Oxygen. Its dangerous stuff.

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snail59

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This is a true story.

'Bob' lived in a nearby village. He had an oxy-acetylene torch and a confused attitude to health and safety. When his five-foot oxygen cylinder ran out he found that the brass regulator on his spare was damaged. He didn’t like the look of it, gas welding can be dangerous, and with a perfectly good regulator on the empty cylinder, well, why not swap them over?


So, he lay the full cylinder on the lawn in the back garden, and, propped up at an angle for easy access, Bob straddled the cylinder and started to unscrew the regulator. Now, he wasn’t stupid, he knew that the swap would have to be really flippin' quick to avoid losing too much gas, so he had the good regulator right there ready by his side. He loosened the regulator with a spanner, then started to unscrew slowly by hand.

The following happened in a split second: Bob never knew just how many turns were left before 2500psi blew the regulator clean off the bottle. It fired, like an angular brass cannonball, through his Land Rover’s tailgate, continued through the driver’s seat and buried itself in the dashboard. Meanwhile, the torpedo-shaped steel cylinder shot up the garden, through two brick walls and into the kitchen. On its way, to add injury to insult, it crossed a gravel path and blasted the still-crouching Bob in the back like a shotgun. We can only imagine this scenario being retold many times in the hospital as Bob lay face-down biting a pillow, gravel pinged into a stainless steel kidney dish and assembled medical staff bit their sleeves in desperate attempts to stifle laughter
 
Firstly the regs are always a seperate part, thats not part of the bottle, which has it's own shut off valve.
Can't be real, He would of had to unscrew the cyclinder valve which is fooking tight and how the hell did he think he could stop that kind of pressure.
 
As you will know Nick you need the correct square key to turn the valve OFF. Now if you are lacking in inteligence AND a key!! well who knows what will happen ;)
 
I've seen the resulting hole in a rebar reinforced concrete wall after an O2 cylinder was dropped on a flight of stairs, shearing off the valve.

Fortunately it was the back stairs of the tech college, otherwise the damn thing would have crossed a fairly busy road; rather than powdering a section of the retaining wall behind the building.
 
There is a story of a cylinder that was dropped upon delivery at Aston Uni . . . Apparently it reached 300MPH across campus and ended up in the gents loo of the Students union (And that was through 2 walls) . . . I do suspect that this is apocryphal though
 
now I was having a think about this, whilst reminising of times where we made loud explosions with bin bags full of oxyegen acetelene gas mixture, one toilet where I used to work was particularly prone, you went for a dump in it at your peril.

any way I cam across this on youtube & it made me chuckle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MLBfwblps8

UP
 
I saw a mythbusters episode a few months ago that featured this "myth" - well not the unscewing, but the cylinder bit.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RespCareWorld

The myth was not busted..... the wall however.......



since watching my co2 bottles are all now tied to the wall rather than just standing freely.
 
A good friend of mine was asked in as a consultant engineer for a referb of an oil terminal in Bantry Bay, he witnessed some ape with a shirt on sledging the valve off an oxygen bottle down at the forshore, the bottle was on its back and pointing to sea. Instant torpedo, this was seen as a bit of craic around 30yrs ago. :shock:
 
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