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jkyocom Offline OP
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I have pumped a LOT of gas in my day...I have noticed that since gas prices have gone up, the nozzle is not cold during delivery.
I have noticed the EXXON down the street added a trailer to the lot and there is a vent with hot gasses comming out of it.
The reason for this is gasoline expands and contracts with temp.....The colder the gas ,the more product you recieve. ...more dense.
There are certain heat ranges that are acceptable for dispensing gas...too hot is ILLEGAL...you get way less product.
Warming the gas is the oil co's way of legally making more profit.
Gasoline in a below ground tank should stay around 70 degrees F. Body temp is around 98.6 F..in you hands it might be lower, but
..if you can feel a difference in the temp of the nozzle....it being warmer than your hand during delivery...they are heating the gas to offset the price drops.
Prices did not go down....the temp went up and volume goes down....I am no rocket scientist and would not be able to do the calculations....but we are still getting it up the tailpipe!!!!!!!!
Joe


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Has it occured to you Joe, that its summer time???? Its been kinda hot lately....


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It does not matter if it is summer or winter if the tank is underground.

I have not noticed that joe, but have thought about this for years on the above tank stations we have around here. Great deal in the winter, not such great deal in the summer.

Ryan

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I dont intend to start a heated discussion here but, storage tanks and pipelines absorb heat. That warm fuel goes into tanker trucks, that also absorb heat. Then the fuel is pumped into below ground tanks, that have absorbed the heat of the warm ground. Then you have the pumps themselves, that warm up in the heat of the day. Do you really think that all this doesn't add up to warmer fuel? If not, then why does the opposite happen in the winter time? I know for a fact that my loads freeze in my trucks in the winter, but not in the summer. My guess would be that the trailer at the Exxon station, is some sort of vapor recovery unit. I could be wrong about that, but I HIGHLY doubt, that ist some sort of heater, designed to warm the fuel, so that the customer gets less. Just a thought...


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You are right Joe!!! Reading your post made me think back to filling my motorcycle last weekend. The tank was not cold afterwards. I can remember during the summer the hotter it was the colder the tank would feel after a fill up. I would have thought an underground tank would not rise above 50 degrees F. My In-Laws root cellar stays around 48 degrees F. year round. Maybe the gas stations are looking out for us by warming the fuel so the condensation from cold fuel will not rust out our fuel tanks. I feel better now.
Mike

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In Canada, the volume of gasoline dispensed by a consumer pump is temperature/pressure/volume corrected automatically by the pump to 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). That means that for the volume dispensed at any temperature, you get the same amount of energy for your dollar.

I don't have the figures at hand, but the coefficient of expansion for the various grades of gasoline (and other fuels)are well known. It does make a difference with large storage tank volumes, you have to leave headspace or they can overflow if the contents warm up.

As far as the machine venting fumes from the underground tank area, I can't imagine that anyone would go to the trouble of warming gasoline for a volume expansion payoff - it' probably wouldn't cover the cost of the energy to warm the gas. But who knows?


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When I was looking at heat systems, the ground source heat pump system in particular, I read that the ground below the frost line is somewhere about 50 degrees f.


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I do know this, when I fill my jet boat, the tanks hold 11.5 gallons of fuel. If I fill them to where the level is near the top of the fill tube, and the sun comes out, it does not take very long for the fuel to leak out all over the place. Seems like it expands and contrasts very rapidly. I have had to pull out one gallon to get it to quit leaking when it gets real warm out. I dont think it takes very much time for it to cool down or heat up.

But Im not a scientist or anything, I paint cars. I could be completly off track.

Ryan

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jkyocom Offline OP
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The trailer I mentioned is not venting gasoline fumes from the tank but waste from a heating system.I have put in enough gas water heaters to know what a waste gas vent is.

Now why, in the summer, would you have waste gas fumes comming out of a trailer on a gas station lot....near the tanks.
The guy at the store said it was "something for the gas tanks" The trailer was installed when prices jumped over $1.50

Not all stations have the MPD's with all the electronic compensators or MPD's at all. There are still a lot of stations running Dispensers with mechanical computers.

Not all stations are doing this....

Geothermal H/C systems depend on the temp of the ground to work...gas stored in the below ground tank will cool.The ground is cooler than the air outside...that is why dogs will dig out a hole to lay in. Not much gas stays in the dispenser and is pumped out within the first gallon or so. So whatever gas is in the cabinet that was heated by the air will pass quickly and cooler gas should follow.
70 degrees was an estimate on the ground temp...but...the nozzle should not feel like bath water temp gas is flowing through it.

This fall/winter take notice and see if the nozzle is warm or cold.Even here in GA in the winter Normally you almost cannot hold the nozzle because of the cold.Last winter I did not notice this....
Last winter I started noticing this at several newer stations.

Do you get cold water or warm water when you turn on the cold side of your sink?
Water lines run long distances through the ground and do not absorb that kind of heat.


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Well Joe, with you being a person, who rebuilds Veeder Root computers, I would think that you would be fully aware of the organizations that checks/regulates the standards of weights and measures. They insure that produsct sold, by either weight or volume, are measured and sold accuratly. Correct? So lets just speculate your suspicion of "Fuel Warming". Though its been a while since I've worked at a service station, I seem to remember that our storage tank was 10,000 gallons. So I would imagine, that it would take a rather large heater to warm up that much fuel. Now one of my trucks, does have a fuel warmer, so even though the tank is substantially smaller, it can be done. So, like my fuel heater, there would be a large, water pipe installed into the storage tank, that would circulate hot water, thereby, warming the fuel. So large holes would be needed, to install, many feet of pipe, into the tanks. Both into and out of the tank. Probably not a simple do-it-yourself kind of job. But there is another possibility.... A flash heater. If installed, at the pump, the fuel wouldnt have a chance to cool down before being dispensed. Two things to keep in mind with this.... Flames inside a gas pump!!!!! And the possibility of the fuel getting too hot, causing the pump to vapor lock. (I bet a lot of racers here remember the coffee cans, full of ice, that had a copper fuel line in it, to keep our cars from vapor locking at the track. But I digress.) Maybe the fuel is pumped into the trailer, warmed up, then pumped back out to the pumps. There's that pipe issue again. I think that the possibility of my science teacher were right, might be worth looking at again. Temps are higher in the summer time because the days are longer. This allows the sun to warm up the planet and everything on it. Thats why it warmer in the city, than it is in the country... More stuff to hold the heat. Even though the tanks are underground, they are not deep enough to not be subject to the warming tendency of that great big fire ball in the sky. To confirm this, check with a building department, that governs a teperate area. They will have a standard called a "Frost Leve" thats how much of Mother Earth, that freezes in the winter. water freezes a 32 degrees farenheit. Dirt, with its moisture content, also freezes at that temp. Thats why foundations are to be built BELOW that level. Heat, or lack of, does have the ability to transmit through solid objects. Your coffe cup warms up when you fill it up. Right? I think that my second post is what you are experiencing here. If not, please contact the weights and measures people. I'm sure that they'd love to hear about this...... BTW. If it is a fuel heater, please ask how much one of those heater units cost? I'll need one in the winter time to thaw out my frozen loads.


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How many millions of gallons would you have to sell to justify the cost of unit + installation + maintenance for each grade ?

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Joe,

Why don't you try an experiment. Fill up your car, then fill up a lawn mower gas can afterwards. This will insure that the temperature through the pump has stabilized. Then, put a thermometer in the gas can and see what the temperature of the gas is. That would answer the question of whether it's being warmed, for sure.

Wes

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jkyocom Offline OP
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I am quite familiar with weights and measures...when I built meters, they had to be within 3 cubic inches + or - of 5 gallons in a 5 gallon test measure, on a 5 gallon delivery, when calibrated before they left the shop.
That was supposed to be at a certain thermal coefficiant ....I don't remember it though.
The formula is on the test measure.
Every one had to be tested for leaks
and if the calibration held on fast and slow,
also they had to be able to be ajusted down to 20 cubic inches below 0 ( 5 gal )to allow for adjustment to compensate for wear.

Weights and measures do periodic checks at stations for calibration, etc.Here they are under the office of the Dept Agriculture.
If what they are doing was illegal they would have stopped it long ago....what I am getting at is there is an acceptable high temp. for selling gasoline.If they sold it colder than that they are loosing profits . So if they can warm to those boundries they sell a larger volume than at a colder temp.

I put in a lot of water lines and the frost code here is 18".... Montana....6'!!!!!!

I will see if the guy will let me look inside the suspicious looking privacy fence that is around it.....I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed anything like this. Knowing what I know about pumps and equipment and junk like that, it just seems a little odd.


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jkyocom Offline OP
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I thought about that yesterday ,Wes.
I have a dipper thermometer. I may just do it.


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I'm not doubting that the gas is warm.... I'm doubting that it is WARMED!!!!


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