Chinese Villages Use Giant Balloons to Steal Natural Gas

[n2doc]

What would you do for simple gas to cook, or heat your home during the winter? Would you be willing to fill a giant bag full with natural gas and carry it into your home, at the risk of, well, exploding? Because that's what villagers in the Shandong Province of China are doing.

The villagers come to the oil extraction facility to fill the massive gas bags because they're too poor to afford other means of heating and cooking gas, and they aren't allowed to connect lines to the oil field. So instead they carry around the giant bags of explosion. According to people who live in the area, they last for about five days before they have to be refilled.

There haven't been any reports of the bags exploding, though one elderly woman was lifted in the air when the wind caught hold of her bag. But other villages with makeshift gas-acquiring techniques haven't been so lucky, like one that had an explosion after a power outage to the main oil line. It's all terribly insane, of course, but also kind of ingenious.

http://gizmodo.com/5889094/chinese-villages-use-giant-balloons-to-steal-natural-gas

[madokie]

1. You have to have a proper ratio of oxygen and NG to make it explode

If the bag is filled with NG and not a mixture of NG and oxygen then there is no problem with carrying around a bag of gas. Burst the bag near an ignition source and all bets are off.
The window of how much gas to oxygen that is explosive is a lot smaller window than most think it is too. Too much of either and nothing happens

[izquierdista]

2. Actually, it's a pretty good technology

Many biogas digesters in tropical countries use the inflatable bag method to store a few days worth of gas. And you have to be really unlucky filling it to get the mixture inside between the lower explosive limit and the upper explosive limit to be carrying around a bomb that can go off. Outside of those two limits, it's just a bag full of flammable gas which you should keep away from an open flame.

Seeing as they are supposed to be communists there, I wonder why the government doesn't install a compressor and let people buy it in 10 liter tanks at subsidized prices.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. omg

[IDemo]

4. A giant bag of gas, did you say?

[badtoworse]

5. LOL