Regulators and Nitrox

[sharpenu]

Spontaneous combustion with hydrocarbons and O2 have been noted with PPO2s as low as 2.0. If you are diving EANx40, this is a depth of 132 feet. Well into the danger zone. The reason they want regs and tanks cleaned is they are exposed to the higher PPO2. Yes, I know that a tank of air has a PPO2 of 42. It is also a function of the explosive range of the hydrocarbon. For this reason, there is little risk of fire or explosion in the regulator in mixtures less than 40%. Tanks in stores using the blending method, however are exposed to PPO2s in exess of 40 and mixtures approaching 100% until the air is added. Get much higher than 40% in an uncleaned system and you are literally playing with fire.

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

As to the FDA post, the FDA does not make policy they enforce policy. Meaning they do NOT come up with the 40% rule but they adhere to the 40% rule. BTW all but a hand full of agency's now uses 23.5 or the 25% rule. Just a note that in the future these agencies will be adopting the new standards as well. Look for it in a dive shop near you.

Ed

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

Forgot one bit. For warhammer. If you look at the old method that apeks distributed their regulators you'll find that they did NOT use o2 compatible parts. Now if you look at the current shipment you'll find that they are using o2 parts (by parts I mean lube, rings and the rest)

Now from a legal standpoint it's better for a company to ship o2 parts in the regulators/tank valves and have a blurb about professionaly o2 cleaning than have some person file charges against the company.

From the monetary standpoint it does cost more in materials, however this added expense is much lower than any expense incured from a legal proceeding (lawyer fees, court time, case prep, settlements, etc..)

From the technical standpoint it's clearly easier to have an o2 friendly rig directly from the factory than not.

BTW the main difference in the apeks "o2 clean" regs and the standard regs is the "o2 clean" regs are hand assembled in the clean room while the non-o2 clean regs are put together with the o2 materials outside the clean room. Or so i've been told.

Ed

 

[Lost Yooper]

Buff's post regarding patients and O2 turned on a light upstairs (OK, albeit dim ). My wife is an EMT, and I thought I would look in one of her training manuals regarding O2 treatment. In the entire chapter discussing O2, only three sentences are devoted to O2 flammability. No where in the text, or in my wifes training or experience, does it address O2 cleaning a patients face prior to administering pure O2.

Ummm...now everyone use their imagination and try to guess how many patients are treated with pure 02 every year who are wearing petroleum based lip balm (Vasaline). How about car accidents where petroleum products in the form of vapor, smoke, or a liquid state might be on a patients face? It is not apart of an EMT's training to clean the face of a victim prior to administering pure O2, as far as I can tell. My son was recently in the hospital for O2 treatment, and there was never any concern regarding an oily face.

I wonder, how many patients faces are burned off every year resulting from emergency O2 administration such as in the case of car accidents or building fires? See, this is what I'm talking about; there's more "real life" evidence to the contrary, on virtually every level, regarding practical O2 usage.

Mike

 

[Lost Yooper]

Originally posted by sharpenu
Spontaneous combustion with hydrocarbons and O2 have been noted with PPO2s as low as 2.0. If you are diving EANx40, this is a depth of 132 feet. Well into the danger zone. The reason they want regs and tanks cleaned is they are exposed to the higher PPO2.

Noted by whom? If there's a source for this one, I want to talk to him.

Thanks.

Mike

 

[blacknet]

Lost Yooper,

I'll say what the rest have stated off board. Your have no clue what your talking about and when people present you the info you ignore it thus showing your ignorance to the mass public. As it has been stated before by rainreg you do NOT, I repeat *NOT* o2 clean the second stage, dry suits, mask or other items like that.

To even remotely imply what you did really speaks lowly of your intelligence in this matter.

Ed

 

[watergal]

Hmmm....

Instead of getting a floor pump for my bicycle I decided to fill my bike tires off of scuba tanks. But most of the time the tanks that I have lying around partially filled are mixed. I made an arbitrary decision not to use helium or 60-100% deco gas, but am I going to go up in flames if I use 23-59% in my tires? I have never put anything but air in car tires, but could I?

And Saturday I thought potholes were my biggest worry!

 

[Lost Yooper]

Much to the contrary Ed.

There hasn't been ANY practical evidence supplied by ANYONE here that O2 fires are occuring as the result of cleaned or uncleaned scuba equipment. I couldn't care less what Rainreg or you have to say unless it is practical in nature. Rainreg might have his own agenda for which I have no interest in. I don't expect anyone who is in a position of liability to give any form of an honest answer that could come back to haunt them.
The problem with you is that you are totally incapable of using any type of basic reasoning skills. If it is necessary to O2 clean a tank or anything else for nitrox exposure, then it would only make sense (by that foolish reasoning) that it would be necessary to O2 clean your BC and dry suit. You are talking about spontaneous combustion regarding mixes up to 40%. This is BS and anyone capable of basic common sense knows it! Cripe, this is YOUR argument (not mine), and the argument defeats itself!

No one here has proven me wrong. I have given common sense evidence why this entire subject is bogus. I don't base my input on these boards on theory, but rather from real life experience and practical research. You want to wimp out and flame me, ED, have at it. But until you can prove me wrong with practical statistics -- you lose.

Get off it, Ed.

Mike

PS. Everyone take note who turned this thread for the worse. This will be my last post on this thread. If someone wants to start up another thread, I will be glad to take part until someone gets unnecessarily rude and baligerant. This is it for me on this one.

 

[Warhammer]

Ed,

First; calm down a bit. There is absolutely no reason to attack anyone and it will not be tolerated.

Second; you talk about providing info. All I've seen you provide is opinions. Not 1 single case of hard evidence. But there have been 1000s upon 1000s of successful dives made that prove otherwise. When you can prove differently, let me know and I'll listen, as I suspect the rest of us will. Until that time I, and probably 90% of the rest of divers, will go by what I know.

Third;

Originally posted by blacknet
Hello,

Forgot one bit. For warhammer. If you look at the old method that apeks distributed their regulators you'll find that they did NOT use o2 compatible parts. Now if you look at the current shipment you'll find that they are using o2 parts (by parts I mean lube, rings and the rest)

Ed

That may have been the case at one time, but it wasn't the case with the set I bought. My regs had all the 02 compatible parts, but they recommended against using it as such. That's fine, I understand their reasoning, however I suspect it was Aqua-Lung's reasoning not Apeks'. But what I won't do is reclean my reg after every use with non-02 compatible air. That's just ridiculously neat picking. And I could care less what any agency adopts as their policy, until they provide a solid backing for that policy, it's my right to ignore it, as I will. I also think it's going to be extremely difficult for any shop to enforce a 23% rule. How are they suppose to check for an 02 cleaned reg, and even if they could, who are they to tell me how I can or can't use something that has absolutely no effect on them or their personnel?

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

That was not a flame nor was it an attack. I was SERIOUSLY scaled down from what I wanted to say. No i'm not up so there's no reason to calm down.

There was some facts that I posted and it was just blown off so no i'm not going to do your homework for you. I'll leave that job up to you. Remember, you can take a horse to water but you can't make the horse drink the water.

Enforcement will always be a problem. Just this past week I meet a cave diver who was not even open water certified. Said something about training was a waste of time and money and that 'real world experience' is the best teacher. So there's a trade off, do you add the extra margin of safety and do the training or do you pull this guy's attitude and use the 'real world experience' of trial and error to dictate your safety margins?


Ed