I was doing some cutting and walked to the other side of the table. The tanks are on a cart and as I walked around the table the hoses hooked the tanks and they both came crashing down on the shop floor. I never notice how top heavy they were before. Luckily the regulators weren't damaged. I stopped what I was doing and welded an extension to the bottom front on the cart so It'll never happen again.
Yep , we all just get used to being around those particular medium-pressure compressed gas cylinders, (that even sounds scarier than "tanks", doesn't it?), and forget their destructive potential. I had a guy working in my shop who changed o2 tanks and there must have been some oil or a fat bug in the new valve. The regulator blew up and set the shop on fire, peeled the skin off his right thumb and index finger and left it hanging in strips from his fingertips, gave him 2nd and 3rd degree burns on the rest of that hand, and the adjusting screw knocked a dent almost a half inch deep in the pole behind him. Now, NOBODY turns the valve on a new tank unless they are wearing a glove and standing behind the regulator.
I knocked a set over with a backhoe outrigger and knocked the top off the oxy. Boy can they spin fast!
How did the reg blow up!?!?
If there is anything combustible in the high pressure side of the o2 regulator, when you suddenly turn the valve on it goes up to 2216 psi very quickly in a 100% oxygen environment. It will ignite, just like the fuel in a diesel engine.
Rob: Were the tanks chained in place?
O2 isnt flammable. It is a oxidizer. It will aclerate the burning process. I seen a guy torching and he had a small pin hole in the O2 hose (from the slag hitting his hose) and the hole was by his pants leg. The O2 oxgeninated him. The outcome was not a positive outcome. I knew someone that seriously hurt himself & his wife. He pounded his own gases into his scuba tanks and one of his decompression tanks (pure o2) fell over in the garage and from pressure force of the 3500psi in the tank, the tank went through the garage wall and into the kitchen where his wife was cooking. It was a natural gas stove that the tank hit. It was a bad outcome. I heard of stories of SCUBA divers using non o2 cleaned regulators (rubber parts in the regulators which is hydro carbons) and there was a small combustion and rendered their regulators inoperable. So even all SCUBA tanks and regulators has to be o2 cleaned if you are going to be using anything other than compressed air. Even though o2 isnt flammable, it needs to be treated with respect.
I had a defective oxygen high pressure gauge on my regulator. So I go to my spare gauges and install one. I turn on the regulator (of course I'm looking at the gauge) and the gauge blew up. The face blew out and something hit me in the eye. I'm so lucky just a bruise. I must have used the gauge over a year ago to check oil pressure and the residual blew it up. The best advice is to look away from the gauges when turning them on.
They were chained only to the hand cart. This one get's wheeled out to the yard. More on Oxy reg fires: http://www.esabna.com/us/en/newsletters/Prevent-Regulator-Blow-Out.cfm
just out of curosity, how were the tanks able to fall and strike the floor with them being chained up? Do you have photo's??
Hi, New to the site and am just finding my way around There's a huge amount to browse Seems like incidents with gas cylinders are very much an international affair The Druid
Welcome aboard. Any story on that ruptured cylinder? Is that on display at a place that sells gas? CO2 tank that was in a fire?
From the first post: Again from the first post: And again from the first post, and how he prevented it from happening again.
Re-read post #9. He stated that they were chained to the cart. Which leads me to believe that the cart fell over with the cylinders or the cylinders got past the chains.
Outside a BOC (British Oxygen Company) depot. Was an O2 Cylinder, in a previous existence
Hi again Delmer, where are my manners? Forgot to thank you for the welcome message. I believe it was involved in a fire, but it may have been a flashback. Cheers The Druid
Thousands of 20 lb tanks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-QgNqBxaSM&sns=em
FMD, the tanks were chained to the cart which is like a wide handtruck or dolly. The cart and the tanks fell over. This cart is similar to mine. I notice today that the carts at the welding supply shops have loops on the back that keep the "bottles" farther away from the front. I might be a good idea for anyone to pull forward on their cart to see how easily it tips. FWIW
I think I'll have a look at my tank setup and see how stable they are if the hoses hook the regulators....Thanks
Thanks for the photo Rob. The reason I was asking was that we purchased a torch cart and the chains are mounted kind of low and I am thinking perhaps if a hose gets caught on the tanks or someone bumps the rear of the cylinder that the cylinder could fall over the chain. I took a photo and sent it to the welding supply shop that I purchased the cart from to see what they have to say.
Yair . . . Interesting, your bottles aren't colour coded in the US? Cheers.
Yeah, Scrub, usually green for oxygen, brown or black for acetylene. Trust Rob to have a pic of something wierd. I have noticed that some brands do have blue oxygen cylinders.
Yeah... I PM'ed Rob a picture of the LHC... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...N_LHC_Tunnel1.jpg/1024px-CERN_LHC_Tunnel1.jpg Now he paints every thing blue... OCR
Had a few go over with normally when rushing to job out. Also had one go on it's travels when its happened to. Flash backs are only fitted on fuel gas, oxygen here. Scariest one i that could have been was a train i witnessed was going to tack weld bottle key chains to all the cylinders in one company. He mistook what the foreman said, I then told off for inter-fearing.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...N_LHC_Tunnel1.jpg/1024px-CERN_LHC_Tunnel1.jpg Oh, and btw, that Tunnel (cylinder... ) is a little more than 16 and a half miles long... :cool2 Back on track now. Carry on, OCR