Acetylene rationing

[hizoot]

About like a military parachute flare..Don't every strap one to a power pole and shoot it off at night...We never told anyone we did that for 35 yrs..Police were hunting who did that for along time around our county.. Lit the night sky up for miles that night.

mmmm....I'm tellin!

I work in the a/c -refrigeration industry. I have 7 schools that I am working on right now, installing new walk-in coolers/ freezers. And there is plenty of copper and brazing involved. With the price of copper, silfos (15% silver brazing alloy), refrigerant and now acetylene... it is becoming hard to bid since price fluctuates daily. It is also becoming a rich mans luxury to have air conditioning ...much less refrigeration.

 

[Jim in ICT]

I recieved one of those letters and appreciate knowing about the possibility of a shortage before it happens rather than when I need to exchange a cylinder. That would allow me to conserve acetylene in advance,or use my plasma cutter in more applications than usual.
The reasonable answer would be for the distributor to allow only even exchanges of cylinders in order to prevent customers from stocking up. Any increases in pricing would be a byproduct of the additional costs due to the shortage and not price gouging.

 

[Soundguy]

makes me want to go check my gauges and see how much acet. I got left... I know my 02 is gtting low.. but I usually get 1.5 to 2 bottles of o2 per acet. bottle..

guess the chop saw will be getting more work..

soundguy

 

[JDdude]

I recieved one of those letters and appreciate knowing about the possibility of a shortage before it happens rather than when I need to exchange a cylinder. That would allow me to conserve acetylene in advance,or use my plasma cutter in more applications than usual.
The reasonable answer would be for the distributor to allow only even exchanges of cylinders in order to prevent customers from stocking up. Any increases in pricing would be a byproduct of the additional costs due to the shortage and not price gouging.

The guy told me they were going to check all returned bottles and reuse the contents..No waste that way.

They do not thnk they have anymore product to sell next week from what I understand.

 

[Soundguy]

makes me think I either need to get a propane tip, or refill my half empty bottle now.. that or buy a spare cheap #1 bottle and get it fileld and hold it for a rainy day..

soundguy

 

[Kernopelli]

As a side note to this conversation, I was sick of always being out of gas ( middle son is quite handy but he can go through consumables like there's no tomorrow). I decided an old carbon arc torch would fill in nicely for most of my needs. A box of copper coated carbon rods was only $16 but finding a torch proved to be the hard part. After getting out bid on several ebay auctions I decided to make my own and it works great. It has cut down our gas consumption considerably. A single rod in the arc welder will cut thinner metal easily and two rods in my home made torch produces enough heat to braze, bend or heat about anything...in fact, you'd better be careful. It'll also make neat little balls of glass out of sand and dirt and light the shop wood burner in about two seconds :thumbsup:

 

[Mace Canute]

A shortage of acetylene due to the explosion is a red herring. That story is being pushed by all the suppliers as a method of increasing their prices for it and also as a means of selling other products to replace it while seemingly being reasonable about it.
A little hunting yielded a couple of nuggets of knowledge.

The classical route to acetylene is calcium carbide in which lime is reduced by carbon in an electric furnace to yield calcium carbide, which is then hydrolyzed to acetylene. Prior to 1951 all the acetylene produced in the United States was manufactured by this process. Since then, hydrocarbon-derived acetylene has almost totally replaced this route. The high power requirements and resulting utility costs have made the calcium carbide process uneconomical in comparison to the partial oxidation route.

Twenty years ago in 1981, there were eight plants in the United States that produced acetylene. Together they produced a total of 352 million lb (160 million kg) of acetylene per year. Of this production, 66% was derived from natural gas and 15% from petroleum processing. Most acetylene from these two sources was used on or near the site where it was produced to make other organic chemicals. The remaining 19% came from calcium carbide. Some of the acetylene from this source was used to make organic chemicals, and the rest was used by regional industrial gas producers to fill pressurized cylinders for local welding and metal cutting customers.

That 19% has dropped to the present level of 15% and the plant in question apparently produced 70% of that 15%. The plant closing has only a small impact on production and distribution changes are causing a temporary shortage... basically the "shortage" is more concocted than real.

 

[yomax4]

If this is true, Airgas Will crap their pants after buying up all available Propylene tanks across the USA and Praxair is turnin g away all new Acetylene business and both are rationing already... Haha Lets watch this.

 

[dstig1]

Mace, interesting. I was not aware that Calcium carbide was no longer the main source for acetylene. So the supply should not be terribly bad then, but you do need to realize that 75% of 15% of the supply is still a considerable piece of the pie. Like any business - gas suppliers aren't keeping tons of extra on hand as they tend to stock enough inventory for the normal demand, plus typically some surge capacity. That is normal business. So taking out 11% (.75x.15) of the capacity will have a real effect on the supply. It isn't end of world bad, but it will be felt until the supply chain adjusts.

And I don't doubt that some will use this as an excuse to gouge...

 

[Jim in ICT]

I think that for all (or most) of the major gas distributors to be in collusion to inflate prices is giving them too much credit. I'm sure they've better things to do with their time. Besides that, there's a few of them that don't get along with each other well at all.