Methane and Natural Gas, the Dummy Comparison

A typical natural gas is mostly methane

There's a saying about greatness: Some people are born great and others have greatness thrust upon them." Yay, them! At the other end of the spectrum, however, is dumbassery: some people are dumbasses, while others chose to have dumbassery thrust upon them; usually for money. One such person is two-time DotD Frederick S. Blackmon, who for unknown reasons insisted on displaying his ignorance of the oil business for eHow.com multiple times. Take number three for Blackmon? "Methane Gas Vs. Natural Gas"at BizFluent.com (now at Sciencing.com).

Like many of the "questions" posed by unknown internet searches and glommed onto by eHow, this topic makes little or no sense: that's because methane is (a) natural gas, and the natural gas that heats your house and cooks your food is largely methane. If Freddy wanted his fifteen bucks, though, he had to differentiate them... and so he started by explaining that

"Both methane gas and natural gas have bright futures in the clean-energy market."

Ummm, yeah. And Blackmon even admitted in his introductory paragraph that "natural gas is 70 percent to 90 percent methane." So what's the difference? Well, let's see what Fred had to say: "The decomposition of organic compounds creates hundreds of millions of cubic feet of methane gas each year." Ummm, yeah. But where? and how? and why didn't you mention bovine flatulence (aka "cow farts"), Fred? Blackmon then went on to mention methane's potency as a greenhouse gas (check) and that the equivalency between methane and gasoline is 225 ft³ per U. S. gallon [we question the accuracy of that last]. Freddy next went on to blather for a while about "Expensive Natural Gas Vehicles" and "Vital Natural Gas" before getting to the only actual comparison between the two products: "BTU comparison." Freddy cited a study revealing that...

"...a pure methane sample tested at 678 BTUs while the natural gas sample provided a BTU value of about 1,000."

Of course, Blackmon's scientific illiteracy rendered that statement utterly worthless. Why? Because the idiot didn't mention the size of the sample! It's per standard cubic foot, you jackass! That's not to mention that Fred never actually discussed what that means, probably because he didn't know what a BTU is...

The most important difference between methane and natural gas? It's that natural gas contains other, more complex hydrocarbons – ethane and propane, for instance. Methane, CH₄, is the lightest and simplest hydrocarbon with the fewest hydrogen atoms per molecule. That's why it has a relatively low heat yield per unit volume. The heavier gases like propane have more hydrogen and thus burn hotter.
Frederick didn't say that because, frankly, he had no idea what he's talking about. Small wonder we've named him our Dumbass of the Day again, eh?

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