What is the best fuel for a barbecue grill: natural gas or propane?
Is there a good reason to convert your existing barbecue grill from propane to natural gas (NG)? The answer is that there may be.
This article will help you make up your mind.
What is the difference between NG and propane?
NG is composed mainly of methane. For those of you who still remember your chemistry, the methane molecule has one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. Propane has three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms. Both, like many other fuels, are called hydrocarbons.
When hydrocarbons are burned, they emit heat and the amount of heat depends on the size of the hydrocarbon molecule. With this in mind, it won’t surprise you to learn that propane emits much more heat when burned than methane.
The amount of heat that is given off can be measured. One cubic foot of propane emits 2,516 British Thermal Units (BTUs) and one cubic foot of methane emits 1,030 BTUs.
So if propane is better for heating your barbecue, is there a compelling reason to switch? Perhaps, but there are several factors that must be taken into account.
The cost of converting your barbecue
You will have to make mechanical changes to your propane grill to convert it. The conversion is necessary because to maintain the heating capacity of your grill, it will be necessary to change the fuel regulator and the pipes that enter the burners to supply a little more than twice the volume of gaseous fuel per minute than before.
There are sites on the internet that show you how to convert and you can purchase conversion kits, but we recommend that you leave the conversion work to a qualified NG engineer.
If you are also installing a supply line in or near your patio to connect your converted grill, get an engineer who can perform the conversion at the same time.
Keep in mind that the conversion costs involved could range from $ 100 to $ 200 or more. If you didn’t pay that much for your barbecue grill, it may make sense to buy a new grill instead of converting your old one. There are some excellent Grill review sites on the web to help you if you decide to do this.
Move your barbecue
Once you’ve connected your grill to your newly installed supply line, you won’t be able to move it the same way you would your propane grill. On the other hand, if you decide to convert, you won’t have to worry about lugging around those heavy propane bottles or running out of fuel in the middle of a barbecue session.
Running cost
When you are billed for the NG you have used, you are billed by the cubic foot (see your bill to see this). It is difficult to compare these costs with propane because in most cases propane is purchased in 20- or 50-pound bottles.
But you can do a relative cost comparison by converting those pounds of propane to cubic feet because each pound of propane provides about 8.66 cubic feet of gaseous fuel. If you know your household fuel costs and your propane costs, you can use this figure as a conversion factor that will allow you to compare the running costs of these two types of barbecue.
That is how:
A 20-pound bottle of propane can cost $ 18, so the price of a cubic foot of propane is $ 18 / 20×8.66 or 10 cents. Compare this to what you pay for a cubic foot of GN. In most cases, you will find that propane is much more expensive. in fact, it can be 2 to 3 times more expensive. But you will need to calculate your own costs to get an accurate comparison.
Maintenance – Propane vs. NG grills
NG is cleaner than propane. When burned, it never leaves carbon residue. Although propane is also fairly clean, it can leave carbon deposits when there is not enough air around it to ensure that it burns out completely.
Food flavor
Natural gas is almost pure methane, but it does contain a sulfur-based smelly substance called mercaptan that is added for safety reasons (that is, you can smell it if you have a gas leak in your home).
Some Users claim that this substance affects the taste of food cooked on a barbecue. I can’t find this, but maybe my taste buds aren’t as sensitive as they could be.
Environmental impact
Propane is environmentally cleaner. NG in the environment is a “greenhouse gases“But propane is not classified as such. This means that there is little environmental impact if propane escapes into the atmosphere, but methane affects the environment if it is present in large quantities.
Should I go for NG?
Do your homework and weigh the above points. My take is that if you already have an expensive grill, grill a lot, and use methane in your home for heating and cooking, then switching your grill from one fuel to another might be a great idea. it will definitely save money.
On the other hand, if your grill is old and you don’t use enough natural gas at home to be able to buy at the best prices, it may not be worth changing, especially when calculating your grill conversion costs.