Propane, and propane accessories

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Number one propane accessory: road flares.

It’s a staple of movies. Good guys need an explosion so the McGyver a barbecue bomb and a few road flares into…ah, you know what…its just easier to show you:

Here’s the thing. Propane canisters, like you and I, are under tremendous pressure. Poke a hole and they go off like a rocket. Any ignition source has to be already in place and at full heat or the sudden explosive force of the propane releasing will just shove the propane tank away. So you (usually) need an ignition source on the tank itself that will, if the tank rockets away, go with it.Tracer ammo? Maybe in the movies, but practically it doesn’t seem to go that way. But…let’s look at some folks who have tried:

I actually found several videos of people trying to blow stuff up with propane and tracers and the results are almost never what Hollywood would have you believe. It was a little harder finding videos with people using incendiary, though.

If your End Of The World plan for clearing out a Times Square on New Years Eve size crowd of zombies is to chuck a propane tack at ’em and light it up with tracer ammo. Well…it looks like you’re going to be in for a disappointment. But…securing road flares to your propane tank and shooting it? That seems to deliver…kinda:

What’s interesting is that the propane tanks don’t really explode like they do in the movies. There’s a huge fireball, no doubt…things are gonna get crispy..but there’s no real bowl-em-over concusive explosion. Holes aren’t blown in the ground and other than the tank itself there isn’t any explosive shrapnel a-flying.

This isn’t to say that propane, used creatively, can’t be used for purposes other than running your turkey fryer. Rather it means that if you think firing a round of tracer into a propane tank is some sort of poor mans remote claymore…well…you’re in for a disappointment.

This post brought to you by the five-dollar summer fill-up discount at the local RV place…where I saw way too many propane tanks of all sizes to not have these kinda thoughts.

 

ETA: ALthough it was a terrible, terrible movie, the gun fu in Sucker Punch was pretty great. Especially against the WW1 Nazi Zombies.

16 thoughts on “Propane, and propane accessories”

  2. I have never been able to set off any sized propane container with just a tracer round, even whith multiple folks trying to fire tracers into the ‘cloud’ of propane moments after the container was breached. This includes 556 and 308 calibers. However, i did get to see containers rocket launch themselves in random directions. Quite exciting when it comes straight back at you (that time, we were at ~120yards and it spent itself out at ~85 yards). Pucker Up time.

  3. “Sucker Punch” was depressing as a movie, but yeah, the gun fu was good…plus the whole B-25 vs Dragon scene.

  4. Did that with the green one pounders. Had a road flare a couple feet away.
    Nice enough fireball, a little boom, but a disappointment.

  6. Explosions are a combination of the burn rate of the explosive and any “tamping” or restriction of the expansion(chemical and gas). This is how firearms work with a small charge burning at a rate to propel the bullet and the tamping of the cartridge/barrel directing the force. A explosive device tries and fails to contain a explosion(very fast burn) and the force is the failure of the container and the rapid expansion. The other variable is the amount of oxygen to allow the burn(fuel/ignition/oxygen) to be fast/slow/incomplete unless a oxidizer is added to fuel. Without tamping the burn happens as fast as the oxygen allows but at a low pressure equal to airpressure xburn rate. To get your “area clearing” blast a equivalent of a stick or two of dynamite in a fairly stout pressure vessel(pipe/canister) will yield the desired effect,but may well take you too.

  7. This is something I actually have a bit of experience with.

    The thing to remember with propane is that the container has liquid propane that converts to a gas when released. If you shoot a barbecue bomb and strike it below the level of the LPG, the liquid will come out and then aerosolize. If you hit above the level of the LPG, the you just get straight propane gas venting.

    In the instances of my experience, we were using full barbecue bombs and the ammo of choice was API-T out of Barret M82’s and were done at 200 meters.

    Invariably our first shot would put an entry and exit hole through the container and there would be gray plumes of propane shooting out, but no ignition. The propane, being heavier than air, would then form a low cloud around the barbecue bomb. The SECOND round would invariably ignite the tank so now you had four ten-foot plumes of flame exiting the tank. Each subsequent hit would add two more flame plumes but the length of them decreased, as more holes in the tank reduced tank internal pressure. When the propane clouds ignited the covered an area of maybe 300-400 square feet but there was no concussive effect.

    No venturi-effect movement of the tank was noted but this may have been because the entrance and exit holes were opposite each other and gas venting from each cancelled out the effect of the other.

  8. good effect can be had with a small charge to blow the valve off, then 3 seconds later another incendiary charge to ignite the expelled gas, all this inside a 20ft conex or other suitable box with strong sides to hold the pressure just a few milliseconds.

  9. If you want a big fireball explosion drop a can of soup in flaming hot oil. Wait for the heat to cause the can to explode sending a huge fireball into the air.

  11. You ain’t seen nuthin until you park a leaking fuel truck next to a LOX tank. Just run, don’t drive away.

  12. We had two poultry houses go up in flames some twenty years ago. Melted the valve off a 500 gal tank positioned between the two. Expended all the gas. No flame, no explosion.

  13. You may want to Google BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion) on Youtube.

  14. In order for propane to explode, it needs to mix with the air to form an explosive mixture. Check out Fuel Air Explosion on Youtube. The same thing for a dust explosion. If the propane is not completely mixed with air before ignition, it will only burn as the air and propane vapors mix together. And not create the near sonic flame speeds that create the blast effect. If it is fully mixed it will create very high flame speeds approaching sonic. So, 1st tank leak or rupture, 2nd time to mix and 3rd ignition. This principle is used in Thermobaric bombs.

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