Word of warning : Don't Leave Full CO2 Tanks in Hot Car!

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Ho... just to add up...

For those who lives in a colder area...
Dont leave 2 full keg with and CO2 in a freezing garage!
-2F or -19C is never good for beer or the Refrigerator they're in !
Lost a couple of glasses of beer and had to clean up the mess.

Thanks for all the advices, I've learned a lot reading on this board.
 
Check out what happened to a guy on my car forum that had a nitrous bottle blow up. If you have a safety valve malfunction it can kill you. This is the same as a co2 bottle in size. The black part is the bottle shredded apart. This car was in mint condition before.
bradspics032.jpg

bradspics0302.jpg
 
Having a bottle explode like that is almost impossible. Based on what I see there the tank was modified to hold more pressure that it was designed for, done by doubling up the burst disks, great if you want to sneak a few extra psi in a tank, not so great for living to tell the story. The moral of this story is don't be stupid tanks/burst disks are rated for your protection don't mess with them.
 
So then you are say I should not fill my tanks that are rated to 2640 to 3600 or more? its standard practice in Cave diving. But thats steel tanks, not AL. I will find out how bad it is for them a few are up for hydro this year. I was using a Haskel pump the other day to boost O2, I got a little freaked out the supply after the pump got really hot, I have had friends that have had explosions from boosting o2. and I transfer SLOOOOOW too.
 
So then you are say I should not fill my tanks that are rated to 2640 to 3600 or more? its standard practice in Cave diving. But thats steel tanks, not AL. I will find out how bad it is for them a few are up for hydro this year. I was using a Haskel pump the other day to boost O2, I got a little freaked out the supply after the pump got really hot, I have had friends that have had explosions from boosting o2. and I transfer SLOOOOOW too.

like I said unless the tanks were modified they will not explode. I've been know to fill my steel 90's to 3200 as well....how else would I know how it was done ;) We know that tanks are hydro tested to 5/3 their working pressure 4400 PSI for steel. The difference between you and most people is you have knowledge of what you are doing. I'm willing to bet you don't overfill your tanks and put them in a car in the hot sun.
 
like I said unless the tanks were modified they will not explode. I've been know to fill my steel 90's to 3200 as well....how else would I know how it was done ;) We know that tanks are hydro tested to 5/3 their working pressure 4400 PSI for steel. The difference between you and most people is you have knowledge of what you are doing. I'm willing to bet you don't overfill your tanks and put them in a car in the hot sun.
Of course not, the go in the back of my truck....
:mug:
 
Check out what happened to a guy on my car forum that had a nitrous bottle blow up. If you have a safety valve malfunction it can kill you. This is the same as a co2 bottle in size. The black part is the bottle shredded apart. This car was in mint condition before.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/supacharged21/bradspics032.jpg[/IG]
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/supacharged21/bradspics0302.jpg[/IG][/QUOTE]


Yeah, I saw those pics some time way back, don't remember where I saw them though.


It's crazy what 2000 psi will do when iit's unleashed with no regard.
 
Check out what happened to a guy on my car forum that had a nitrous bottle blow up.

So when something like that happens...you know...a nitrous bottle exploding. Is it just a little bit funny???...cuz...you know...it's laughing gas after all.

I'm just wondering. You know...was there any sort of upside here?
 
I'm guessing that the car owner wasn't chuckling. That car is ****ed up.

Maybe the rest of us can laugh....
 
I'd like to thank we would all just KNOW not to do this but it is appearent that it is not common knowledge and I agree on a Summer Safety Bulletin Sticky.

I'd hate to see anyone on this forum getting hurt especially from something very easily preventable.
 
or......

P1V1/T1 = P2V2/T2 :mug:

The thing is, this doesn't apply with CO2 tanks because the CO2 liquifies under pressure. If the CO2 was obeying ideal gas laws then a typical 2.6 litre cylinder containing 2 kg of CO2 would be under around 770 bar or 11,000psi of pressure. Far more than those things could stand. But, as the CO2 liquifies they are only under around 50bar/750psi of pressure at room temperature. However, as the CO2 heats it fairly quickly tries to turn back to gas and the pressure in the cylinder ramps up far more quickly than ideal gas laws would suggest. Luckily the safety burst should take care of the problem...
 
CO2 tanks are fun when that burst disk goes. Very entertaining at paintball games in the winter. My brother had just filled a 12oz tank and put it in his vest. about 10 minutes later while discussing the scenario we were about to play the tank blew the burst disk... and the open end was aimed upward... right at his head. Nice white jet enveloped his face for a second till he got clear of the jet and let it vent out.


So even WINTER times are times to worry about CO2 tanks. CO2 expands when warm, so colder temps keep it from expanding as much as it would under normal conditions.
 
Easy solution, guys:

I have a 15lb nitrous tank in my trunk 24/7. It's been in there for 8 years. In the middle of summer in South Carolina in months of 100 degree days, I kept a beach towel and a small container of water in the trunk. A soaked towel draped over the top is all that is needed to keep the bottle at normal temps, but if you're really scared (or in my case, need to cool the bottle fast), a little ice water is a quick trick.

When a car is parked outside in the hot sun all day long on a 100+ degree day... I have no idea how hot it must get in the car, but my bottle stayed in usable temps, so it was no where near blowing the safety valve.

hmmmm. arround here, people use heaters when its not 90+ summer temps. so as to keep the tank pressure curve shallow.

i transport 20# co2 in my back seat or pass seat hole all the time. only one car has a trunk and all 3 of my catalina alumnis are under 2 years old so i dont want them gettin all beat to ****. dumb if they blow... YES! and you get to suffocate if the winder aint down. not that you wouldnt hear 1500 psi gettin purged.
 
I would think that it's safer strapped in the passenger compartment. If you put it in the trunk and it's rolling around, there's a chance the valve can get damaged. And if it does, that thing will be a missile.

You can pick up thread savers. It's just a metal piece with female thread that screws over the top to keep such damage from occurring. As far as my experience with burst disks, it can more easily than you would think. I had a 24oz tank for paintball in the back of my truck in a black bag in the middle of summer on the way to a paintball match. You wouldn't believe how big that converse duffel got after the burst disk blew. In retrospect, I guess it was pretty funny, but I also had some back-up tanks for the game. Otherwise, I guess I would have had to use my slingshot the whole time (which I have gotten kills with, lol).
 
The thing is, this doesn't apply with CO2 tanks because the CO2 liquifies under pressure. If the CO2 was obeying ideal gas laws then a typical 2.6 litre cylinder containing 2 kg of CO2 would be under around 770 bar or 11,000psi of pressure. Far more than those things could stand. But, as the CO2 liquifies they are only under around 50bar/750psi of pressure at room temperature. However, as the CO2 heats it fairly quickly tries to turn back to gas and the pressure in the cylinder ramps up far more quickly than ideal gas laws would suggest. Luckily the safety burst should take care of the problem...


You beat me to it...

CO2 and Propane tank pressure has nothing to do with the ideal gas law, it has to do with liquid-gas equilibrium. It's like a pressure cooker, except a pressure cooker is generally set to max out at 15 psig, the burst disk in a CO2 tank is set at ~1800psig. Just like you can tell the pressure in a pressure cooker based on the temperature of the liquid, you can determine the pressure in a CO2 or propane tank based on the temperature of the liquid.

I can't find it online right now, but a CO2 saturation table will tell you exactly how hot the cylinder has to be to reach 1800 psig.
 
I have just started to get back into brewing after being away since the early 90s. This is my CO2 cylinder story:

I had a 2.5lb CO2 cylinder filled for use in our basement bar. I always placed it in the back wedged under my seat so it would not be rolling around and that's where it was on that day. I was going to pick up my young daughter and then go home. I noticed that the cylinder would hiss every minute or so which I had never heard before. After probably half an hour of this, the pressure valve blew. The entire car fogged and I managed to get into the center turning lane and get the door open. I was standing in the center turn lane gasping for air with fog pouring from my car. If my daughter had been in the car, things could have been worse. I took the cylinder back to the shop that filled it and the guy realized he put 5lbs into that 2.5lb cylinder. I managed to get a free refill out of the deal, some safety glasses and something else I can't recall. From then on, I used a bungee cord in the trunk.
 
Not to mention that a burst disk letting loose is damn near defeaning. When I was a firefighter, we had one let go on a 2200 psi SCBA tank. It was louder than hell, even from 50' away and around a corner! I'd hate to be riding in the car with one when it kicked off. :eek:
 
People use CO2 tanks for filling tires, esp in off-roading applications (something I just recently learned).

I imagine people have them inside vehicles all the time in that application. Not saying there aren't risks, but they can be mitigated.
 
Re: CO2 - Propane similarities: I used to do propane refills, and we would always help customers load the tanks into their cars, and would always advise customers to head straight home if they had a non-open vehicle (i.e., car/wagon/van) because of the risks of heating tanks. IIRC, we couldn't legally fill more than 2 tanks (80 lbs) unless the person was in a pickup due to orders from the fire marshal about explosives.

PV=nRT or no, I just would not pick up a freshly filled CO2 tank and leave it in my car any longer than to get it home. If it can kill you in your car, better not to leave it there at all IMO.
 
So I am in the process of converting an upright fridge into a kegerator for a friend. Once its done I have to load it in my truck and drive it 3 hours to his house. Is it okay to leave the full CO2 tank inside the fridge in the back of my truck for that long of a haul?
 
So I am in the process of converting an upright fridge into a kegerator for a friend. Once its done I have to load it in my truck and drive it 3 hours to his house. Is it okay to leave the full CO2 tank inside the fridge in the back of my truck for that long of a haul?

You should be fine. You only have to be concerned if its exposed to hot temps (i.e. trunk on a hot summer afternoon).
 
I had a 2.5lb CO2 cylinder filled for use in our basement bar. I always placed it in the back wedged under my seat so it would not be rolling around and that's where it was on that day. I was going to pick up my young daughter and then go home. I noticed that the cylinder would hiss every minute or so which I had never heard before. After probably half an hour of this, the pressure valve blew. The entire car fogged and I managed to get into the center turning lane and get the door open. I was standing in the center turn lane gasping for air with fog pouring from my car. If my daughter had been in the car, things could have been worse. I took the cylinder back to the shop that filled it and the guy realized he put 5lbs into that 2.5lb cylinder. I managed to get a free refill out of the deal, some safety glasses and something else I can't recall. From then on, I used a bungee cord in the trunk.

Same thing happened to me. They overfilled my 5 lb bottle, but it waited until I got home before it blew. I had it sitting next to my bar, and about 5 feet away from a 90 gallon aquarium. Luckily no one was in the room when it happened and nothing was seriously damaged.
 
Well now we know what NOT to do,

Can anyone speak to "best practices" In handling CO2 tanks?

I have a 5, 10 and 15 or 20 # tanks.

I keep next to kegerator. there are some other things around it, but its not chained to anything to keep it upright. Kids can mess with it if they wanted. Any way to safety proof this?

5# sits on storage shelf with Reg attached. 10# is in corner - haven't used for years since I got the larger cylinder. No reg attached but its full in corner of garage on a bookshelf.

Gets up to 100 degrees in my garage in summertime.

Use the 5# for cleaning and sanitizing kegs and stuff.

Always worry about a bad accident.

TD
 
Well now we know what NOT to do,

Can anyone speak to "best practices" In handling CO2 tanks?

Do keep water out of your CO2 tanks. CO2 forms carbonic acid in water, which will cause rust (not in aluminum tanks, however). It is hard for the customer to introduce water into the tank, but the filler can do so with "wet" CO2. If you are concerned, ask where his CO2 dew point is. Look for -64C dewpoint on the CO2.


Do have the tank visual tested every 5 years and hydro tested every 10. Decommission by drilling a hole in the tank. Just some of the basics, the cylinders are strong from really anything you can throw at it from the outside except for maybe a 7mm Rem mag or extreme heat, such as exploding gas cylinders:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/national/25stlouis.html




I saw the 2005 Praxair STL explosion. I worked at a chemical company near downtown STL and my co-worker, who had a loft on Washington Ave about 2 miles from the Praxair facility, told me to come up to the top of her loft building to watch the fire. I could feel the heat from the explosions.
 
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The local Airgas has a picture of a car where someone stored some tanks. It looks like it was used for a car bomb. They routinely load up all canisters onto trucks and secure it, but if you insist on putting it in the car, they make you put it in by yourself. No pressurized canister should be left inside of a vehicle. 80 degrees outside can easily climb to well over 100 degrees inside the vehicle in the full sun.

Another important safety note is NEVER use any kind of oil when screwing a valve onto an oxygen tank (or any tank for that matter). The pipefitting shop I worked in only used teflon tape.
 
If you need to be told not to leave a metal canister full of highly pressurized gas inside a car during the daytime (especially in the summer)... maybe you should be wearing a helmet. At all times.
 
I get nitrogen tanks for stock car racing at AIRGAS - They wont even let me pick them up in anything other than my truck.

They even had a fit that I had a tonneau on the truck in the summer - and as someone else posted, I had to load them in my truck myself... this is the big tall tanks. I was driving 8 miles...
 
Should I be worried about my tanks sitting in my garage year round? It gets 95F+ in there in August!

As to vehicle safety, I had a 25# CO2 tank in my car when it rolled twice. The tank started in my backseat, and ended up in my front passenger seat. I don't know how I didn't get whacked by it...oh and my little .22 rifle that was in the back ended up sticking out the windshield in front of my seat.


Here's a picture of how it sat:
DeathofFocus.jpg
 
My scuba instructor told us to always transport our tanks upright and strapped in. If you're in an accident and the valve gets broken off the tank becomes a rocket. MythBusters did an episode on air cylinder rockets and showed they can penetrate a cinder block wall.



Seemed like good advice to me to keep this potential force going down! (Not sure it matters in a rollover though :-(

Cheers,
-Brad
 
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I just had my 20lb tank filled on monday because I had a leaky connection on my kegerator setup. Lost a 20lb tank in 3 days while I was gone on vacation. The tank I bought on monday was going to help me find this leak, the first thing I noticed when I got home and hooked it up was how high the regulator pressure was. Almost 2500 psi I think. Long story short, until the tank cooled down and equalized in my garage temperatures I couldnt' even see if my leak check was complete because the psi just kept dropping. It was 90 out that day and only in my car for about half an hour.
 
Good Posts. Where I get my tanks filled the guy said propane left in a car can be dangerous if there's a slow leak when you go to start the car it can cause it to ignite.
They warned me about the c02 on hot days as well. I usually prop my c02 tanks nice and snug upright in the back seat like little babies with some coats. Same with the nitrogen. I usually go right home with them. Ever since I got to learning about acetylene I'm real careful with any kind of tanks.
 
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