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Edited on Thu Dec-13-07 12:35 PM by Tesha
> Propane puts off virtually no carbon monoxide
Don't bet your life on the "fact" you just cited. *ANY* hydrocarbon, burned in the presence of limited oxygen, can result in Carbon Monoxide being produced.
(Hint: A Propane molecule contains three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms. A "gasoline" molecule typically contains between eight and ten carbon atoms and eighteen and twenty two hydrogen atoms.)
As you burn *ANY* hydrocarbon fuel in an enclosed space, the oxygen in the space is consumed as two oxygen atoms bond with one carbon atom to form CO2 and one oxygen atom bonds with two hydrogen atoms to form H2O.
But as there's less and less oxygen available, the carbon reaction starts to shift to only one oxygen atom bonding with each carbon atom, producing CO. Produce enough of that and the occupants of the enclosed space die.
Propane has some advantage over gasoline because, in propane, there's proportionally less carbon and more hydrogen, but methane is even better (with one carbon and four hydrogens). Yet each winter, people still die of CO poisoning when the vents from their natural gas (methane) burning furnaces become blocked by snow.
Tesha
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