Banjo Burner on Propane or NG?!

[Jravpro1]

Pretty new to All Grain, but got a Banjo Burner for Christmas to replace my old turkey fryer burner. Works great, heats 8 gal's to 180F in about 15 mins, but I've run low on propane each time I've used it. Tried a new regulator with a gas gauge, but that only confirms I'm out of gas. So I did a little research tonight and "discovered" that 15# of LP will only run a 210,000 BTU Banjo Burner for about 1.5 hrs! That's almost a whole bottle per batch!

A friend once told me that he runs his "Tower" on Natural Gas, after drilling out the aperture. You Tube videos make that look pretty easy. But I'm wondering how well it can work when NG delivers only about 5# pressure.

Who has experience out there and can advise me?

 

[mprowland]

The reason why you would drill out the orifice is to allow more volume. Pressure is only on part of the equation.
In simple terms; Pressure X Volume = BTU
Similar to electricity; Volts X Amps = Power
If one variable is low, compensate by raising the other one.
I use a 23 tip burner off of Amazon. The burner is quiet, cheaper to operate and I never run out of gas.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]But I'm wondering how well it can work when NG delivers only about 5# pressure.[...]

More like 0.4 psi. And at a lower fuel energy density vs propane. I guesstimate the output ends up around 50K btu.

But lots of folks run their Big Banjo burners on natural gas successfully...

Cheers!

 

[Build]

Propane has about 2.5 times more btu than ng per unit. Either will work ok, but propane will get you up to boil quicker.