Compressed Gas Cylinder Safety

I think that's closer to 1600 psi.

I tolerance everything and tolerate everyone. I love: Dona, Jeff, Kim, Kimmie, Mom, Neelix, Tasha, and Teri, alphabetically. I drive: A double-step Thunderbolt with 657% range. I fight terrorism by: Using less gasoline.

CO2 is stored as a liquid. It's vapor pressure at room temperature is around 800 psi. Bob

Nope.

I worked in Lamont Observatory when I was a kid,

-- back in the halcion '60s -- as an electronics tech.

One day [[ thank GOD!! it was a Saturday ]] someone knocked over a large tank (4' or 5' job - this is 30-odd years back, so it's a bit fuzzy). I don't know if it was oxy or acetylene or what, but it made everybody on site re-check their tank moorings.

I think the tank was in the old machine shop ... anyway, over it went; top came off; and it proceeded to carve a hole in the stone wall of the shop. Skittered out down the observatory road for a few hundred yards before it encountered something less mobile than a (somewhat dated) stone foundation wall.

HECK of a mess. The university (Columbia) counted its blessings that nobody was killed that day.

- Carl

"Carl

I was Chief Engineer at A brewery in the Fiji Islands in the seventies. Among other things we tested and filled our own CO2 bottles. We had a sequence of events that were almost impossible to believe. A non-return valve leaked and allowed 300 psi Co2 into the low pressure collection system,which was shut down at the time. A vent valve was supposed to be opened when the plant stopped but that was overlooked. The pressure built up in a low pressure scrubber and blew off the inspection cover which was held on with 6 mm bolts. These failed in tension and the cover flew across the shop and knocked over a couple of full CO2 cylinders. One of the valves broke off, and the cylinder bounced around a bit but didn't really do any damage. The valve went out through the galvanized steel roof. At the same time, all the ceramic saddle packing from the scrubber flew all over the place and caused a hell of a mess. There was only an engine room operator on duty at the time and luckily he was at the other end of the plant. He had no idea what had happened and was an incoherent mess when he called me at 3:00 AM. It took me about 4 hours to figure out what had happened. I came to the conclusion that the reason the cylinder didn't move faster was that the valve that broke off the cylinder was only about 7 mm in the bore and this limited the amount of gas that could escape.

I finally found the URL, it's:

I didn't recall it quite right, the guy straps the cylinder on his back, and it looks like oranges instead of tomatoes. Anyway, it's a mess.

Dan Mitchell ============