Welding + Brake Cleaner = DEADLY

[FlaDon]

I used to work for a telephone company years ago. To make some extra money I had an occasional job helping a guy installing the batteries for the telephone switches. When the cells were assembled they were connected by led bridges welded with Hydrogen/Oxygen torch.
One time we were assembling two batteries at some plant and needed to move our stuff from one building to another. My boss and I carried the O2 bottle and local maintenance guys were carrying the H2 bottle. My boss told them to put the valve cover on it but it was ignored saying it is easier to carry without it on. While walking across a railroad track one of the guys tripped, they dropped the bottle and the valve hit the rail and broke off. The bottle flew into a maintenance building made round about a foot big hole in the brick wall then hit a work bench inside of the building and pushed it out on the other side making about garage door size hole there.

That's why you never carry tanks in a vehicle with the caps off. Rocket powered tanks can ruin your day.

 

[patrick_g]

That is why most gas turbines and diesel engines use CO2 fire suppression in their enclosures.

Millions of hand held Halon extinguishers have been sold to the general public and pitched hard to the boating community. The danger also exists with portable extinguishers.

The boating/yachting community was targeted for ad campaigns for Halon based automatic fire suppression systems for engine spaces. Given the arrangement of many yachts a CO2 system poses a threat as it excludes oxygen and is dangerous to people in enclosed spaces. A Halon extinguisher is safe to use in an occupied space EXCEPT if their is a running diesel engine.

One of the projects I designed for NTC (The Army National Training Center at Ft. Irwin) had a 12.5 KW Onan Diesel generator in a Helicopt Hut (Box that fits in the bed of a deuce and a half truck) along with two operators AND a Halon fire suppression system. I linked the deployment of the Halon bottle to a fuel cutoff solenoid to kill the diesel if the fire suppression system was deployed. The operators of this mobile microwave spectrum analysis system would be safe to breath the Halon until they could make an orderly egress. Any fire inside the unit would have been extinguished within a second or two of the Halon being deployed.

CO2 is great stuff for extinguishing fires BUT if you aren't careful it will EXTINGUISH you!

Pat