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A few items I've picked up over the years. If anyone would like to expand on these, please do- The main dangers with O2 are in high temp/pressure situations, so compressors do require special treatment if you are running high pps of O2 through them. You should never use a ball valve with 02. But for the most part the 02 is added downstream, so any quality compressed air source can be used for pp fills. There is a long track record of oxygen being used with standard scuba equipment with no failures due to oxygen induced oring degradation. 0rings used in Scuba gear are changed regularly as a matter of course, never giving them the chance to degrade. It seems that the degradation is something which takes place over a period of time which makes it irrelevant to scuba. Pressure vessels carrying your primary air supply should be clean period. Any tank which is clean enough for your breathing air is clean enough for nitrox. If it is not clean enough for air then you need to get it cleaned. In my own experience I have seen partial pressure fills done in shops, on boats, and in cars, on tanks which have had no special preparation and never once has the world come to an end. If you could see how oxygen is handled in a shipyard, you would understand why I think all this nitrox hoohaa is a joke. While we treated 02 with respect, we sure as hell didn't tippy-toe around it like it was a bomb ready to go off, as scuba rules seem to decree. We would regularly drag oxy-acetylene hoses into bunker C tanks which were not exactly what you would call "oxygen clean". And these hoses carried 100% 02. We were more scared of methane from leaking sewage systems. Even with the shipyard experience, it seems that the rules for handling oxygen were derived primarily from industrial usage, for lack of a better source. 02 is used in different fashion in scuba. It is also my experience that "powers that be" can make all the stupid rules they want, end users will filter out the BS and do what actually works. Nobody wants to spend the time and money to find out the facts, and then be held liable for their research. So if there are codified rules already out there, it is easier to just use them, no matter how irrelevant they might be. Jim On 8/7/97 2:02 PM CHKBOONE@ao*.co* wrote: > >This is to all you guys insisting that O2 cleaning is BS. > >I would like to hear some clarification of and justification for these >arguments against O2 cleaning. > >Are you saying there is no need for special lubricants in compressor systems >? > >Are you saying that there is no need to clean tanks and valves for partial >pressure filling? > >I think most of us will agree that changing O' rings and seals is primarily >to reduce or avoid accelerated deterioration so that is not much of an issue >here. > >I look forward to some logical, technical, or scientific reasoning behind >your claims that O2 cleaning of scuba tanks is BS because I would love to >never have to clean a tank and valve again, but at this point the logical and >technical reasons I can see for doing it stand taller than the >unsubstantiated claims that it is BS. > >Thanks, > >Chuck > > >-- >Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. >Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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