Ozpilot414

People who cant spell should be shot at birth.

sailingfun

O2 is highly flammable! If you have a O2 leak almost anything can ignite it including any petrol product source without a open flame or spark. Remember the Apollo astronaughts killed in the O2 fire in training. A O2 leak in the EE compartment on a Delta 727 destroyed that aircraft at the gate in less then 3 minutes. The Navy which uses 100% O2 in fighters forbids using any petrol products on the face to avoid fires. In this case it clearly was not a fire but a failure of the bottle however stating O2 is not flammable is very wrong.

CrimsonEclipse

Well, to nick pick a bit, O2 is NOT at all flammable, but it IS part of the flame triangle and will contribute to an existing flame or cause spontaneous combustion in the presence of petroleum products.

Someone really should teach those auzies to spell.
(a "Q" without a "U".... I mean, it 1st grade English!

CE

rickair7777

O2 could be flammable when combined with certain exoctic gases found in a lab, but in the world we live in it is NOT at all flammable...better go check your 101 chemistry textbook.

It is what is refered to in chemical terms as an oxidizer...it enables OTHER substances to burn under the proper circumstances. Air is only 21% oxygen, in a 100% oxygen environment many substances will almost explode into flames (including people).

In this case there should have been nothing inside the oxygen bottle but O2...so there was nothing to burn. A solid steel or aluminum bottle will not burn at normal temps even with 100% O2 due to high heat transfer coeffecient.

rickair7777

No, joepilot is correct.

A bottle (like a scuba bottle) being filled with by a compressor will get hot. If an O2 bottle was filled by a compressor, it would get hot, but I doubt a compressor would be used...

100% oxygen ( and other special gases) is not readily available in the air for us to compress at our convenience, so we would expect an O2 bottle to be filled from a larger bank of bottles. This bank would be at HIGHER pressure the necessary final pressure of the bottle being filled...so the O2 would have to experience a pressure DROP while filling. Pressure goes down => temperature goes down.

rickair7777

I would guess internal corrosion, not much else will get to steel. If it was overheated externally, the relief should have blown first.

A borescope operator somewhere is going to have some explaining to do.

SWAcapt

Well actually, it doesn't matter if you are filling a cylinder from a bank or a compressor, the cylinder being filled will experience an increase in temperature as the pressure inside that vessel increases (it's physics). I do both. In fact I have a bank of three 340 cu.ft. ABO (100% O2) cylinders in my garage that I use to refill my 40 and 80 cu.ft. decompression cylinders and do partial pressure mixing of various EAN (NitrOx mixtures). Also O2 is not flammable, it is an oxidizer. Fuels are also not flammable in the absence oxidizers. I once welded up a pinhole in a 20 gal steel fuel tank full of gasoline, I displaced the oxidizer (20.9% o2 in the air at the top of the tank) with argon (an inert gas) and welded up the tank. Science is a beautiful thing.

Evers

Too bad it's an acronym and technically should be Q.A.N.T.A.S

Very interesting read. I'm sure the media will pipe up soon with some of those more detailed pics to keep the Bash QF bandwagon rolling.

EYBusdriver

Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.

CrimsonEclipse

There's a band wagon?

Why am I only learning this now?

CE