Got a fill that smells of plastic

[Marie13]

Glad they’re taking care of you.

 

[Searcaigh]

I was only the second person to have come back to report it.

Quite likely only you and one other person noticed it and others did not.

Ideally once the shop knew about this there should have been some sort of recall to have recent cylinders checked.

 

[rob.mwpropane]

Ideally once the shop knew about this there should have been some sort of recall to have recent cylinders checked.

This is 100% true, in a perfect world the best of shops they should have reached out. In a way it's kind of sad that we're all ecstatic they at least admitted they were wrong.

 

[bakodiver391]

Yes, if they are using filter elements with the clear plastic housing, like Lawrence Factor, it is possible to have the molecular sieve react to a slug of water from too fast a blowdown, overheat and set the activated charcoal on fire. This then melts the plastic and you get that plastic smell in your tanks, probably a lot of CO as well. So your fill could very well have been fatal.

 

[Jake 10]

Yes, if they are using filter elements with the clear plastic housing, like Lawrence Factor, it is possible to have the molecular sieve react to a slug of water from too fast a blowdown, overheat and set the activated charcoal on fire. This then melts the plastic and you get that plastic smell in your tanks, probably a lot of CO as well. So your fill could very well have been fatal.

interesting !

 

[bakodiver391]

I've seen it happen. It was caught immediately and was not pumped into anyone's tanks, but it was a mess.

 

[tursiops]

It smelt like vaguely burnt plastic

This reminds me of a time that I was a working researcher at an oceanographic institution that used to get a lot of calls from the public asking questions, some good, some bad. The lady who took the calls had a roster of some of us that she would pass a call to if she couldn't answer it from her book of standard answers to common questions. So I get a call from my lady one day and she says, "Good luck with this one!" and forwards the call to me. The lady on the other end said, "I have what I thought was a simple question; how come I can smell the salt in the air at the sea shore but I can't smell it at my dinner table?" I explained to her that she wasn't actually smelling the salt in the air at the seashore, but rather all the dead and decaying organic matter on the beach, especially from the region between the low-and high tide lines. She thought for a moment, and told me, "No that can't be right. Patti Page even recorded a song about the salty air on Old Cape Cod." I tried explaining that, Yes, the air was salty, but that is not what she was smelling. I finally suggested she run an experiment: go down to the beach and scoop up a bucket of wet sand from the beach and put it on her dinner table. Wait a while, and see what she smells. She basically hung up on me. Oh, well.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

There are a few ways that this "plastic smell" can get into the tank. First, deterioration of plastics in-line in the compressor/filter assembly. Second, the air intake can be funneling contaminated air into the system. For instance, if it is an intake on the roof, and someone is doing roof work involving burning plastic, or applying a solvent, then that smell could be picked up by the intake and pumped into your tank. Now, all the filtering in the world won't remove a vapor. So if solvents were being used near the compressor's intake, you could get a solvent vapor compressed into the tank.

The biggest thing is not to use that tank, and to ensure that there is no liquid in the tank producing the smell. For that, it needs to be drained, then evaluated.

If you want to know exactly what that smell is, you need to get it to a lab and have it evaluated. But this will cost some money, as they will need to do probably several tests on this air source.

'Hope this helps.

SeaRat

 

[Gone for diving]

Second, the air intake can be funneling contaminated air into the system. For instance, if it is an intake on the roof, and someone is doing roof work involving burning plastic, or applying a solvent, then that smell could be picked up by the intake and pumped into your tank. Now, all the filtering in the world won't remove a vapor. So if solvents were being used near the compressor's intake, you could get a solvent vapor compressed into the tank.

Wouldn't the carbon filter remove most of it? It may have been to much for the filter, we don't know how many cu ft and how long it ran, and how big the air banks were,
But small amounts should have been removed right?

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Wouldn't the carbon filter remove most of it? It may have been to much for the filter, we don't know how many cu ft and how long it ran, and how big the air banks were,
But small amounts should have been removed right?

That is correct, provided that the filter was not saturated. There should be a change schedule for carbon filters. We had to do that for isopropyl alcohol carbon filters, which in an industrial setting were huge (like a huge water tank). We had them filled half-way up with activated carbon, and the rest of the way with bunky balls (plastic balls simply to hold the carbon in place, with a cloth mat in between the two layers. I had to enter the tank (I was the EHS Manager) because the person we wanted to do that had too great a girth to get into the tank. We used tape to tape the cloth to the wall, so that the balls could be put in. I was in a fall protection harness and on the end of an extraction line/tripod system overhead. These activated carbon filters have a lifespan, and need to be replaced when close to saturation.

SeaRat