WD40 in a woodburner

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , NY escribió:

Not even blood and gory bits?

[NY]

I believe it's in acetone. The cylinder has a honeycomb structure inside to act as baffles to stop the acetone and dissolved acetylene from sloshing around too much because that might cause it to self-detonate. Acetylene cylinders really are not to be trifled with :-(

[Martin Brown]

That doesn't sound quite right. He might have lost a hand or an arm or been killed by it if very unlucky but he would still be there.

I have known an industrial accident where an unchained nitrogen cylinder fell over and knocked the valve clean off. The valve went through a few brick walls and several asbestos process sheds before coming to rest. Fortunately it didn't intersect with anyone on the way. The cylinder suffered a version of the hose pipe instability and scudded round the shed spinning horizontally as it went. Doing a fair amount of damage but again missing people. The unfortunate engineer was deaf for a couple of days and probably had long term hearing loss.

At university we had someone use ordinary rubber pipe and no regulator on a 2000psi gas bottle. He cracked the valve open a little and saw the tube instantly blow up to beachball size followed by an enormous bang and then silence. ISTR it took a week for his hearing to return.

[Clive George]

Experience says otherwise :-)

[newshound]

I've seen an HSE picture of that (or a *very* similar) accident site, with the trajectory "drawn in", during a training course some decades ago.

[mcp]

They would go off explosively in large parts of the world including the middle east which is presumably where they got the idea from.

Islamic terrorists foiled by the EU bureaucrats and the Health and Safety Executive. It's enough to give The Daily Mail readers palpitations.

[Tim+]

That makes no sense. The most significant feature of the Glasgow airport "bombing" was the way that the cylinders *didn't* explode. Would moving them somewhere else make a difference?

Tim

[Vir Campestris]

That's very surprising. A range of several miles would imply the valve was accelerated to supersonic speed within the few inches it was close to the cylinder.

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

as most bullets are..

[mcp]

Not moving the cylinders, using locally supplied ones which don't have the fusible plug.

[dennis]

Acetylene is very dangerous due to it exploding spontaneously if its pressurised by more than about 1 atmosphere.

Its dissolved in acetone to stop it exploding.. but if you draw it off too fast you can lose the acetone and then the remaining acetylene with explode all by itself.

The old acetylene lamps used to be powered by dissolving calcium carbide which made acetylene and they would blow up if the jet got blocked.

[Tim Streater]

Strike a light !!

[Tim Streater]

Not dissolving: chemical reaction between Calcium Carbide and water gives off acetylene.

CaC2 + 2 H2O => C2H2 + Ca(OH)2

[Nick]

In message , Stephen Mawson writes

I think not a store, unless there was more than spectacularity at the time. I worked on the 20th floor of Lunar House (top ten floors weren't the immigration dept., sorry Harry and co.) from 1976-79, a few hundred yards from West Croydon station. A freight train with 12 or so tanker carriages in a siding ignited and caused most interesting fireworks. Several of us young un's watched through the window, ignoring loudspeaker warnings not to do so.

[amcmaho]

What a fuel.

There are Youtube videos of using a squirt of WD40 to explosively expand a tubeless tyre onto a wheel rim and seat the bead. I don't know whether it's the WD40 or the propellant gas that goes bang. I've done it once and it was quite impressive.

[Vir Campestris]

... inside a carefully shaped cylinder. Which is usually several feet long. Heck, even a 45 magnum pistol won't make Mach 2.

Andy