Butane Fuel since 1864 Discovery ? Clean Burning & Renewable via Bio-Fuel Production

Nifty relatively clean burning hydrocarbon fuel that can be kept liquid at low pressure in small plastic refillable lighters.

My steel Zippo EDC lighter upgraded with a butane jet cartridge, since the naphtha fuel wick system that shipped with it originally dries out due to waste heat in the 5th pocket of my jeans where my body heat boils off the liquid hydrocarbon. The butane cartridge also cleaner burning and makes nice blue white jet flame.

Notice clean green blue white flame of butane combustion
This is my EDC custom laser engraved DIY Steel Zippo

From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butane we learn a lot about butane that is scientifically accurate, with historical accuracy, making it an excellent academic base resource for hydrocarbon science research contrary to what many misguided universities and colleges claim about wikipedia articles. 

Butane or n-butane is an alkane with the formula C4H10. Butane is a highly flammable, colorless, easily liquefied gas that quickly vaporizes at room temperature and pressure. Some small portable stoves run on a common 8oz butane refill cartridge.

I use a small butane cartridge to refill my butane fueled lighters. Gasoline sold in the USA has butane added, since it's soluble in the gasoline sorta like CO2 soluble in carbonated beverages as long as they are cold, that go flat if warm, and butane similarly boils out of gasoline at higher temperatures, so more butane added to winter gasoline mixes since it stays in solution better in cold gasoline.

If you put this gasoline in a plastic sealed gas can, you might notice that as it warms up in your garage, when you press the button you can heat the butane pressure leaving the gas canister with faint gasoline smell from the fumes in their airspace of the gas can that escape with the evaporating butane gas. 

The name butane comes from the root but- (from butyric acid, named after the Greek word for butter) and the suffix -ane. It was discovered in crude petroleum in 1864 by Edmund Ronalds, who was the first to describe its properties, and commercialized by Walter O. Snelling in early 1910s.

Butane a liquefied petroleum gases (LP gases). Others include propane, propylene, butadiene, butylene, isobutylene, & mixtures thereof. Butane burns more cleanly than both gasoline or coal, with similar combustion properties to the small molecule propane that must be compressed at higher pressures to remain a liquid but none the less very popular and widely distributed in 5 gal white painted steel propane tanks used to fuel small metal forge furnaces like my 10lb smelter or more commonly barbecue patio stoves used to cook food outside!

When my buddy and I first started making beer, we used just such a 20lb propane tank to fuel a 34,000 BTU banjo burner to boil a 50 liter pot of wort with hops, after first extracting freshly ground malted barely in a 160 liter custom made polypropylene cooler that I kitted out with drilled copper pipes top & bottom to recirculate hot water through the grain mash to extract malt extract to make the wort. We used an electric drill to drive a grain crushing mill to fresh grind dried roasted malted barely to make the grit to extract.

These 20lb propane tanks made of white painted steel with a brass valve on top are common on the tailgates of RV's where they are used to fuel water heating, cooking, space heating and even adsorption refrigeration using the heat of combustion to energize a gravity powered heat loop of working fluid compressed to move heat out of the fridge into the environment, such that the combustion of propane actually energizes refrigeration. This often done in RV's to minimize current loads or electrical dray from the batteries and inverter to reduce costs, since propane and other hydrocarbons have incredible energy density vastly better than AGM 31M sized marine RV batteries that are typically installed in pairs or as a group of 3 units in the battery tray of an RV or in a waterproof plastic box mounted to the trailer hitch bracket in RV's towed by other vehicles. 

Butane did not have much practical use until the 1910s, when W. Snelling identified butane and propane as components in gasoline and found that, if they were cooled, they could be stored in a volume-reduced liquified state in pressurized containers.

Density of liquid butane is 571.8±1 kg/m3 (for pressures up to 2MPa and temperature 27±0.2 °C), while the density of liquid butane is 625.5±0.7 kg/m3 (for pressures up to 2MPa and temperature -13±0.2 °C).\

Butane burns to form carbon dioxide and water vapor when excess oxygen available, in bluish white clear flame; when oxygen is limited, carbon (soot-black particulate) or carbon monoxide may be formed.

Butane is more dense than air. By mass, butane contains about 49.5 MJ/kg(13.8 kWh/kg; 22.5 MJ/lb; 21,300 Btu/lb) or by liquid volume 29.7 megajoules per liter (8.3 kWh/L; 112 MJ/U.S. gal; 107,000 Btu/U.S. gal). That's an incredible energy density for a fuel BTW. 

Maximum adiabatic flame temperature of butane with air is 2,243 K (1,970 °C; 3,578 °F), though often lower than this because of crude nozzle designs of common butane lighters, stoves, and torches. \

Normal butane can be used for gasoline blending, as a fuel gas, fragrance extraction solvent, either alone or in a mixture with propane, and as a feedstock for the manufacture of ethylene and butadiene, a key ingredient of synthetic rubber. Isobutane is primarily used by refineries to enhance (increase) the octane number of motor gasoline.

For gasoline blending, n-butane is the main component used to manipulate the Reid vapor pressure(RVP). Since winter fuels require much higher vapor pressure for engines to start, refineries raise the RVP by blending more butane into the fuel. n-Butane has a relatively high research octane number (RON) and motor octane number (MON), which are 93 and 92 respectively.

When blended with propane and other hydrocarbons, the mixture may be referred to commercially as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). It is used as a petrol component, as a feedstock for the production of base petrochemicals in steam cracking, as fuel for cigarette lighters and as a propellant in aerosol sprays such as deodorants.

Pure forms of butane, especially isobutane, are used as refrigerants and have largely replaced the ozone-layer-depleting halomethanes in refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioning systems. The operating pressure for butane is lower than for the halomethanes such as Freon-12 (R-12), so R-12 systems such as those in automotive air conditioning systems, when converted to pure butane, will function poorly. A mixture of isobutane and propane is used instead to give cooling system performance comparable to use of R-12.

Butane is also used as lighter fuel for common lighters or butane torches and is sold bottled as a fuel for cooking, barbecues and camping stoves. In the 20th century the Braun company of Germany made a cordless hair styling device product that used butane as its heat source to produce steam.

As fuel, it is often mixed with small amounts of mercaptans to give the unburned gas an offensive smell easily detected by the human nose. In this way, butane leaks can easily be identified. While hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans are toxic, they are present in levels so low that suffocation and fire hazard by the butane becomes a concern far before toxicity.

Most commercially available butane also contains some contaminant oil, which can be removed by filtration and will otherwise leave a deposit at the point of ignition and may eventually block the uniform flow of gas.

The butane used as a solvent for fragrance extraction does not contain these contaminants and butane gas can cause gas explosions in poorly ventilated areas if leaks go unnoticed and are ignited by spark or flame. 

Purified butane is used as a solvent in the industrial extraction of cannabis oils. Inhalation of butane can cause euphoria, drowsiness, unconsciousness, asphyxia, cardiac arrhythmia, fluctuations in blood pressure and temporary memory loss, when abused directly from a highly pressurized container, and can result in death from asphyxiation and ventricular fibrillation. It enters the blood supply and within seconds produces intoxication. 

Butane is the most commonly abused volatile substance in the UK, and was the cause of 52% of solvent related deaths in 2000. By spraying butane directly into the throat, the jet of fluid can cool rapidly to −20 °C (−4 °F) by expansion, causing prolonged laryngospasm. "Sudden sniffer's death" syndrome, first described by Bass in 1970, is the most common single cause of solvent related death, resulting in 55% of known fatal cases.