[Vwdiesel] Was Broken Bleeder Valves - now acetylene lore

[Harmon Seaver]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 09:05:14PM -0500, Lee Hillsgrove wrote:
> The acetylene tank finally heated up enough
> >in the hot trunk that the pressure of the dissolved acetylene
> >went above 15 psi.  The acetylene in the tank decomposed explosively.
> >
> <snip>
>
> >Don't EVER let the pressure in the tank get higher than 15 psi.
>   I think you mean the line pressure. Been a little while since I looked at
> the tank pressure, but I think it's around 5-600 psi when full. It's safe
> when it's in the tank and happy with the acetone.
>  I've heard a similar story concerning barbecue tanks for propane grills.
> One of the reasons why we now have the new style valves.
>
    I don't think propane will go off the same way. I've seen two fires where
full or partially full propane tanks didn't rupture when the building
burned. One was a small "logger's shack" -- the logger died in the fire, the
100 lb propane bottle looked pretty black from the fire, and nothing else much
left of the building, but didn't explode.  The other was a big building, a
store, with a big tank right next to it, building burned to the ground but the
tank seemed fine. We sat about a block away watching the blaze on that one.



--
Harmon Seaver
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com