Hey guys, we are back outside again today, because today we're experimenting with a relatively dangerous substance today
We're playing with propane now in our standard atmosphere propane is typically a gas
But if you compress it into a bottle like this
It actually liquifies under its own vapor pressure you shake one of these bottles and listen [carefully] you
Can actually hear liquid propane sloshing around inside?
The purpose of today's experiment is to see if we can get that liquid propane out now if you remember back to a previous
experiment
We took a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher and sprayed it into a pillowcase
To create a homemade dry ice and the process for doing that is very similar to how we're going to extract our liquid propane here
Today now I want to give a shout out to my friend Kevin
He's the Backyard Scientist and before he started playing with Liquid nitrogen
He used liquid propane and the way he would do that was by modifying the torch for the propane tank itself and sticking it upside
Down in the glass so we're going to make that modification here today
I'm going to show you step-By-step. How it works
Because of the pressure the propane is putting on the inside of the tank it wants to escape until by opening the valve counter Clockwise
More propane can shoot out and by turning it clockwise it restricts the flow and limits the flame eventually shutting it off now
This is kind of interesting if you look down the tip of the nozzle you'll see a little wire mesh in there and the purpose
Of that is to stop flashbacks gas can burn freely outside of the nozzle
But it doesn't work its way back inside because that wire mesh stops it
It's really interesting is if we remove the sheathing from the nozzle here?
The flame actually goes out and if we try and relight that again it won't actually work the whole in the tip here is so small
It's shooting a gas out like a jet and so we're not able to light it even with the barbecue igniter
It whisks the heat away, so quickly. There's no time for ignition. so let's make the hole bigger
Here's the basic idea. I got myself a hacksaw and a drill with a 9/32 inch drill bit
We're going to use the hacksaw to cut the tip off the torch and the drill bit to hollow it out
And there we have it as easy is that we've got an instant homemade propane spewer
The hole on this module is exponentially wider than the factory version, and so when we open the valve now
There's nothing to restrict the flow so the nozzle cools down quickly and begins dripping liquid propane
Now I'm going to try something now that you probably shouldn't try at home
I'm going to open this valve all the way and touch it off with a barbecue igniter
Just want to see what happens is anything gonna happen
There we go how sweet
Now you might be wondering why the flame didn't travel back into the bottle and make this thing explode and here's why we know that
The fire triangle says three things need to be present in order for combustion to happen
We need to have an ignition source
We need to have fuel and we need to have oxygen
But there's no oxygen in the bottle so there's no way for combustion to take place until it travels out of the nozzle it mixes
with the oxygen in the air
But saying that this still isn't an experiment
I can recommend for anyone else
all right now for the fun part the backyard scientist found that if we crank this valve fully open and turn it upside down and
Leave it in the glass all I have to do is give it a few minutes and the glass will fill itself up
so we have our propane with our modified tip we have a glass so let's go ahead and put the two together and see if
It really works
it is
Now that we got our glass filling up with propane let me tell you about some of the characteristics of propane itself
We already know that propane is normally a gas
But if you can press it and stick it in a pressurized steel container
It will actually carry as a liquid the liquid itself is pretty cold
But maybe not as cold as you might think it's nowhere near the boiling point of liquid nitrogen
Propane boils at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about minus 42 degrees Celsius
But the amazing thing is it won't freeze until it hits minus
306 now even though it's far from being as cold as liquid nitrogen making contact with your bare skin can cause frostbite
But the bigger Concern here is this liquid is flammable
Meaning if you got a near flame or spark it could go off and cause a lot of damage
Propane vapors are actually heavier than air which means they're not going to float away into the atmosphere
They will sink down into the corners of the room
So if you're working in a very confined space with propane there's a small chance that could push out all the air and suffocate you
there we go guys it's been about six or seven minutes our glass is about halfway full and you can see the stuff is cold because
Frost is forming on the outside of the glass itself or our capture rate has decreased quite a bit
I think that's because most of the liquid is out
And we're just blowing bubbles at this point the interesting thing is our tank is still going it slowed down
But it's still pumping out liquid propane look at this down in here. So let's take it apart and play with the liquid itself
So there we go guys the goal of this experiment was to extract liquid propane
And I think you could say we've done that successfully, but there are a couple more quick experiments
I want to try before we go first off
What will a marshmallow do soaked in liquid propane and what will happen if we light it off? OK here we go dunk number one
Oh, you hear that? That's already frozen solid that's cool
Look at how hard that is
Cool. It froze pretty quick. Let's move in this for about another minute yeah, it's about a minute. Take it out and smash it.
Oh that's hard
Nice
Yeah, it's like really crispy on the outside, but still a little gooey on the inside
Maybe I should have left it a little bit longer because now I just made a mess everywhere
Let's try that again, but this time I'm going to light it off
alright, that's been about a minute. You can see this thing
Is actually go crispy it chips off. I'm going to light it up away from the propane
That burned up pretty quickly and even scorched the whole thing so marshmallows in liquid propane kind of cool
But there's one bigger question on my mind that I'd really like to see the results, too
What would happen if we touched an open flame to a glass of liquid propane?
What the whole thing explode would it go up in a big fireball or would it
just sit there and casually burn? you and I both know there's only one way to find out now
I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen so I came out here to a big cement Pad
I'm think I'm just going to set this thing down and throw lit matches into it so we can ignite it from a distance
Sound safe right here we go moment of truth. Ooh
That was so close
There we go
Okay, so that wasn't incredibly dangerous looks like it's still burning
It is so there's a little flame in there
But that's not super dangerous at all in fact you can barely even see the flame
If you look closely you can actually be my match floating at the bottom. What if I roll it around a little bit
Oh wow look at that
It's got the little bits of Marshmallow inside their burning
wow, so it didn't explode and this actually makes sense because if you think about it this whole container is filled with propane like the
Bottle itself, there's not much oxygen here, so it doesn't actually ignite until it gets up here where it meets the atmosphere
But if I shake it around I can agitate that
You create a lot more gas venting off a good to think light
It was bigger if we were to pour this stuff out on the concrete it would have a lot more surface area and probably create
A much more dramatic effect I'm actually going to try it. I'm going to pour this on the pavement here we go
Cool, and it's gone in an instant. It's just gone it would have sat there and burned for
Indefinite amount of time in the glass, but you throw it on the concrete boom it's gone
That was very cool. Let's go ahead and summarize what we just learned here today
We know that propane is a gas in its normal state, but when compressed and confined to a container
It turns into a liquid
We found that traditional propane nozzles are designed to mix air with the propane to give a nice teal blue color
But that if we remove the shroud that mixes the air it won't let off at all
We chopped off the tip of the nozzle with a hacksaw and drilled out the inside and found that rather than exploding the large amount
Of gas being expelled burned slowly with the air causing a bright orange flame
we opened the valve all the way tipped it upside down a cup and left it for about six minutes where we extracted all the
Liquid propane and got half a glass or about one cup
We tried freezing marshmallows to see what they would do and found. They got really crispy on the outside, but unless they're soaked longer
they stay pretty gummy on the inside and
Finally we tried lighting matches and throwing them into an open container of liquid propane to see what happened where we discover all that really?
Happens is it just slowly burns off the top as it's able to mix with the air. So there you have it guys now
You know how to modify your propane torches to extract liquid propane remember this stuff is extremely flammable
And this probably is'nt an experiment you really want to try at home
But I'm sure glad you joined me for this video, and I'll be looking for you the next one. Talk to you then
Ha I guess it comes out the back good to know
Like made Marshmallow snow that's going to be bugger to clean up