NLPGA debunks misleading info on the safety, pricing of gas as an alternative for generators

The Nigeria Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association (NLPGA) has debunked some misconceptions about the use of gas for generators in the country.

A member of the Safety and Technical Committee of the NLPGA, Engineer Busayo Fabunmi put out a statement on his official LinkedIn page  regarding a previous post stating that fuel is cheaper than gas.

“The attention of the Safety & Technical Committee of the Nigeria LPG Association (#NLPGA) has been drawn to some misleading posts on Autogas, which we need to address.

“Nigeria has many safety standards in place; where domestic ones have not been fully developed, some international ones have been adopted. The level of implementation of these standards is a different matter. This is an area our committee focuses on!

“When making comparisons of this nature it is not sufficient to simply quote numbers, but to compare apples with apples and not apples with pears. Nowhere is it done to compare the weight (kg) of one product with the volume (litre) price of another.

“The equivalent and correct price comparison for this post should have been:

“Volume: N400/litre (@N700/kg) for LPG versus N550/litre for petrol.

“Weight: N700/kg for LPG versus N742.5/kg (@N550/litre) for petrol. In either case, LPG is still cheaper.

“Giving the Energy Density of 42.3 and 46.6MMBTU/Tonne of LPG and Petrol respectively: LPG is about N10,700/MMBTU, while Petrol is roughly N18,500/MMBTU.

“The Author of the post also pointed out the potential effect of the high heat content of LPG. This is the very reason why the complete replacement of the petrol carburettor is recommended.

“The retrofitting kit has a specially designed regulator cum carburettor jet system that dispenses the right amount of LPG, which gives a petrol-equivalent calorific value to the internal combustion system. It is, however, important to ensure that the right type of kit is selected when doing this conversion.

“Lastly, on the comment that nowhere in the world where people use LPG in 5 – 10kVA generators, a simple Google search on Amazon (key works: “propane generators”) will provide clarity on this.

“NLPGA has conducted several trials over the years and the following are summarised results of LPG/Autogas using a 7.5kVA generator set post-subsidy:

“N500/hour on LPG and N1,050/hour on petrol. This represents about 50 per cent cost reduction.” he said.

Before this time, many Nigerians have considered converting generators and vehicles to run on gas variants due to the rise in petrol pump prices. It is worthy of note that the current petrol pump price now sells for N617/litre and above, depending on the location of the buyer.

According to him, the fuel volatility and explosion limit of LPG is between 2 per cent and 10  per cent and LPG has a lower explosion limit (LEL).