Featured Here's why I don't transport gasoline in plastic containers...

In going to all electric lawncare tools one of the main considerations was to no longer have to store gasoline in the garage area.

This always bothered me and was a welcome change when storing gas was no longer a consideration.

In the southeast it can get close to 100 degrees in the summer and in an enclosed garage it can get even hotter. Gasoline fumes and evaporation can be a problem in almost any container at those temperatures.

 

And you consider those marketing claims to be "proof", while a JSE Journal paper is to be dismissed? And that portable gas cans are less permeable than vehicle gas tanks?

Elsewhere, I'm seeing indications that EPA rules earlier this century (not sure it that is still current) allowed about 0.3 grams of emissions per day per gallon of portable can size. That is about a half cup per year, a bit more than your claimed "almost measurable passage of a few molecules".

 

I guess I'm in the minority on this one, but I usually keep a few 5 gallon cans (3 currently) stored outdoors away from the house.
There is one small container inside the garage that's verified gas tight, but it's in a corner away form the house, and we have no gas appliances.

I HAVE carried a gas tight container filled with gas in an SUV a time or two when I did not have a pickup available and just didn't want to hook up a trailer (work car during hurricane) but I drove as if I had 5 sticks of dynamite worth of fuel-air bomb inside my car looking for a time and a place to get loose.....
I foresee NO SCENARIO where I would bring gasoline into my house, but I will not say "never" in this case...because....hey, 2020-2021.....

The idea that lawn equipment is going electric and that will reduce the number of jerry cans in the world is not without merit, but for people in hurricane country, and places where rolling blackouts are a thing I'm betting that gasoline will continue to be a thing for sometime to come...MOST particularly since the cyber terrorists got their ransom for the latest pipeline hack....practically guaranteeing that it will happen again.

Be safe out there!

 

Note that their website and payment server were taken down shortly thereafter, so other ransom victims are unable to pay to restore their own systems. And there is an indication the funds they collected were also "withdrawn" by an unknown entity.

It remains TBD whether this disappearance is of their own doing, covering a hasty exit, or the work of law enforcement of some state actor.

I keep a working smoke detector in my garage too, a reaction to long ago serial arsonist who had an affinity for carports and garages. He was eventually captured and imprisoned, but I kept up the smoke detector there.

 

Seems like it'd have to get pretty cold to cause that... Never seen a gas can do that on the west coast? Too bad they don't mention what temperature this becomes a problem? Seems like a regional thing?

 

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I'm thinking that they bit off a little more than they could chew.
One cyber expert cited the pipeline attack as "dog catches bus."


Releasing napkin drawings of the iPhone 14 into the wild is one thing....
Disrupting the fuel supply for the eastern US is QUITE another thing and it elevates the perps to the level of a de-facto terrorist nation state....or at least folks with those abilities.
Yeah.
They have the Rooskies giving them top-cover, but every first term US President wants, above all things, to get to be a second term US President......and we are not without arrows in our quiver to loft BACK at the cyber terrorists.
DarkSide's 'hosts' often like to give tea parties, and their relationship is entirely transactional.

Pigs get fed.
HOGS get slaughtered.

 

Hydrocarbon molecules are HUGE compared to oxygen or nitrogen or CO2.
Pictures have been posted showing a plastic can collapsing because AIR won't leak through it at any significant rate.
Why would you think that gasoline molecules would ??

Oh, sorry, I presumed that some thinking was actually involved here.

 

The permeation isn't about molecule size, but solubility of the hydrocarbons in a hydrocarbon derived plastic. The lighter ones dissolve into the plastic, and evaporate out the other side.

Back to the OP with a little math.
The Hummer H2 has 86.6 cubic feet of cargo space behind the first row seats(passenger volume not published), or 2.45 cubic meters.
Considering likely temperatures for Florida at the time of the fire, there was about 2.92 kg of air in that space.
Given the permeation limits stated here, the gas cans could have emitted 6 grams of hydrocarbons over a full day of sitting in the truck.
That is an iota more than 0.2% of vapors within that volume of air, if the cans were there for a full 24 hours. Less when passenger space is factored.
The lower flammability of gasoline is 1.4%.

Permeation of plastic cans had nothing to do with this fire. The only way the cans were involved is if gas was spilled in the truck during the course of filling them. Which can happen with metal cans. Metal cans could be worse in a fire has the gas would heat up quicker, and build up pressure. Venting will likely result in a rupture of the tank. By melting, plastic cans will vent at much lower pressures.

The presence of the gas cans likely had nothing to do with the fire starting.

 

It is too bad thinking is absent.

The collapsed cans involve cooling that happens overnight, or as sun and shade patterns move. A few hours at most.

Fuel permeation through plastic, on a similar volume scale, takes months or years.

 

The last time I was in a military convoy, we used Jerry cans to augment our fuel truck......for the same reason and in the same manner as the Wehrmacht did back in Dubbaya Dubbaya Too.
They worked fine, and if you're properly trained - or at least have a three digit IQ, and the cans are even passingly well maintained, they work fine.
However (comma!) If you need more than 2-3 of them they can get to be kinda expensive...

I've been using Blitz containers since roughly 2005/2006 when the area was saturated with them following a hurricane.....and they went on super sale by big box stores that had stacks of them taking up space.
I think I paid something like 6-7 bucks for them at the time and I bought over a dozen all told.
Had I known at the time that "normal" (non nanny-state) nozzles would be as rare as polite political discussions just a few years later, I would have bought hundreds of them.

Here's the thing.
I have fuel stored on 2 properties often for 6-8 months at a time.
As stated before, I regularly burn off this fuel in the spring and fall by just filling up our vehicles with stored gas and refilling the containers.
They've been almost continuously full of fuel for 15+ years and they're still functionally gas-tight.
I know this because I store them outside either in a shed, or other facility, and I would be able to detect them outgassing either visually or olfactorily....or aurally either from the loud whoomph! followed by the crackling of a fire.....or the sirens from our fire department.

This is one of those zany arguments that often follow questions like:
"Why do your tires have green valve stem caps on them?!"

I suppose that "scientifically" my cans outgas, degrade, etc but my faith in how science works in the real world has been somewhat shaken over the last year or so.

MY plastic cans work.
Period.
Full Stop.

They have for 15 years.....and I have no reason to believe that they will 'wear out', deteriorate, break, or otherwise stop functioning in the near future.

It's for DANG sure that they will not rust!

 

TOTAL BS.
Troll bait indeed.

 

You have absolutely no way of knowing that.
I did something similar on the farm years ago.
After about 8 years, it came out looking like brown Karo syrup.

I wish you luck after you put that into your car.
Chemical changes can occur in the fuel that has nothing to do with evaporation.

 

Can you point us to better explanations? Or is this going to be yet another of your empty outbursts?

The stuff I'm seeing makes crystal clear that there is more going on than simply molecule size.

 

yes .... & when gas is cool out of the gas station nozzle, capped for storage, and the garage gets roasting hot, the gas in plastic can expands, making leached evaporation happen at an even accelerated rate - to the point - you do NOT want to take a whiff right next to that permeable plastic. Might not be enough to explode, but do folks really want to be sucking (just a few) plastic gas fumes when they're working in the garage during the weekend?
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