Why did I get nauseated? Oil and water in my tank.

[Hickdive]

OP it is time for the dive shop to buy a CO meter for the their compressor and for you to buy one to check all your air fills. That WAS a near death experience. We had something similar happen and people were nauseous and throwing up.

Post up the name of the shop and insist they install a CO meter that shuts the compressor down should there be an issue.

Oil and Water in the cylinder are a symptom of filter breakthrough not CO intake or dieseling in the compressor generating CO. A CO monitor would not help in this case.

What would help is monitoring filter usage and changing as necesssry, regular air quality testing (which isn't the same thing as CO monitoring), and a secondary filter tower to catch any breakthrough if the first two systems fail.

 

[DandyDon]

At the ludicrously slow pedestrian rate of 55 MPH you drive on US highways most of us in Europe at that speed wouldn't see a 3% tyre failure as a problem. At that speed its just a slow stop. With a no limit unrestricted Autobahn the only restriction is in bad weather and its down to 81MPH

Yet on the USA Highways there is an average of 3.62 deaths per 1b vwh/km compared with only 1.98.in Germany.
We just have better cars and highways I guess? Iain

President Carter enacted a 55 mph maximum in the 1970s, but that's long gone. 75 mph limits are more the norm with typical speeds a little over that, and some hiways have higher limits.

Have you ever had a high speed blow out? I prefer a lower failure rate than 3 times out of a hundred - for air or tires.

 

[iain/hsm]

Oil and Water in the cylinder are a symptom of filter breakthrough not CO intake or dieseling in the compressor generating CO. A CO monitor would not help in this case.

What would help is monitoring filter usage and changing as necesssry, regular air quality testing (which isn't the same thing as CO monitoring), and a secondary filter tower to catch any breakthrough if the first two systems fail.

Sadly none of your suggestions would have been any good in this situation.

1. Monitoring filter usage isn't the issue and is a waste of effort when the OP stated that at a previous time the filter cracked. This is the clue to the problem.

2. Changing the filter cartridge also isn't going to work in this situation.

3. Ditto for regular air quality testing, your too little too late.

4. The secondary filter tower is also of little use, albeit for this customer, this fill, this time he may have been saved the carryover but 5 more fills down the line and it would have been out and all over again despite the 2nd filter

The key here is that the primary filter (cartridge) cracked, the cause of which may not have been resolved by just simply replacing the cracked cartridge.

The resolution to this problem is IMHO some decent competent compressor engineering service.

However to help both the OP diver and the dive shop dispenser of the gas.

Only get fills from a dive shop that monitors water vapour in real time at the panel you can see the indicator showing the dispensed gas.

In real time this would have been quickly cheaply and competently resolved by the use of a simple £40 ($60) visual indicator and a £5 ($10) 10/20/30% relative humidity indicator card.

Examples of disrupted filter cartridges.




Example of a small real time $60 visual indicator monitoring downstream of a twin chemical filter shells





Iain Middlebrook



---------- Post added August 28th, 2014 at 01:06 PM ----------

Oil and Water in the cylinder are a symptom of filter breakthrough .

Oil and water in a cylinder to this extent is generally caused by a separator drain failing swamping the filter with emulsified oil and water
Lack of draining is the cause, be it lack of or forgotten mechanical hand draining, auto drains blocked of power/solenoid failure of the auto drains.

The chemical filter is designed to adsorb oil vapour and reduce water vapour dewpoint its not capable of handling solid liquids for long

 

[drbill]

At the ludicrously slow pedestrian rate of 55 MPH you drive on US highways most of us in Europe at that speed wouldn't see a 3% tyre failure as a problem.

Obviously you haven't driven Los Angeles freeways... 55 mph wouldn't even get you in the slow lane. But then I'd be glad to be doing 55 mph during rush hour!

As for the OP's situation, the response of the LDS is very questionable IMHO. Although accidents do happen, this could have been a very serious one and they knew there had been an issue with their compressor that could have caused it.

 

[iain/hsm]

President Carter enacted a 55 mph maximum in the 1970s, but that's long gone. 75 mph limits are more the norm with typical speeds a little over that, and some hiways have higher limits.

Have you ever had a high speed blow out? I prefer a lower failure rate than 3 times out of a hundred - for air or tires.

Hey Don.

Thank goodness but you know its only because you now have decent car imports LOL .

But to be a little more serious I have two "party tricks" that for many years have been undertaking on our navy clients.

First I regularly fill my small aluminium cylinder without any filter stack or any form of chemical filtration tower direct from our HP compressors as a test.

Second collect the water condensate discharge collected direct off the compressor separators during filling and pour it into a glass.
After the fizzing clears offer the contents of the glass to drink and interestingly most do, or at least when rank requires them to.

We then take the filled cylinder down to the watering hole and test dive the cylinder with the said divers. Just to show ambient air compression without chemical filtration can be done in the field or remote applications etc without filtration with the right equipment for the application.

Regular gas analysis from the compressors without a filter or filter removed show passes to BSEN 4275 and 4001 the two now obsolete UK standards and with a small amount of dehydration chemical added we achieve BSEN 12021 by lowering to the required water vapour dewpoint.

The points to prove are:

1. Firstly and primeraly: The Filtration fitted. IT FAILS SAFE

2. All Filters by there very nature fail

and when this occurs:

3. Refer to point 1

Granted the exception being that the compressors are electric driven and have both interstage and a discharge mechanical separators for the condensate collection. But apart form that I guess like good car imports you just need a better tool for the job.

Adequate gas preparation with adequate gas separation.

Similar with your CO problems its easier to remove the source of the problem than be totally reliant on a solution of simply monitoring for it. Iain Middlebrook

 

[Hickdive]

In real time this would have been quickly cheaply and competently resolved by the use of a simple £40 ($60) visual indicator and a £5 ($10) 10/20/30% relative humidity indicator card.



Iain Middlebrook
-

Sold! I'll take one - just let me know where to send the order and give me the BACS details for payment.

 

[chillyinCanada]

It is possible that the staff are trained to be low key in response to bad reports. Lawsuits right?

If you are involved in car accident, a lawyer will tell you, that while you may profess your concern for others well being you do not say "OH MY GOD, I'M SO SORRY! IT WAS ALL MY FAULT".

Whether either of these scenarios are proper behaviour for human beings, I'll leave that judgement to you.

 

[iain/hsm]

It is possible that the staff are trained to be low key in response to bad reports. Lawsuits right?

If you are involved in car accident, a lawyer will tell you, that while you may profess your concern for others well being you do not say


"SNIP,

I'M SO SORRY! IT WAS ALL MY FAULT".

Whether either of these scenarios are proper behaviour for human beings, I'll leave that judgement to you.

There is a big factor of the divers own self responsibility here.

First. As with all diving pre checks, what happened in not doing a smell test on the air before you leave the shop and especially before you jump in. Irrespective if you used this dive shop regularly or not. As divers we are not ignorant of compressor filter breakdown problems. The basic smell test is still the best indicator or oil contamination, oil combustion and filter content carryover. Moreover its cheap and easily seconded. Smelling low flowing air over the nostrils is much more sensitive than taste.

Secondly and incidentally this would also have be the point at which you would use an analyser CO, oxygen etc depending on whatever air/gas your purchasing to verify percentage, purity and pressure. etc before you leave the shop.

Thirdly: Just an observation but the OP did commence a second dive, and IMHO takes full responsibility in my book for that despite being dizzy and nauseous...... Hello !!!
Despite this and with clear warning signs of something, possibly anything at this point is not quite right yet commits to a second dive.

Finally: And on this point I'm going on the compressor operators side.

There is a common if not fully appreciated problem even with all this analysis suggestions and hope pinning on a digital display solution that you can get yourself as a compressor operator in a position that the service log shows as follows:

1. A new filter change or change over cartridge on an oil lubricated compressor,

2. An air purity test done and sent away. It passes good.

3. Then around 5 to 10 fills later you get gross contamination into the diving cylinder. At which point you may or may not be aware of the problem

5. Around 5 fills after that say fill number 15 to 20 it all clears even out of all the pipes and pressure lines and your back to breathing air albeit a little high in water vapour dew point.

6. Around 40 hours later you again change out the filter, even do another test and all is clear, as if nothing happened.

Now in this situation not seeing even a photo of the compressor and filter plant, pump model, age service history etc I cannot comment further, apart from urge all operators to invest $60 £40 on a small water vapour indicator which incidentally would have both ensured a pleasant days diving for the OP and flagged up a service problem for the compressor operator.
Both in real time, on the wall in plain sight.

But in the situation of the OP and his position IMHO its much easier.

You now take your pick, diver responsibility and education or diver responsibility and education. Iain

 

[chillyinCanada]

so you're saying the guy working at the shop was right to make no expression of regret, concern , sorrow nor curiosity.

---------- Post added August 29th, 2014 at 04:19 AM ----------

And had the driver, oops diver been killed it would have fallen upon his own selfresponsibility for failing to see the oncoming, erm i mean smelling the tank before diving it. No harm no foul.

Meanwhile the compressor operator must indeed be more careful, whereas the car owner, erm dive shop can sleep well.

(Just joking with you, your post is full of great info and while I'm always inclined to get divers including myself to be thinking and acting in self-reliant/responsible ways, I'm just sayin' . . . )

 

[iain/hsm]

ROFL For living in Reno I'm all sorrow for the pair of them. LOL

Must be the 5000 foot attitude or was that altitude