Propane is a specific light fuel gas. LP-gas is short for liquefied petroleum gas, the family it belongs to, stored as a liquid under pressure.
Propane is a gas in open air but becomes a liquid under modest pressure. That is what makes the business work, because the liquid is easy to store and haul in tanks and turns back to gas when you draw it off.
It heats homes, runs farm equipment and forklifts, fuels grills, and dries crops. It moves in its own pressurized trucks and tanks, kept apart from gasoline and diesel.
For a fuel marketer, propane is often a winter business much like heating oil, with demand and deliveries that climb as the weather turns cold.
In useThe marketer keeps a customer’s propane tank filled through the winter for the home’s furnace, then sees demand drop off in spring.
Where the word comes from
Propane is a chemist’s name, built from the naming pattern for this family of fuels, and it came into use in the early 1900s as the gas was identified and sold. LP-gas is simply short for liquefied petroleum gas.
See also Heating oil, Keep-full