Whatever happened to the original MAPP gas?

[Dave G in Gansevoort]

53 years ago, I bought my first torch set. And got a 10 year lease on the largest oxygen cylinder. And the salesman talked me into buying a cylinder of MAPP. Now I was cooking with gas! Everyone says that you must use acetylene for oxy-fuel welding, but it was what I had, and it seemed to work okay with a neutral flame. Brazing and cutting it was good at. Heating, fine. I had a buzz box for welding, so the only things I attempted to weld were things that were sheet metal, oil pans, bodywork and the like.

I liked it for another reason however. It was a lot safer than acetylene. Although it wasn’t as much fun in filling garbage bags with… you all know what I mean! So now for a question: what ever happened to it? I don’t think those small cylinders used for propane torches are the same formulation, besides that they would cost a fortune to use in place of acetylene. Anyone got any information about this?

 

[The Cobbler]

MAPP as far as I know was a by product of something that is no longer manufactured.

 

[Firebrick43]

The factory burnt down and they didn't want to spend the money to rebuild it.

Mapp gas was a trade name by the Linde company so the replacement made by other companies is Mapp Pro to avoid trademark infringement. It is a very different formulation, better than straight propane but no where as hot as Mapp Gas was

 

[Beerhippie]

The factory burnt down and they didn't want to spend the money to rebuild it.

Mapp gas was a trade name by the Linde company so the replacement made by other companies is Mapp Pro to avoid trademark infringement. It is a very different formulation, better than straight propane but no where as hot as Mapp Gas was

IIRC, MAPP stood for MethAcetylPropanyl--or something similar. If I still have an old can around, I can check.

But I'm sure Linde copyrighted the name and almost certainly the process, which is why no one makes it today.

 

[dscheidt]

IIRC, MAPP stood for MethAcetylPropanyl--or something similar. If I still have an old can around, I can check.

But I'm sure Linde copyrighted the name and almost certainly the process, which is why no one makes it today.

No, no one makes it today because the industrial users of it moved away from it, and propylene is more valuable as a feedstock for other things, so refiners have gotten better at turning propane into propylene, with less byproducts like methylacetylene-propadiene. As undesired byproducts, it was mostly burnt off, so it was originally cheap. The rising relative price of methylacetylene and propadiene meant that it was cheaper to use something else, usually either propane or acetylene. There used to be other methylacetylene-propadiene gases, with different ratios of propane, or using butane, but I doubt anyone makes them, either. The last large scale users of it were underwater welders for cutting torches. Can't use acetylene underwater, because you need to deliver the gas at higher pressure than the water pressure, and at high absolute pressures, acetylene likes to cease being acetylene. Mapp has higher flame temps, so it works better underwater. Almost all underwater cutting is now done with thermal lances.

Use by people using little cylinders of it was never a big money maker, but if you're making it anyway, it's easy enough to put in small bottles (or for someone who puts stuff in small bottles to buy it and do it, whatever.). Firebrick mentions a fire, if that's right, it could be that the product was making money, but not enough to justify spending capital to rebuild whatever they'd lost in the fire.

 

[Beerhippie]

@dscheidt : Thanks for straightening that out. I don't know why I couldn't fully recall the story of a product that went off the market... twenty years ago?

 

[Dave G in Gansevoort]

Thanks for the history of MAPP. I didn’t know anything about it except that I liked it. And when I was working in the Midwest after college between 1985 and 1998, I had a small set of cylinders for my torches of oxygen and acetylene, which I used only for the occasional cuttin of heavy stock. I sold them before moving to the northeast and didn’t replace them until mid-2000s. And saw that MAPP was unavailable. So now I have a tiny portable set of cylinders and a set of the largest cylinders that can be purchased (I don’t use either enough so I have to use them for anything and everything I can think of to use up the gases before I get stuck with the cylinders recertification).

I do remember having to relearn how to use MAPP for welding as compared to acetylene when I got it. It wasn’t as easy or nice for welding, but I figured it out. Brazing was easy. And cutting was also. And the best part was over the 10 years between high school and college I only had to get a refill once for the large cylinder I had. Oxygen on the other hand, was a little more. It seemed like I was going to the welding supply store at least monthly.