How many therms are in a propane tank?


 
Arun L.

Arun L.

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The natural gas company measures gas used in therms.

If I want to compare how much propane gas is in a 15 lb. tank, then how many therms are in a 15 lb. tank?

I figure a few people on here might have done the same calculation before, so I could get a better answer here, then by a random internet search.
 
According to an Amerigas blog, a therm is the heating equivalent of 100,000 BTU. Kind of makes that nice to compare natural gas to LP. In LP, it's 1.1 gallons, apparently. 1 MCF of natural gas has 1,000,000 BTU, equivalent to 11 gallons of LP.
 
JKalchik said:
According to an Amerigas blog, a therm is the heating equivalent of 100,000 BTU. Kind of makes that nice to compare natural gas to LP. In LP, it's 1.1 gallons, apparently. 1 MCF of natural gas has 1,000,000 BTU, equivalent to 11 gallons of LP.
Click to expand...
My propane tank just says 15 lbs.

How can I use this information and make a comparison to BTUs, given that it's a weight?

Would I use this conversion?

1 pound (lb) = 0.119826427 gallon

So 15 lbs is 1.797396405 gallons, which is 164,375.49603006 therms.

That seems too low. One tank with only 1.64 therms?
 
Arun L. said:
My propane tank just says 15 lbs.

How can I use this information and make a comparison to BTUs, given that it's a weight?

Would I use this conversion?

1 pound (lb) = 0.119826427 gallon

So 15 lbs is 1.797396405 gallons, which is 164,375.49603006 therms.

That seems too low. One tank with only 1.64 therms?
Click to expand...
According to the internet one gallon of propane weighs 4.24 pounds
 
Those 20 lb. grill tanks really aren't that large.

100,000 BTU..... 1 BTU is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 lb. of liquid water (standard atmospheric pressure,) 1 degree F. So, figuring 1,000 lbs of water, that's enough energy to lift the temperature 100 degrees F. I brew beer with a ~70k BTU banjo burner in 5 gallon batches (starting with 6 gallons, about 48 lbs.) Tap water temp of 50 degrees F, raise it 160 degrees to boil it, that's 8,000 BTU right there, and I keep it boiling for generally an hour (at a lower burn rate.) I wouldn't be surprised that a single batch of beer burns through 30k-40k BTUs of LP. Figuring a couple of therms, for a few hundred thousand BTUs, with my fairly efficient burner, that seems to be in the ball park.
 
BPratt said:
According to the internet one gallon of propane weighs 4.24 pounds
Click to expand...
Ok, that comes out to 3.5377 gallons in a 15 lb. tank.

Which comes out to 3.216 therms.

I spent $23.48 on the tank, so I paid $7.301 per therm.

Meanwhile, for NG, it appears during the past billing cycle, I paid $1.65 per therm.

Does this calculation seem to make sense?
 
Arun L. said:
Ok, that comes out to 3.5377 gallons in a 15 lb. tank.

Which comes out to 3.216 therms.

I spent $23.48 on the tank, so I paid $7.301 per therm.

Meanwhile, for NG, it appears during the past billing cycle, I paid $1.65 per therm.

Does this calculation seem to make sense?
Click to expand...
Yes, you pay more for the portability of propane per unit.
 
This link has some nice conversions.

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If I use their conversion that 1 lb. has 21,591 BTU, that comes out to 15 lbs. being 323,865 BTU, which is similar to what I got above.

So this seems to suggest that is conversion from lbs. to therms/BTU is valid.
 
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