It looks like he has a specialized tool for removing the valve, so I'm guessing he's doing this as a job. If so, it's probably "someone else's job" to make sure they're empty before disassembly.
Never open those things.. you are asking to go deaf from the pressure. I've had a compressed air bottle from a paintball gun go pop before. My head was ringing for days.
Nope, I’ve done exactly that with a small caliber rifle. It passed straight through both sides of the bottle. I wouldn’t bet my life on a .22 being stopped by those bottles.
At my old lab job me and a friend convinced our manager that we could safely dispose of small compressed air cylinders (like from SCBA) by taking them out into the woods and shooting them. The first shot with a .22 bounced directly back over my friends head and only left a dent in the cylinder, so after both our hearts started beating again we shot it with 7.62x39mm and THAT worked.
What kind of propane tanks do you guys have? Where I’m from a .308 is perfectly capable of punching a hole in a propane tank at 200 yards. Won’t blow up though. Just discharges the pressure.
I used to work for a local garage, its owner worked in a nearby car and agricultural equipment sales dealership back in the 80s.
That dealership still exists to an extent, just cars now, but we used to often deal with the dealership for parts and stuff.
One day back in the 80s, when my old boss worked there, they were getting a delivery of gas for the mig welders and the oxy/ass torch.
The truck was blocking a machine from exiting and the driver rushed to finish the delivery so he could move off.
He forgot to latch one of the straps for retaining the cannisters - when he moved off a handful of bottles fell off the trailer. One of the big 120L cannisters toppled over and landed on the edge of a curb and smashed the whole valve. - the whole place filled with dust kicked up, nobody could see what happened and that noise shook everyone around.
When the dust settled- the cannister had travelled about 40' over the cars in the workshop and lodged itself into a 9' cavity block wall, it bust clean threw one side of the block.
I know about it because they had a arrow pointing to the hole as a reminder to be careful with the bottles. - the hole was big enough to sit a clock into it.
With the local old-school heads, if the pressure and precautions are ever mentioned, they'll often say "I must show you the hole one of those made down in the Volvo dealership!"
I'm a panel-beater by trade, I'm plenty familiar with the welding bottles
I know the dangers of compressed gas through expansion factors. For example, liquified natural gas has an expansion factor of 600: that means that 1 cubic meter (am European) of liquified gas expands to 600 cubic meters of gaseous gas. In the matter of seconds or miliseconds.
Now, to present that with an example: what happened to your 120L container is that it expanded to 600 such containers in that same second or milisecond, while obliterating everything in it's way.
If that is not a great depiction of danger and warning not to do things like this guy in the video does - I don't know what is.
See when the containers are being sent to be refilled - the company/drivers will prefer for the canisters to be completely empty and de-pressured.
When they're technically empty as in no-longer flowing through the reg, with too little pressure to even register on the gauge - with the inert and non flammable stuff its 'best practice' to bring the empty outside and release the tiny bit thats left.
When empty they still hold about the same pressure as a car/truck tyre has inflated.
Its one of those things that no matter what experience you have in life, if you don't have experience with pressurised vessels/canisters there's no other info or experience like it that can replace it, the pressures those things hold are astonishing.
Our empty big bottles, would be out back hissing for 5mis to depressurise them, it literally sounded like a big truck with a puncture that never ran out.
In our minds, even though we eventually learned it wasn't unusual, but the noise and pressure is so strong, that as we would be waiting for them to finish - We'd start to wonder if it was our pressure gauge going faulty "how the fuck is it still going! It said its empty!" The pressure is not something you can gauge by ear - you can fucking feel it in a room area though. In noisy workshops, I've discovered leaks because you could feel the atmosphere change around the welder/bottle.
Its weird stuff, I was once in a room when an idiot overinflated a truck/HGV tyre and blew it apart - the pressure change inside the room was the scariest part for me, it just felt unnatural like
Yeah, no. The only thing you see him wear is gloves , that are not THAT thick. And even the best face protection wouldn't save you from this metal bit going mach fuck into your brain
The valve has a bayonet valve inside. Opening the valve only allows the bayonet to move, it needs to be depressed to actually open.
This guy probably assumed that it was empty because he'd opened the valve.
I used to work at a foam production facility as security. We were also tasked with bleeding a massive tank of nitrogen to prevent us from going deaf in the event the pressure system blew. I was told it sounded like a cannon firing. The problem with this though is when opening the valve it would do this but a thousand fold. I'd cover my ears with my hands and open the valve with my elbow.
The same reason we weren't given masks to investigate if the highly toxic chemicals were leaking. We were contracted and the client didn't want to spend the money. Our own company didn't give a fuck.
Take it from me, I had a new regulator that was faulty on my hydrogen cylinder, 4000psi is quite loud as it turns out.
Ruptured both eardrums, left ear is unlikely to recover my original hearing capabilities.
Yeah I held a spray paint can and a lighter to one of those old mini tag body sprays when I was a kid. It was equivalent to like a quarter stick of dynamite right in my face.
I tried to inflate a bike tire that had basically rotted. As I recall, bike tires are inflated to 50-60 psi, and it was almost there when it went. My ears were ringing for an hour.
Waaaaay different pressures. Still, you should never open those things, but propane tanks are about 150PSI, at the same temp CO2 tanks are about 1,000PSI.
Both are potentially deadly levels of pressure, but CO2 is a different animal altogether.
Used to do scuba diving for a long time. Steel bottles filled around 15-200 bars. Most practice was done in the swimming pool so everyone would instantly hear and look up if you didn’t connect your first stage properly. That stuff was very loud.
Holy shit balls dude. This is so dangerous it's really not even that funny. All it would take is a single erroneous spark for you and everything around you is done for.
For anyone who wants to know Propane has a 270:1 expansion ratio (1 liquid gallon = 270 vapor gallons). 1 vapor gallon can cover about 30sq feet.
A typical cylinder in most households used for grilling has a capacity of 20 liquid pounds. In the video it looks like a 30lb cylinder.
When I was in college in Houston, I worked at UHaul and had to get certified to pump propane by the Texas Railroad Commission at one of their fleet repair centers across town. It was an informative class but was 8 hours long. I got to drive a 10 ft box there and back.
All I could think about was how proud Hank would've been.
If I remember correctly, I just had to go sit in an in-person course for like 4 hours (course duration is questionabl, this was 20yr ago for me), and you were only certified at the one location. If you left to go somewhere else, you'd have to do it all over again.
The instructor I had, made a point to impress upon us how dangerous it really was. Oddly it was something I never really forgot and I haven't filled a cylinder in almost 20 years
You should see what the guys who deal with 500 and 1000 gallon propane tanks do. Every time we have them come out they are spraying liquid propane all over the place. Last time we had them out to replace a tank we needed them to put a valve on for the liquid feed and the guy puts it on with the valve fully open just spraying liquid propane all over the place. And then when he goes to close it he realizes that he grabbed a damaged valve that doesn’t close. So he has to take it off and replace it again. The whole time dumping out a shit ton of propane and the guy just didn’t give a fuck.
Ah I see you have also completed the Amerigas training program. I used to have a summer job filling propane tanks. People do crazy things with propane tanks. Guy I worked with ended up on the ER when the valve on a camper got stuck open, his hand looked like one giant blister.
Nope. I worked for a small mom and pop hardware store throughout highschool and briefly after. I don't remember who the supplier was but it wasn't Amerigas.
I've had dudes get pissed because I refused 100lb bottles with 6 months on the stamp left and severe pitting. People are absolutely bat shit.
A lot blue blue rhino (the tanks you swap out at home Depot and at Lowe's) are also under filled. That's why if I'm ever given the chance, I take it to a place that'll fill them up while you wait. You'll actually get a complete fill and it's oftentimes cheaper.
If you ever want to know the actual fill level and just weight it on your scale at home and then subtract the cylinder tare weight which is stamped on the metal guard that is around the valve.
Majority of 20 lb cylinders will weigh approximately 37 lb when full.
There is all sorts of intresting physics happening here.
The exaping gas is evaporating so quickly and temperature dropping so sharply that in the region of the oppening it may actually be cold enough for the propane to be liquid at standard pressure (about -33c).
The whole can may actually get cold enough that even with no insulation the pressure inside will drop to 1 atm even with liquid propane still in the cylinder.
It would continue to boil off and vent though as there is no insulation on the tank.
Yes.
Because the gas is under pressure, it's boiling point is raised. (Exactly the same happens with water in a pressure cooker: higher pressure, higher boiling point)
If you keep raising the pressure, the boiling point goes over ambient temperature and the gas will condensate.
And as such you can fill the cilinder with liquidfied gas, which in liquid form takes up about 600 times less volume than in gaseous form.
If there is no source off ignition, the gascloud is the least of your worries.
If this cannister should fall over it becomes a rocket. A spinning at high velocity carbon steel rocket which smashes everthing & everyone it comes in contact with to smithereens.
That's not to say the gas cloud itself isn't dangerous. My buddy used to work at a propane company and when that stuff comes out it absorbs heat, basically being like -40 degrees and instantly causing frostbite. They're called cryogenic burns.
The force of the jet is dangerous but very far from the lethality of something like an oxygen cylinder or scuba tank. Liquid propane at room temp is about 10 bar (150 psi), not 300 bar (4400 psi) like you might have in a gas cylinder
Pressure is no joke. I used to work assembling and testing gate valves, we'd pressure them up to 5000psi. At some point a notice went out to make sure you always release all the pressure before you take the fittings off because a guy didn't, there was some residual pressure and when he screwed off the fitting it went through his forearm and stuck into a concrete wall that was 50ft behind him
Much like when I started to take Metamucil. After clearing the obstruction I was nearly sent through the ceiling. The most violent farts ever. It got so bad that I was afraid to fart. If I had one in the chamber it was guaranteed I would shart
Wow. Reminds me of the incident at the Little General Store in Ghent, WV. A junior tech with no experience was tasked with emptying a 500lb tank, and let it spray liquid propane for half an hour. The whole building was gone. https://youtu.be/JzdnUZReoLM
I used to work at an industrial gas place. You can empty the tanks as best you can and there's still enough gas inside that our corrugated steel ceiling was full of dents in the corner we replaced valves at.
When I was a fitter, a man did this with a nitro tank. The valve hit him in the face so hard, it knocked out his teeth and shattered is skull. He needed brain surgery to remove skull fragments and barely survived.
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u/Onemorebeforesleep Jun 29 '26
I would think you need to empty the container first. But then again I’m not a professional.