Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, it must undergo processing to remove almost all materials other than methane. The by-products of that processing include ethane, propane, butanes, pentanes, and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, elemental sulfur, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and sometimes helium and nitrogen.
Natural GasNatural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons (primarily ethane). It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.
Most natural gas is created by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material.
Natural gas is often informally referred to as simply gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal.
Domestic use
Natural gas dispensed from a simple stovetop can generate heat in excess of 2000°F (1093°C) making it a powerful domestic cooking and heating fuel. In much of the developed world it is supplied to homes via pipes where it is used for many purposes including natural gas-powered ranges and ovens, natural gas-heated clothes dryers, heating/cooling, and central heating. Home or other building heating may include boilers, furnaces, and water heaters. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is used in rural homes without connections to piped-in public utility services, or with portable grills. Natural gas is also supplied by independent natural gas suppliers through Natural Gas Choice programs throughout the United States. However, due to CNG being less economical than LPG, LPG (propane) is the dominant source of rural gas.
Avoidable Health Hazard
Natural gas has caused more cases of environmental illness than any other substance, even than pesticides. Recent scientific studies strongly link indoor natural gas use to increased asthma and respiratory illness. If you already have environmental illness or asthma, avoiding natural gas use is crucial. But it is equally important to realize that everyone can lessen the risk of developing illness by avoiding natural gas use. Cook stoves are commonly the worst application, but space heaters, fireplaces, dryers, hot water heaters and furnaces all adversely contribute. The Maritimes have the worst rates of asthma and environmental illness in Canada
The introduction of natural gas to the Maritimes is a juggernaut that is difficult to resist as government and business are falling over themselves to promote it. However all the hype just covers up the surprising, awful truth. Government contrived deviously to avoid any evaluation during the rigged environmental assessment of the environmental, social and health effects of the actual USE of natural gas. Why? Because the truth is - it isn't good for the environment to use gas, gas use suppresses, not promotes, truly sustainable energy alternatives and gas is bad for the public's health in indoor uses.The immediate question facing Maritimers is, "Should I connect my home or business to use
natural gas?" We say that it is a risk better avoided. Leave gas use to electrical generation and heavy industry where it is better than other available alternatives, being both cleaner and less expensive there. Gas pipes and gas combustion inside buildings people inhabit is too great a risk, particularly when we have such better alternatives, such as electric and solar.
natural gas?" We say that it is a risk better avoided. Leave gas use to electrical generation and heavy industry where it is better than other available alternatives, being both cleaner and less expensive there. Gas pipes and gas combustion inside buildings people inhabit is too great a risk, particularly when we have such better alternatives, such as electric and solar.
Natural gas is dirty compared to electricity. Studies by the California Institute of Technology and others have found that one breathes gas fumes when cooking. Gas fumes include methane itself, radon and other radioactive materials, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene), organometallic compounds such as methylmercury organoarsenic and organolead, mercaptan odorants, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particulates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (including formaldehyde), and hundreds of other chemicals. You breathe this when you bend over a gas cook stove, to stir your food or when you open the oven door. It sticks to your food too, so you eat it as well. It sticks to clothes in gas dryers so you are covering your skin in it.
It is lighter than air so it rises up into your living and sleeping areas, concentrating higher up nearer your head. This is one reason why gas is worse than fuel oil, which is heavier than air and thus sinks and which is never used in stoves or dryers, etc. Gas or propane cook stove/ ranges are far and away the worst. Also avoid any other open flames inside, including candles.
Gas combustion generates copious amounts of water vapour contributing to moulds, dust mites, viruses and bacteria, providing a transport mechanism for these and other respirable particulates and volatile organic compounds deep into the lungs and thus into the body.
All gas lines eventually leak. Small leaks are typically not detected until they grow much larger, often taking years. These small leaks add a significant constant pollutant load that stresses and wears down immune and other body systems. Many people have trouble even with underground leaks in neighbourhoods as well as from appliance exhausts. Gas leaks even damage plants. Direct and indirect costs of illness are extremely high.
