Thread: oxy-petrol, anyone ever use it?

I've got a pressure lantern that runs on petrol . It is designed to run on shellite which is cleaner [less additives ] but can run on petrol in an emergency .Its got a mantel and is just like the LPG gas lights.

Apparently if run on petrol for prolonged periods the additives gum up the insides as they dont vaporise .I have also seen small camping stoves designed to run on petrol.


My guess is the vaporised petrol would be similar to LPG but you might have to clean out the gummy residue of the vaporised additives occasionally.

Definitely would be cheaper though , and if the petrol burns even a bit hotter than LPG it could be hot enough to fusion weld mild steel .I,m sure it would get hot enough to cut and braze any way .

Definitely keep an eye on this post

thanks --mat --

I just looked at the links .At over a grand they are not cheap, but if they get popular and other companies {china] start making them hopefully they will get a lot cheaper .

In its original form one brand was Petrogen, but its only been here in Oz since 2008 maybe there's probably not a lot around who have used it as yet .

The yanks were saying stuff like it used $8.00 of petrol( yanks call it gas-that it itself may seem confusing to anyone dealing with real gas) to an equivalent of $125 worth of acetylene.

I would be careful of racing out to get one because if I remember about the LPG gas substitute it was cheap too but that used up Oxy a 2 to1 basis as compared to the costing against Oxy /Acetylene.

Grahame

Note that the kit listed is for cutting...they don't mention welding.

And that was the same sort of thing with the LPG....it seemed to be good for cutting...and possibly brasing.

It may not produce enough heat for welding

Before LPG became common most people used petrol/shellite/white spirit powered stoves and lanterns.....i remember camping with them as a kid.


Back in the 80's the LPG oxy was reasonably popular with plumbers, particularly those working on BIG pipes, I remember sing city councill trucks with oxy lpg rigs on them.

Graham will know more detail.

cheers

Maybe some other guys will know more, but I heard from a mate who is a mechanical engineer that dropping leaded petrol for unleaded was in some ways a questionable thing to do (he came across this in his studies).

Lead is toxic. The benzine in unleaded is even more toxic and highly carcinogenic. Hence the catalytic converter was added to the car to remove the benzine after combustion along with a host of other unsavoury items.

Burning petrol as an acetylene/LPG substitute to me sounds like you'd be inhaling some pretty unsavoury fumes, meaning you'd need to watch and manage your exposure levels.

Not a scam, as stated by others used for cutting. I investigated this for work about a year ago. But the pricing I got was about 6x the ebay price, if ebay did it back then we probably would have tried one. Some info from the Petrogen agents is attached.

cheers
Frank

Guys,
Think about what you wish to do.
Salvage and demolition cutting which the unit is very good for those applications.I don't criticise the unit for what its made for.

For the the cutting this unit does will not suit many on this forum as the finish is like it is basically chewed off the plate. There is not fine cutting to the tolerance of half a center pop perhaps you are used to with an oxy acetylene cutting process.

More like the tolerance is within half an inch.If you are cutting up ships and bridges its great.

It will not give the results many of you will want.Check first.

Grahame

The guys who work in the scrap metal industry (eg. Simsmetal) would find this unit interesting.

I know of one place where they are paid by the ton for the scrap they cut for recycling preparation.

If the claimed cutting speeds are almost double that of other gases, they would effectively give themselves as pay rise...

On my previous post about unleaded fuel, I hear rumors about the USA about to re-introduce leaded fuel to help combat pollution?

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

For the the cutting this unit does will not suit many on this forum as the finish is like it is basically chewed off the plate.

But that is probably what all of our oxy-acetylene cutting attempts look like anyway....