Carbon monoxide in our tanks .. I need to solve this problem

Dears all
i have 112 steel tanks. In last January i got some of bad air filled in it.

And its from dive shop compressor.

My question

how can i use the tanks again?
what should i do to clean it from Carbon monoxide ?



i want Scientific solution to get approve so i can use it again safely ?



Im from Saudi Arabia.
Any idea or suggestion will help me.


Thanks for everyone in advance.

Carbon monoxide is a gas, so emptying the cylinder, blowing some air through it to remove all the contents, and refilling it should be sufficient.

More concerning is whether the failure that allowed the CO into the tank also brought with it any oily contaminants. In that case, the tank would have to be cleaned with a substance like Simple Green, that can remove oils and hydrocarbons.

Did you already fix the compressor?

Which shop did you get the bad fill from? I got some questionable fills from a shop in Jeddah. They changed their filters after I asked about it. Subsequent tanks have been free from CO so far.

Ditto what TSandM said.

Empty the tank completely and then refill it with clean air. Take a few breaths and smell the air. If you taste any oil or smell any odor you'll have to either clean it yourself with Simple Green or take it to a shop that does O2 cleaning which should get rid any residual odor or oil mist from the tank and valve.

If the shop does not know how the CO ended up in your tank I'd be looking for another fill station because if it happened once it will happen again.

Aziz:

Dears all
i have 112 steel tanks. In last January i got some of bad air filled in it.

And its from dive shop compressor.

My question

how can i use the tanks again?
what should i do to clean it from Carbon monoxide ?

Click to expand...

• Find an air fill station you trust.
• Take the tanks in, tell them you had bad air and want a VIP inspection
• They'll :
  • open your tanks,
  • let out the bad air,
  • check for oil or burned stuff,
  • clean if nececeary
  • refill with good air

You may need a CO tester if the fill stations are not dependable.

Never go back to any place you get a bad fill from. Its a systemic problem with how the shop views its customers (profit over safety).

Get the tanks VIP and Cleaned if needed, you might also have some contaminants that could have been introduced into your tanks.


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Unlikely to have had CO in them, more likely it was oil vapour. Emptying and adding some good air and emptying again should do it, but it may need to be properly cleaned.

clownfishsydney:

Unlikely to have had CO in them, more likely it was oil vapour. Emptying and adding some good air and emptying again should do it, but it may need to be properly cleaned.

Click to expand...

Why would you doubt the poster's statement?

First off, he likely has access to a hand held CO monitor which today with their electrochemical sensors are extremely accurate. Minimum detection limit is 1 ppm and resolution is 1 ppm on the Analox CO EII. Similar on the Oxycheq and Nuvair handheld units.

Secondly he lives in Saudi Arabia where current daily high temperatures are over 40 C (104 F) and we know that the propensity to burn the compressor oil is directly related to the ambient temperature and the quality of the compressor installation.

Thirdly we have data from the large accredited compressed air laboratories in Canada and the USA which allows one to quantify the rate of failures for the various contaminants or analytes. When I look at the data from one US lab (n = 4000 samples) the rate of failure on oil and particulates is ~ 1%. For dive air the rate of failure for carbon monoxide (CO) is still 3 % to 5 %. And > 90% of those CO failures are from electric compressors where the mechanism of failure is dieseling of the compressor oil not CO contamination from an external point source.

Here is one of several articles DAN has run over the years which clearly states that the rate of sample failure for CO is three to five percent of samples submitted. In 1998 the rate of failure reported by the labs was 5% to 8% so there has been some improvement. When I spoke with the lab directors a few years ago the CO failure rate still stood at 3 % in the dive industry which is far too high.

If a dive air sample fails on one contaminant only and we exclude moisture and CO2 it is far more likely to have been CO rather than oil vapor.