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PROPANE: THE HIDDEN HISTORY
PART II
PROPANE AND THE ASTM
Propane's history is hidden in the history of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard for propane, ASTM Standard 1835D. In the story of ASTM Standard 1835D, we find what HD5 propane is and how "commercial grade" propane became the code for "refinery slop." It is people who write the standards at ASTM, primarily for the benefit of business. ASTM Standard 135D has been in place since 1961, and over the fifty years we have relied upon it, it has changed at least a dozen times. We went to MIT and the Cleveland Public Library Science and Technology Collections to find all the published versions of ASTM D1835 since 1961. When we dug out the old standards, we discovered HD5's hidden history.
When we went through the historic ASTM Standards, we found, just as we suspected, an elegant flim-flam of the American public. Until 1975, the standard set out only one grade of propane, "commercial grade" propane. Before 1975, almost all the propane in America was produced by natural gas processing, which meant that almost all of it was HD5, since the propane so produced had to conform to GPA 2140, the standard of the Gas Processors Association, in effect since 1932.
This all began to change in 1972, when the Clean Air Act required oil refiners, among others, to capture the sulfur emitted from their refining columns in order to preserve air quality. By 1975, ths "desulfurization" requirement created opportunity: the oil refiners sold the captured sulfur as chemical fertilizer, and they saw that the remaining gases could be captured at the top of the column and sold as fuel. Coincidentally, in 1975, HD5 propane was introduced into ASTM Standard D1835, as "Special Duty" propane, equivalent to GPA 2140's HD5. The "Commercial grade" designation, which defined propane as a "mixture of hydrocarbon gas that holds a flame" for refinery odds and ends or "slop:" the odds and ends were hydrocarbons, and they could hold a flame.
By 2010, the GAO could report that half of the propane was produced as a by-product of natural gas processing and half was produced as a by-product of oil refining. The GAO reported the facts as they stood, without the history. The history tells us that where once the source of propane was natural gas processing, by 1975, when "Special Duty" propane, "equivalent to HD5 propane" described in GPA Standard 2140, was introduced, the sources of propane, and with the source of propane, the quality of "commercial grade" propane, shifted from propane derived from gas processing to "slop." All that was required of "commercial grade" propane was that it hold a flame, and the refiners took full advantage of this low bar to sell their slop to all takers, making a profit out what had threatened to become a liability.
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