Exploding scuba tank kills one - Florida

[Some X Dry]

I knew Russ when he worked at Scuba West here in Hudson as a Instructor. Filled many of my tanks. Was a couple of divers I dive with Instructor for OW. They are beside themselves. He recently completed Cavern training and was looking to go Full Cave in the near future. Was very enthusiastic about diving and it showed. I have no details to add. I know he dove both steel tanks and AL but are unaware as to the composite of the tank involved. If I can confirm any facts from reliable sources I will pass them on. RIP Russ..

 

[squid509]

the burst disk is supposed to give way.

not all burst disk are created equal
they are batch tested some bad ones can slip throw the cracks

i have personally seen one burst disk rupture on one of my paintball bottles next to my face lucky it only scared the crap out of me
the was the low pressure burst dist set for 1000# the blowout 15min after i fist filled the bottle after buying it brand new
after testing the pressure on the reg and the bottle the most likely a bad burst disk that rupture too early

now I’m not saying burst disk dont work as advertised
there are just a thin piece of metal held in place by a vented cap and are destroyed when they burst
so they can only be batch tested some bad one can be out there with now way of knowing it

now that i bashed the burst disk i must defend them
in a 3000# tank the bust disk is set to 5000# maybe something like seawater weakened the tank before the burst disk had a chance to do its job

 

[ajduplessis]

Cylinders are very dangerous and should always be treated and maintained with care!!

 

[deepair]

Very curious about what they find caused this tank to explode. I find it hard to believe it, "Just Blew". Possibly dropped?

 

[Insta-Gator]

I hear a lot of folks talking about buying LP steel tanks because they can be over-filled (more than 2640) to gain more ft³ of gas. Perhaps someone with some amount of cylinder knowledge can start a thread about why people think it is safe to over-fill a scuba cylinder. I'm not saying this is the case here, but it seems to be a common practice. Some divers joke about shops in cave country with a standard policy of "4 and out the door" as in 4000 psi on all fills. Where's the logic?

:focus:

 

[Rick Murchison]

Agreed. Al tanks kinda just split in the weakest spot from the photos I've seen of them going. That sounds more like a bomb. Drop a tank and knock the valve off and it becomes a missile. Steel tanks I don't know if they'd blow like that or not.

??????? Most of the catastrophic failures of AL tanks I'm aware of involved potentially fatal shrapnel. Steel too. These pics are all AL.



Rick

 

[ktomlinson]

I would never fill my tanks this high, but the US navy conducted tests in the 1960s of al failure pressures. They tested 160 tanks by filling them until they exploded. If my memory serves me correctly, none exploded below 7000 psi. I have posted a link to this study on SB before, but am on the road and can't locate it at the moment. I bring this up not as an excuse to overfill tanks, but to say that it's very unlikely that temperature changes caused this, even if it were slightly overfilled to begin with. I'd suspect some sort of injury to the tank.

 

[netmage]

No, there is more than enough energy in the compressed gas alone to do the damage described.

Tobin

Just imagine the dynamics we are talking about here....
Something the volume of a tank..., no matter the size... releasing gas 232 times its volume in a fraction of a second.... In close proximity, that'l ruin anyone's day...

 

[gypsyjim]

Has anyone considered the possibility that the diver simply tripped, and the force of the cylinder striking the ground could have been the cause? Just a thought I had while reading all the previous posts.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Insta gator, there are several threads on that topic already. No need to try and turn this into one of those unless it turns out to be a cause....but if it was a cave filled lp tank, then I hope good analysis is done to figure out the cause, as thousands of overfilled steel tanks are sitting in garages around Florida.