Rich Grise wrote:

rangerssuck wrote:
On Jan 12, 6:34 pm, Rich Grise wrote:
David Lesher wrote:
"Pete C." writes:

And if the fill plant doesn't vacuum out that potential contamination,
particularly the most probably acetylene, before putting high pressure
pure O2 on top of it, their fill plant will go BOOM! Any traces small
enough to not be a safety problem at the fill plant are also too small
to be a safety problem breathing the O2.

That's not the only fun you can have with compressed gas. I
recall that not once but twice, Koch Refining burned down the
CO2 plant attached to their refinery. We never figured out
how...

Anyone heard the UL about the guy with the full scuba tank held
valve down in some kind of chain vise, and he somehow took the valve
out, and the tank turned into a rocket, went through the basement
ceiling, the upstairs ceiling, the roof, jetted around in an arc, and
embedded itself in the roof of some car?

I _do_ know that 2250 PSI (150 atmospheres) is a very formidable force.

Didn't you ever see "Jaws"? The shark finds out how much energy is
stored in a scuba tank.

Oh, poof. That was camera tricks. ;-)

A tank that can hold 2250 PSI would probably laugh at a mere bullet,
except for maybe an armor-piercing round. But I'm guessing.

I wonder if anybody's got a definitive answer to that one? Anyone ever
actually shot a full scuba tank or other high-pressure gas cylinder?

Mythbusters did. They found the obvious, that a bullet hole makes a nice
jet nozzle, but it doesn't cause a catastrophic cylinder failure.

Catastrophic cylinder failure comes from sustained load stress cracking
in the aluminum, primarily seen in an older alloy no longer used for the
cylinders. Those failures rip sections out of the cylinder and send them
flying through anything in their way.


Once, when I was in the service, I was on a detail with a couple other guys
rearranging some storage garage. There was some kind of cylinder up against
the wall; one of the guys found a sledge hammer and took a swing at the
tank. I almost had a heart attack; I _shrieked_ "NO!!!!!!" and ducked
behind some box - I didn't know I could move that fast.

He didn't shatter the tank (Thank Gawd!), but how stupid can some people be?

Pretty stupid. The service gets some good people, but they also get a
good number of duds who don't have any better life / job opportunities.