Pete C. wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:

David Lesher wrote:
"Pete 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.

Thanks,
Rich

No, but I read the OSHA report (and saw the pics) from a guy at a
medical O2 place who put a small O2 cylinder that had a stuck valve in
such a vise and proceeded to try to remove the entire valve with the O2
still in the cylinder. Instead of creating a slow leak to drain the tank
as he probably intended, he managed to get an O2/aluminum dust fire
going and blow the cylinder up, embedding most of the cylinder in one
wall and depositing the guy's arm some distance from the rest of him.
This is why the medical vs. welding grade O2 thing is a myth, you simply
do not risk putting the best oxidizer there is in pure form and under
high pressure on top of some unknown gas remaining in the cylinder.

Yeah. The local welding store tells a story
of a guy that tried to transfer O2 from one
cylinder to another with used hydraulic hose.

All that was left of his head was a pink mist
on the wall.