Keeping your Cooking Gas (LPG) Cylinder in your Car’s Trunk

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• Author: Muyiwa Ige(LPG Stakeholder and Consultant)

Scores of catastrophic incidents of LPG cylinders that exploded in the truck or interior of parked or moving vehicles, have led many people to the conclusion that the practice is equivalent to a suicide mission.

However, available evidence indicates that filled cooking gas cylinders can be safely kept in the trunks or interiors of stationery or mobile vehicles, under the right conditions.

Quality of the Gas Cylinder

Keeping a fully filled old/expired, substandard or fake gas cylinder in the trunk of a vehicle, where there’s no ventilation, is extremely dangerous.

This is because the temperature in the trunk will be higher than the temperature outside, which will trigger an increase in the vapor pressure of the LPG inside the cylinder.

If the vapor pressure of the LPG exceeds the generally low design pressure of the old/expired, substandard and fake cylinder/pressure relief valve, then an explosion is inevitable.

An old/expired, substandard and fake gas cylinder typically has low tensile strength and can’t withstand so much pressure before failing.

Therefore, a fully filled old/expired, substandard or fake LPG cylinder must never be kept in the trunk of a parked or mobile vehicle.

High Temperature/Heat

It is not advisable to keep any fully filled cylinder in the trunk or interior of a vehicle parked in the open and directly under a hot morning/afternoon sun.

This is because the vehicle will absorb the heat of the sun, causing a spike in the vapor pressure of the LPG in the cylinder. The longer the vehicle stays in the sun, the higher the vapor pressure of the gas in the cylinder rises.

Only a cylinder that is of top quality, and that is not overfilled with gas, can withstand the sustained rise in the vapor pressure of the LPG inside it.

Old/expired, substandard and fake cylinders stand no chance and will fail under this continuous temperature increase.

Keeping your rightly filled good quality cylinder in your vehicle parked under a covered space (shade) is the ideal thing to do.

Source of Ignition

The leakage of gas from the valve, burner or body of a filled LPG cylinder kept in a vehicle’s trunk is a recipe for disaster. This is because this will lead to a dangerously high accumulation of gas in the trunk.

Any source of ignition kept in the trunk will ignite the vapor, starting a fire and produce the resultant outcome of the explosion of the LPG cylinder.

Sources of ignition must not be kept in the trunk of your vehicle together with your filled gas cylinder.