Thread: Petrol fumes in old 44 gal. drum

Wow lots of replies but ?

Just back to initial question, fill it with water, saves explaining the short hair or black eye... Hammer and chisel, there is no other method to use safely without prior experience..

My rubbish bins are ex oil, but 2x I used for petrol when my wife and I went around the gold fields ( in WA you need extra juice, about 400 litres extra) before I chopped the tops..

When full of water there easier to chisel and an axe for the breather hole will help empty them...

It may still flash when you drain it so stand back first time...

Enjoy the cold nights with the fire going..

Morrisman I've seen a few people giving away house oil heating tanks on Gumtree with up to 60 litres of oil in them.

So you get a heavy steel tank for scrap salvage and nearly $100 worth of oil for your diesel - provided it has a piston injector pump - this will stuff up rotaries apparently.

My farmer bro inlaw made a grain feedout trailer from one of those oil tanks very nicely.

Rob

Originally Posted by nearnexus

I still wouldn't regard oil vapours as non explosive.

Here's a good example:

Oil vapors caused blast that killed 2 workers

Other things that don't even have vapour can blow up too - like flour dust. How many flour mills have blown up - plenty.

So I would always rather be safe than sorry. Water in the drum/tank would always be number one priority with me when cutting/welding.

Too many people get killed being careless with this stuff.

Rob

The vapours of ANY product be it flammable or combustable will be explosive if it is present in the correct mixture with air. What determines if a certain product is flammable is how easily it produces the required amount of vapours. Most engine oils and the like require being heated above 180 deg C to produce enough vapours to create an explosive mixture, hence they are considered combustable liquids, not flammable liquids. Diesel has a flash point of about 65 deg C and so is also a combustable liquid.

An oil drum filled with water and cut up should be safe. I have done a similar thing with an old LPG cylinder except I emptied the water out before cutting being confident that when removing the water it would fill with the ambient air in it's place and so no chance of an explosive mixture.

Simon

Originally Posted by simonl

The vapours of ANY product be it flammable or combustable will be explosive if it is present in the correct mixture with air. What determines if a certain product is flammable is how easily it produces the required amount of vapours. Most engine oils and the like require being heated above 180 deg C to produce enough vapours to create an explosive mixture, hence they are considered combustable liquids, not flammable liquids. Diesel has a flash point of about 65 deg C and so is also a combustable liquid.

An oil drum filled with water and cut up should be safe. I have done a similar thing with an old LPG cylinder except I emptied the water out before cutting being confident that when removing the water it would fill with the ambient air in it's place and so no chance of an explosive mixture.

Simon

I'm glad I wasn't anywhere near you when you did that Simon, too big a risk for me to take. The water would serve 2 purposes, it would cool the tank and reduce the formation of vapour, (provided you filled it with cold water, not hot) and more importantly it would fill the space where vapours collect, so if you were to be unfortunate, and there was an explosion, in the case of the drum, you may have 12 cubic inches of vapour mixture, not 12, 200 cu. inches. if you wanted to keep water from interfering with an angle grinder, you could fill to just below the cut line and then pipe in some carbon dioxide from a preferably diesel exhaust for a few minutes, or in the case of the gas cylinder, you could use bicarb soda from the kitchen with some vinegar to create carbon dioxide to displace the oxygen from any remaining fuel gas.
In my mining days, there were plenty of tops cutout from oil drums, and once we did have a minor explosion or a big woof really, when the boilermaker had sat a strip of steel plate to support his arm holding the cutting torch, as he had cut around most of the drum and the top was falling inwards and not offering enough support. For some reason the vapours ignited, and lifted the strip of steel plate, from memory some 10mm X 300 X 700 about 500 mm into the air, and the boilermaker ended up on his back on the floor. He was ok apart from his jocks, but he got a fright. Perhaps it was the oxy cutting jet that provided the extra oxygen that made the bang, but it can happen, thankfully it doesn't happen too often. That was the only instance I am aware of that happened in my 18 years or so there, but I would always take steps to minimise any chance of a bang. After all we are all a long time dead, not point in rushing the queue. Very glad you had no such troubles
Rob

I watched some CIG guys (then) weld a fuel tank at a race meeting but I did retreat while they did it. Take the tank and empty the fuel, swill with water then purge it with argon and seal so the argon stays in the tank and weld.

Just the other day I had to re-braze a fitting onto a surge tank (small tank that holds fuel [maybe 1 to 2 litres]) after I found a small leak. I drained it of fuel and then filled it with water and emptied it three times. Applied flame and heat ... and no boom.

BTW this surge tank used to be a MAPP gas cylinder in a previous life.

Any reason why no-one has thought of using a jigsaw?
Faster/neater than a cold-chisel I would have thought.

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

I'm glad I wasn't anywhere near you when you did that Simon, too big a risk for me to take. The water would serve 2 purposes, it would cool the tank and reduce the formation of vapour, (provided you filled it with cold water, not hot)
Rob

Hi Rob, I'm interested to know where you think the vapours from the LPG cylinder would have come from to cause the explosion? Are you suggesting LPG in it's liquid phase would penetrate the metal and outgas over time when empty?

Simon

Originally Posted by Single-phase

Any reason why no-one has thought of using a jigsaw?
Faster/neater than a cold-chisel I would have thought.

I doubt you would get close to the edge, made a heat exchanger for an airseeder, using drums and jig saw to cut ends out, i couldn't get any less than an inch or so from the edge...

Was fine for the heat exchanger as it was just a big hole needed at each end of drums, then weld them end to end..

if you use a cold chisel, then only need to use hammer around inside lip to flatten edge, use a back stop on outside of drum, like another hammer..

I have had the misfortune to have 2 fuel tanks explode on me, both filled with water. There was a corner section where the leak was that had an airlock, it was welded twice, still a leak, weld again, next thing KABOOM. Probably explains my deafness.
A Farmer friend has a way of dealing with petrol fumes in a drum, put the drum outside, hook a return lead of the welder to the drum, grab the electrode lead with a rod in it, then shove the rod inside the bung and then switch on the welder!!!!!!!! NOT MY ideal way??????????
Kryn

Years ago, I used to drive a fuel tanker and prior to any repairs on it, we used to steam clean its interior, just leave the steam hose in each compartment for 15-20 minutes, then empty it out. The petrol used to get into the pores of the metal tank but the steam would release it so it could be welded safely. After the tank had been steamed out, we were then required to fill the tanker using a "flash loading" procedure i.e. we'd fill the tanker initially at a slow fill rate until the metal pores were resaturated with vapour, then fill at normal fill rate.

I also had another truck with a rectangular diesel tank that used to leak along its seams. My boss used to fill it full of diesel, then weld up the leaking seam with an arc welder. Occasionally the seeping diesel would catch alight (easily extinquished). Air and fumes were the dangerous mix, not the liquid although he never welded up a petrol tank using that procedure.

Welcome peterbilt. It's interesting that the metal itself absorbs fuel. I can understand why your boss only used his proceedure with diesel.

Regards
Paul

soapy water, rinse well for a long time, fill with water, grind down on the top of the "pittsburg joint" around the outer lip of the drum until you just get through the first layer of steel all the way around, tip it over and drain the water out and give the lid a few good hits, it will pop off or into the drum, then you can lightly grind the rolled edge left around the inner rim and there will be no sharp edge.

Originally Posted by tongleh

That's because they have depleted the oxygen in the car, once depleted they would be breathing straight CO2. You can pump any number of non toxic gasses into a vehicle and live, as long as oxygen is present, but as soon as we use up the oxygen, we die... We can breathe a number of gasses, as long as oxygen is present, for example: scuba divers use a mixture of oxygen (about 20-30%) and nitrogen on deep dives; however, if they were to remove the oxygen from the mix, they would be asphixiated. As a matter of fact, nitrogen has been espoused as a more humane gas for capital punishment: We can breathe it without tasting or smelling it, we simply go to sleep, painlessly.

Actually, it matters not if there is oxygen present. Our blood had a greater affinity for carbon monoxide (CO), than for oxygen (O2). This means that our bloodstream will absorb carbon monoxide preferentially over oxygen. The only way to rectify this in the case of carbon monoxide poisoning is to force oxygen into our bloodstream under pressure, (hyperbaric chamber).
This is why CPR or an OXYVIVA is often not successful in the case of an attempted suicide by gassing.