. When the liquid propane turns to gas there is a temperature change which can cause the frost. You can google up the subject and get a better explanation. Again, I wouldn't use any kind of heat to defrost the outside.
Now, let's wait on a better reply.

Your fine... we live in -25 degree weather, (Montana) and we never lose our propane flow. Our tanks are outside. It spends all that time covered in snow.

The only reason I asked about heating blankets is because I found these on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00P...werblanket&dpPl=1&dpID=41qqcdhjgsL&ref=plSrch



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We go skiing nearly every year with our rig, most of the time we are below freezing. We've never had propane issues, so l'm not sure why you'd heat the bottles.


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Aandaar said:

So this is only our second cold weather trip. It is only getting down to the mid thirties at night but my propane bottles have a layer of frost and ice on them.

Should I be insulating them or putting some kind of heating blanket on them?


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Click to expand...

We've been down to -30 (F) a number of times. Never used propane tank heaters. The only problem we ever had was when an external 100 lb. tank was refilled and hooked up at -10 (F). There was a little moisture in the hose that froze and restricted propane flow that night.

When it gets really, really cold, you can lose effective propane flow as the tank gets to 1/3 full. This is going to be more of an issue on 30 lb. tanks. The effect starts to show up when propane flow is less than what it takes to run the furnace wide open. The result can be poor heating. But I think you have to be closer to, or below zero for this to show up. And you can deal with it by keeping your tanks topped off.

Thanks for all the quick replies. I just have never seen a layer of ice in my tanks.


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The reason you're getting ice on the propane bottle and likely the regulator as well is because the LP is stored as a pressurized liquid. It has to boil into a gas in order to be used, to do this it takes heat from the outside of the bottle. It can do this in almost any weather because the boiling point is -42C. You don't always see this unless you take the bottle below the dew point, but it is more likely when you are using gas quickly (furnace) from a small bottle and there is some moisture in the air. The frost line will tell you how much propane you have left.

You are ok. Open another beer.

R E Siemon 2015 BH 3875 F B with and 2015 F250 Diesel, 4WD, Firestone air bags

When you use propane you use the gaseous propane floating on top of the liquid propane. This lowers the pressure of the propane gas. When the pressure of the propane gas lowers the liquid propane will vaporize the liquid propane. It takes energy to vaporize any liquid so the liquid cools. The cold liquid cools it's container. The air heats the container which heats the liquid propane.

If the liquid vaporizes faster it gets colder quicker. That is if it is colder outside you use more propane and everything gets colder quicker as the inside heats. As it gets colder outside it takes more heat energy to warm and vaporize the liquid propane so the liquid propane gets colder quicker.

The colder the bottle and liquid propane the quicker it will turn water vapor in the air into liquid water. The tank gets wet. The colder the tank gets below 32F (even if the air is still above freezing) the faster it freezes liquid water into ice. Ice insulates the bottle making it harder to turn liquid propane into gasnwhich you can use.

So, at some low temperature and some high use of propane you start to get less and less propane until you get none and you have no more heat.

Thus, the heat blanket then becomes useful under low temperatue, high humidity conditions.

You can help the situation by running off of more than one cylinder, because 2x the surface area between the gaseous and the liquid propane results in less heat being extracted from the liquid over the same period of time.

The problem with running off both propane bottles is that when you run out, you're OUT OF PROPANE! It's always at 2AM on the coldest night of the season.

jayc said:

The problem with running off both propane bottles is that when you run out, you're OUT OF PROPANE! It's always at 2AM on the coldest night of the season.

Click to expand...

Did that last night. Bottle died at 10pm and had to go out and switch it over.


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