We're back. Last week we looked at 7 Challenging Quirks of LPG, and how they made working with it as an alternative fuel tricky in the early days of the Auto LPG industry. Today, then we will look at how those challenging material behaviours were overcome. Join me, then, as we dive back into David Batchen's memoir (with the occasional added remark) to find out how it was done.

4 Innovative Solutions

Solution One

Our very first dispensers were fitted with American industrial meters which had been used in the industry for many years. However, it was quickly found that they were not accurate enough for retail use. This led us to develop our own meter, which we based on a German meter with a good reputation in Europe. We have now sold thousands of these meters around the world, even exporting them to Germany.

Modern-day Batchen meters.

Solution Two

Since LPG is handled as a liquid under pressure, the connection to the motor vehicle must be pressure tight. This is achieved by a firm attachment of the hose nozzle to the car filling point. The problem, then, is if the car drives away with the nozzle still attached. One of two things will happen: either the fitting is pulled of the car, or the dispenser is wrecked.

We developed a hose breakaway coupling which would separate at a predetermined force, and seal off each end of the hose to the prevent the escape of any liquid. It could also be easily reconnected without emptying the hose, thereby removing a potential safety hazard: the release of gas on the service station forecourt. These too have been exported all over the world, and have been copied in several countries.

A Sentry20 breakaway coupling.

Solution Three

The hose nozzle which was connected to the car was another piece of industrial equipment which was found wanting in the early days of the industry. We had decided to try to develop a nozzle as had Treloar Industries, manufacturers of nozzles for petrol. Neither of us were making much progress, so one of the engineers at Shell suggested we join forces, and combine Batchen's knowledge of LPG, with Treloar's experience in making petrol nozzles. The managing director of Treloars, John Treloar (of Olympic sprinting fame), had recently retired and needed a new interest, so we decided to form a new company, which we called LG Equipment, Pty. Ltd. This was in 1986.

A range of LPG nozzles, provided by LG Equipment.

The two of us became good friends and business partners in a small enterprise which developed a variety of LPG hose nozzles, with about 80% of our production being exported around the world. John and I did the design work initially, with John doing the drawings, and we sub-contracted the machining of the components. At first, John assembled the nozzles at his home, but as the business grew we eventually moved into premises at Taren Point in the south of Sydney. Finally, after we were both well into our retirement we sold the business in 2003 to Philip, John's son.

Solution Four

The development of all this ancillary equipment led to a great improvement in the accuracy of metering and the safe handling of LPG on service stations. Another major milestone was the development by an a Sydney company, Ebsray Pum

Some world-renowned D.J. Batchen Auto LPG dispensers, made possible by a tradition of excellence and innovation that began with our founder, David Batchen.

LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) has a number of advantages over petrol and diesel as a motor fuel: it is relatively cheap and environmentally friendly, burns cleanly (meaning fewer or no toxic emissions like carbon monoxide or diesel particulates), and we have a readily available natural supply here in Australia. However, it has some curious properties that mean it requires considerable expertise to safely and efficiently handle.

In our continuing series on our company's history, we delve into the memoirs of David Batchen, the founder of D.J Batchen, to see what we might learn. In today's post, we explore the challenging beginnings of what would soon become D.J Batchen's largest area of business: the Auto LPG dispenser, and seven particular quirks of LPG that brought about these challenges. Next week we will lift the lid on the innovative excellence that dealt with these challenges, and means that today D.J. Batchen Auto LPG dispensers have an "unparalleled reputation for performance, reliability and durability".

7 Challenging Quirks of LPG

...a former senior executive of a company called Rheem came to us with a proposal: that we should build LPG dispensers, and he should sell them. This was in response to a government decision to remove excise costs on LPG in order to promote its use as a motor fuel, a move they believed would reduce pollution and make use of a locally sourced hydrocarbon which was being produced in excess of our requirements.

This was the start of a completely new industry.

Petrol had been used in Australia for about a hundred years, and the handling techniques and equipment were well known. LPG had such different properties that virtually none of the existing petrol technology could be utlilised. Holland was the only other country to have embraced LPG as a motor fuel, but they had made limited progress in meeting this new challenge. Australia therefore had a golden opportunity to become world leaders in the safe handling of LPG for this application.

The nature of LPG makes it difficult to handle:

aries as its temperature varies.

2. It has a very low viscosity, and therefore it leaks readily.

3. The resulting reduction in pressure when it leaks causes cooling as the liquid vaporises, and this can cause cold burns if the vapour or the cold equipment contacts the skin.

4. It expands rapidly with temperature increase, which means that storage tanks must never be completely filled with liquid, to avoid over-pressuring the tank should temperatures rise.

5.

6.

7

It is not surprising that this product was treated with great respect, and some trepidation, by those new to the industry. It was claimed -- with some justification -- that LPG, like God, worked in mysterious ways.

These oddities of LPG meant that simple petrol expertise wouldn't be enough: standard meters, nozzles, pumps and hose connections were not capable of dealing with this highly unusual -- but incredibly useful -- alternative fuel. Something else was needed. Stay tuned for our next instalment, as we explore what exactly that "something else" was.

E376-2: the very first D.J. Batchen Auto LPG dispenser.

Hello again! Welcome to the start of a new series of blog posts entitled A Look Into the Past. Here we will delve into our history, with the hope of discovering some of the things that have made us who we are. We hope you'll come along for the ride with us, too.

Today, we start with the very, very early days of the company. David Batchen founded his eponymous business in 1965, and so to 1965 we will go. We don't have a time machine, but what we do have are David's memoirs. The following are some short extracts from these memoirs, covering the period around the founding of D.J. Batchen Pty Ltd. Enjoy.

...we also needed a foreman and persuaded Doug Burdon -- who had been employed at APL for a while but had subsequently left -- to throw in his lot with us. Doug had been in the permanent Navy for about fifteen years, and was pretty taciturn but very practical. He was impatient with people who had emotional problems:

"I'm not a psychiatrist," he would say. "Tell him to get back to work and stop whinging." With this philosophy, we got along well together.

Finally, we had to find a workshop, and settled on renting a small building (about 10m by 10m, with a mezzanine floor for a desk and a chair) at 135 Bombay Street, Lidcombe. All that remained now was to form a company called D.J. Batchen Pty Ltd, resign from APL, find some customers and get a telephone connected. The first and second were relatively easy, the third daunting, and the fourth impossible, despite the war finishing twenty years previously. We opened for business on 16th August, 1965, and the phone was connected about three months later.

David (left) and Doug, on their first day of work, 16 August, 1965.

Our first big job was for the Australian branch of an American firm of contractors to the mining and chemical industries called Dorr Oliver. They had won the contract to design, supply and install sewage treatment equipment at Fyshwick, near Canberra.

To install the equipment, Doug Burdon recruited a team of a father and two sons who, with their wives, had driven from England to Australia in cars towing caravans. They had been second-hand dealers in England and regaled us with all sorts of tales of adventure as they would their way across Asia, including their stay in a Maharaja's palace in India. They claimed one of the sons -- who was cross-eyed -- had married and Indian princess in England and they all lived in luxury for a few weeks as guests of her father. We thought this a highly unlikely story until they called into the workshop after the Fyshwick job was finished. The cross-eyed son opened the door of his caravan, and there in the dim light was a beautiful Indian girl clad in a magnificent sari, dripping with trinkets.

They had great ideas about how they would make their fortune in Australia. One plan was to collect all the derelict cars they saw parked in the streets and sell them for scrap. One had the impression they wouldn't be too fussy over which cars actually were derelict.

An old brochure, showing some work for Dorr Oliver.

We received orders for the fabrication of other equipment items from a variety of customers, but we also pursued the labour hiring field. The memories of this are so painful that I try to block them from my mind. It generally involved the hiring of a lot of men for a short time during a plant shut-down, and of course you had to wonder what sort of people would be willing to work under these conditions. Quite a few followed the plant shut-downs from job to job, and were attracted by plenty of overtime paid at casual rates.

Others were itinerants who had a very doubtful background. On one job we had four men who each gave us the false surname of Scraggs, and who each claimed to have six kids because that meant we took less tax out of their pay. I asked one of them why he had chosen that name, and he said Scraggs was a man generally disliked by his fellows, and with any luck this would land him in trouble. Will the real Scraggs please stand up!

This experience gave us insight into the lives of people who somehow couldn't cope with normal existence. One man had a garnishee on his wages every week, which meant we had to extract a certain amount of his pay and forward it to a hire purchase company. Eventually he would pay off his arrears, only to go into debt again a few weeks later, and be in the same position again. Another man's wife left him with four small kids, and consequently he was unreliable, but he would never ring us to let us know he would be absent, and it became difficult to be sympathetic.

It also made us realise the way forward was to have a stable workforce whose skills you knew. It led us to regard long-term employment as a desirable goal, and resulted in some employees being with the company longer than I was.*

*If you were wondering, David "officially" worked for his namesake company for over thirty years, until his retirement in 1997. His memoir contains a list of "Company Builders", who served at D.J. Batchen for over 15 years. There are twenty names on that list -- a list that has grown longer since David wrote these words.

Hello, and welcome to our new website! We hope you like what you see.

If you were a regular visitor to the old site, do not fear, you have still managed to find D.J. Batchen! We hope you will find this new layout easier to navigate, and perhaps easier on the eye too. Everything here is completely new, but it has been our aim to transport across all of the useful and necessary content from our old site. So if there is something from the old site you are looking for here but cannot find, please let us know. You can do so using our Contact page.

On the other hand, if you are a new visitor, we would again like to extend our welcome. Please stick around and have a look at our new site.

It strikes us that either way, you might have a few questions. We will try to answer some of them here.

1. Who Are You?

We are D.J. Batchen, a small manufacturing business located in Sydney, Australia, but exporting to

the world. We were founded in 1965 by David Batchen, and are managed today by his son, James. Over the last fifty years we have built up a tradition of excellence and innovation of which we are very proud, and continue to work hard at maintaining.

2. What Do You Do?

Simply: we make things. To be more specific, we know a lot about LPG, and many of our products involve the storage and use of it. Some examples include our flagship Auto LPG dispenser range (which you can find at motor vehicle service stations across Australia and around the world), and our innovative LPG vaporiser tanks.

We also run a fabrication and machining shop, where we make all sorts of things out of metal. For more detailed (and formal) information, visit our Products and Services page.

3. Why Have You Changed Your Website?

Many reasons. The old site was tricky to navigate. Its content was dated. It was not easy to update and maintain. It was not in any way mobile responsive. It didn't look great. Sometimes, it felt a bit like we were trying to operate in a world of iPhones and Surface Pros using this:

All of these reasons taken together mean we have to decided to completely refresh and update our online presence. You are seeing the results of that here. We hope it was worth the change.

4. This Is A Blog. Why Do You Have One?

We want to share with you who we are and what we know, and we want to do so in a way that is less formal and more personal than standard corporate press releases. Along the way it is our hope that you will find things here that are genuinely interesting and useful.

What can you expect? Well, for starters: more FAQ posts like this one, some stories from the early days of our company, a chance to meet some of the people who make us who we are, some of the manufacturing tips and tricks we've picked up over the years, and even some case studies looking at some of the bigger jobs we've done.

There will be more. Watch this space.

5. How Can I Get In Contact With You?

Whether you have an enquiry, a question, or some constructive "feedback", that's something we would love you to do. The easiest way is to head over to our Contact page, where you will find our email address and phone number. There's also a contact form, if you like that sort of thing.

Find our contact details here.