Practical Use of Gas Booster with Argon and O2 Question

[mikecotrone]

Hi,

I have been researching gas boosters for a while now and I do have a practical question for those experienced.

Example Setup:

- 160cuft Supply tank of Argon (2010psi) : I would use this for my small 6cuft 3000psi Argon Tanks

- 300 cuft supply tank of O2 (2400psi) : This supply tank is Meant for Deco Bottle filling

( <= 40% blending would be handled by a separate O2 supply tank connecting into a Nitrox Stick).


My question is that if I am going to want to boost my Argon fills and then turn around and want to do O2 fills (75% to 100%) how do I do this and keep all of those nasty hydrocarbons out? I can't imagine O2 cleaning your booster between argon and o2 fills every time would be the solution nor is buying two boosters. ???

How are you handling this? And does this make sense

Thanks!

 

[Dsix36]

If you are intent to use the booster for both argon and O2, then you better boost the O2 very slow and make sure that things do not heat up. There is the train of thought that O2 cleaning is not necessary if pumping is done slowly and heat is not allowed to build up.

disclaimer: I never told you this.

 

[mikecotrone]

If you are intent to use the booster for both argon and O2, then you better boost the O2 very slow and make sure that things do not heat up. There is the train of thought that O2 cleaning is not necessary if pumping is done slowly and heat is not allowed to build up.

disclaimer: I never told you this.

Yes that is exactly my intent or at least a plan so far.

 

[divingtactics]

There are a number of people using their boosters for helium, oxygen and argon and they happily swap between the three gasses. Argon is very clean from a supply cylinder as it is generally used for welding and any impurities will cause the welder to run poorly. The major issue with Argon is having it mixed into your breathing gas due to any gas which remains in the lines and then gets pumped into scuba tanks by mistake. You can avoid this by purging your booster and panel with clean air - basically blowing some air from your banks through the booster and the panel - depending on your specific set up and configuration. Basically, if you just bleed the booster, the argon will still remain in there at 1ATA, so you need to push it out by putting another gas in its place. You could use oxygen, air or helium to do this too and just let the first 5 or 6 strokes blow out the bleed screw on your panel or booster outlet - again, this depends if you are boosting back through your panel or just directly from supply cylinders to scuba cylinders.

Personally, I don't run argon through my panel or my booster, but that is more because the water temperature in Australia is never low enough to need argon in my drysuit. Air is fine for suit inflation here as it generally doesn't get under 50 deg 'F (9 deg 'C).

As far as oxygen cleaning goes, I subscribe to the train of thought that one needs to be careful with oxygen and that gas velocity is the largest single contributor to an oxygen fire. Clean your booster and boost slowly, one cycle every 2 to 4 seconds for me with oxygen. Now having said that, if you have oil and high pressure oxygen, those two alone are not enough to cause ignition, but by introducing gas velocity, you have all the ingredients needed for a nice little mushroom cloud within your booster. You can't take the oxygen out of the mix, you can take the oil/hydrocarbons out by oxygen cleaning and you can minimize the velocity by boosting slowly - two out of three ain't bad, one out of three (a dirty booster pumping oxygen slowly) is not so good.

Hopefully this helps you somewhat.