High pressure gas cylinder transfer
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- čas přidán 5. 10. 2014
- I transfer high pressure ethylene gas from a rental cylinder to another cylinder that I own. I use a cooling water bath to condense the ethylene and transfer as much mass as possible.
- Věda a technologie
As always very useful and practical information. Been watching your channel for a few years now.
at last, an American who talks in Celsius :D
LOL, He dont all the time though. I didnt even notice. I just expect Celsius and only notice when the faux temp is used.
All we need is to beat some millimetres into them, get rid of those thousandths of inches, and you have the beginnings of a rational measuring system ;)
I do this day by day, And while we here lets not forget about "aluminium" and the 'L" in 'solder'
:P
TheProCactus
Herb! :D
Psh, Celsius... Kelvin all the way!
Always fun to listen to someone talk about passing gas...
Very cool, now I know how to transfer the most gas from one cylinder to another. :D
I love watching your videos, I always learn something cool.
Neat! If you still have the rental, it'd be interesting to see another video where you liquify them both, pour, and then see how much the rental cylinder weighs.
I condense small hydrocarbons like this all the time using liquid nitrogen. It is an effective way of transferring gaseous species between vessels. The problem with only 8 C temperatures is you can only condense until the system pressure reaches the vapor pressure. A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that the vapor pressure at 10 C is on the order of 40 bar (coincidentally the pressure your gauge reads). If you lower the temperature further using dry ice or liquid nitrogen you will obtain exponentially lower vapor pressures (i.e. Clausis-Clapeyron relation). In this case however, you are probably not worried about the 0.1 or so lbs / cylinder L of ethylene remaining in the other cylinder.
Hey, Ben. Great video by the way. Just one question is this the most efficient way to transfer gas or no? I am looking to do the same but only have household materials.
I used to fill small propane cyls from a 20 pound. The small cyls went into the freezer and when transfering I put the 20 lb cyl upside down. You need a very expensive brass adapter that can probably be bought at home depot. This is the only way to transfer liquid propane that I know of. Worked great.
One of the Best videos I ever saw.....This is REALLY cool. Can't thank you enough !! Subscribed already !!
thanks Ben, very informative!
Nice: An examples of applying gas laws in an ad hoc (i.e. back-of-the-envelope), but effective way to get the job done.
Cheers, Mark
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Very helpful as it is expensive to hire bottles these days. thank you .
This is a *great* video.
A quick mention of health and safety, the cylinder on the left really could do with an additional support. A check valve may help prevent any gas equalizing back into the donor cylinder when transfilling, and an inline pump could suck out that remaining gas better. We regularly transfill 300bar helium cylinders, but they're done using a low pressure cylinder first, topping up with a high pressure cylinder. This increases the volume of transfer without depleting the higher pressure cylinder's contents and having too much effect on the overall pressure. Your one on one transfer presents more challenges.
Interesting use of phase change as an alternative to a booster pump. Are you aware of the pumps made by Haskell (amongst others) which use a compressed air supply to drive a cylinder which pumps gas from low to high pressure? They seem quite simple mechanically and might be an interesting build project if you can figure it out.
With the exception of CO2 bottles specifically labelled as siphon tanks, all North American CGA bottles are vapor mode. From my experience in the HVAC/R field I can tell you that whenever you are trying to transfer condesable gasses from one bottle to another via gravity and/or pressure differential you should cool both containers initially below saturation, invert the source container and place it such that the valve assemblies are at equal heights or the source is higher. Continue to maintain cooling on the receiver, and heat the source to a few degrees above ambient. Immediately shut the receiver bottle when pressures are equalized, but BEFORE removing heat. This method has allowed me to transfer better than 80% from one bottle to another. Of course this is a lot easier with gasses that have a sub 500psig critical pressure, but has worked for me on non-siphon CO2 bottles.
Good job on evacuating the receiver beforehand, heat of compression could have left you with a nasty surprise if you hadn't.
Really great video. (Great opening lines). Thanks so much. Subbity Subbed !
interesting Video as Usual! Thanx :)
Would you be able to do an example transferring Argon- For tig welding ?
does it make a difference if the supply cylinder was inverted?
So for all this work and effort you managed to get a little over half/equalisation is that correct?
Hey im just wondering if I could do something similar but with argon for my welder
If you had to cool it down to liquid, what temperature would that be? Wouldn't it also depend on the pressure in the system too?
Would it have been a good idea to build a box (styrofoam, plexiglass, wood…) around the rental tank and heated its environment, so as to increase the pressure in that tank?
Hey Applied Science! Nice video- thanks, it has been very helpful. Can you tell me about how long the transfer took once you opened the cylinder? Is it all done in seconds/minutes? Is do you do it much slower for any reason? Thanks.
thanks. Just an idea - do you know of a homemade, even if more advanced - way to make argon at home? Say i want it for welding things. Is it feasible?
Why not do the transfer before using any gas then do that work from the rental cylinder? Would retain a further half of the amount used.
Good point!
Because it's 12 am and you need that tbone .
would it have made a difference to place the rental in boiling water?
would it have made any sense trying to transfer the gaz in liquid form rather than in gas form (cooling the donor tank and turning it upside down for pouring the liquid, since syphoning is not possible due to the geometry of the tap)? the question being is there still some liquid in the donor tank at the open valve equilibrium pressure...
nice video, how did you manage to keep a straight face when you said passing gas..... keep em coming. whenare you going to do that cvd diamond video...? kind regards paul
Are you making a refrigerant autocascade ?
Can you use a 1 way valve to fill the tanks better?
couldnt you just put both in the freezer for a while, then transfer the liquid?
This could be a good strategy. After chilling both cylinders, I could turn the full cylinder upside-down, and have the condensed liquid run through the line into the other. It should work, and also transfer slightly more gas than the method that I showed because total system pressure would be lower.
Applied Science The one up one down seems to be a painful but viable solution but I thought more about the minimal low pressure you applied to the empty. If they were both below the critical temp then liquid would move more freely especially with a larger cap tube but would eventually reach diminishing returns. Seems to me that a couple hundred mTorr just isn't enough and once the system balances there wouldn't be any more flow? How deep can your pump go? I also thought I saw a diffusion pump in one of your other vids? You can still find older Veeco units for a pretty good price and might help with your Mass Spec. ;-) Unfortunately the cost of setup would likely be higher than the rental and gas combined¿ Thanks for another thought provoking video!! PJ
James Fry
Good point but it still will reach diminishing returns without chilling the tank further into the curve and even then reach stasis. This thread seemed to be about transferring liquid as much as possible. With as much of the liquid transferred as possible it would then use less wattage to cool the reciever to extract what ever gas is left. Either way starting with as clean a receiver as possible in the 10-5 range should maximize the transfer, but it may open the tank valving as a can of worms?
James Fry
pjsalchemy the other gas content in the cylinder shouldn't matter too much, as its only the partial pressure of the gas being transferred thats going to affect the mass of the liquid fraction... in fact, now that I think about it, maybe doing it under argon at a very high pressure might substantially increase the transfer efficiency...?
Were you able to determine how much gas was left in the rental cylinder to see how well your transfer worked? You could just vent the contents of the rental tank to atmosphere and weigh it to see how much didn't transfer (assuming it is legal to vent to the air whatever gas you are using at the time)
I mean it's flammable, he could have just burned it outside.
Anyone know where to get 1/8 high pressure copper tube with screw on fitting at each end
in Mexico they would just let you swap the cylinder if it was of equal volume and type. a lot easier.
What was the pressure difference from one cylinder to the other? Would it be possible to put a pump inline to scavenge the one cylinder? Though I imagine it would have to be something special to put up with the 50bar absolute pressure.
ps. what's the ethylene for, or is it a surprise?
It was used as the refrigeration gas in the 2 stage cooler he bought.
Oh yeah, that's right, thanks!
Could you cool both tanks and empty the rental tank upside down?
Great Vic. What do u use this gas for though?
he used it to refill a two stage low temprature cooler.
So I have a question.
Could you preform the gas transfer by chilling both cylinders then use gravity to transfer the liquid gas?
+sghost128 Exactly. Seems like a lot easier and faster solution just to pour liquid gas from one container to another using some kind simple pendulum.
I'm wondering why Ben didn't do that this way.
+Applied Science ? :)
***** I was reading through the comments and I think Ben replied to a comment of similar nature. I believe his reason was convenience.
Maybe if that gas is expensive this is usefull. But for cheap natural gas the natural flow of liquid should put almost all of it in the receiving cylinder when the feeding one is upside down and higher. How much pressure is it at zero degrees Celsius?
Turning the rental cylinder upside down helps a lot for getting liquid into the other cylinder.
are you sure these "High pressure copper line" named so,
have searched around but could not find them. Where to buy them?
how much pressure in bar or psi are those for ??
Sorry for bad English peace!
McMaster part # 5174K1 is rated for 3000 psi at 100*F. Use it with easy-align compression fittings, such as # 5220K61
Why didn't you use a regulator to migrate the product at steady-state?
this is acetylene gas?
Can't you use a pump to transfer the gas?
The inside if these cylinders i filled with a solid white porous material. There is a solvent in there too.
Good video. What's your cat's name?
But.... if you put it upside down, in that qay alk the liquid goes down buy the pressure... ?? Can it work?
You couldn't go super critical with both bottles, then turn upside - down the first bottle, then the liquid should flow gravitationali to the second one?
You could have emptied the container to see how much was really left in there to have a good starting point for figuring out whats going on
what else could you do with all that ethylene? ripen massive amounts of fruit?
Haha, got me laughing right away :P
could you chill the full cylinder to bellow super critical temps and simply run the same system you have there but with the full one upside down to transfer the liquid faster/first?
With no liquid left in the initially full cylinder using this setup, how would that help transfer any more? Faster maybe, but it wouldn't be any more effective.
i didnt say it would get more gas out. i just thought it would be slightly faster
HomeDistiller Possibly, but I doubt it would be worth the added hassle of trying to suspend a cylinder upside down to do it.
I have always found high pressure cylinders both to be scary and curious at the same time. I learned how much power it is in just 3 bar air pressure when you almost can't hold back with your finger. 4 bar in a bicycle wheel and it feels hard like a stone.
I was pumping up a bicycle tire that didn't have any protective tape on the rim and it blow up at approx 3 bar in a big echoing cellar which maid an excruciating pain in my eardrums.
9 bar was the max pressure allowed for a compressor to fill up a cylinder. The cylinder was solid metal but I still didn't feel safe around it for some reason. It probably was because it was an old machine and we didn't bother with service or anything.
15-19 bar is the limit for a plastic soda bottle I think which is interesting that it can withstand such high pressure if you compare the solid metal cylinder for the compressor. It will make a loud bang if it explode.
150-200 bar is just an astonishing pressure used in cylinders for oxygen when welding. If that cylinder cracks it will be changed to a deadly rocket projectile. This is also used for high pressure washer and if you saw the video that TheCrazyRussianHacker released, he demonstrated that you can cut a wooden plank with it.
For every 10 m down in the deep ocean the pressure will increase one bar so if you imagine that you lower a plastic bag with air 2000 m down in the ocean the air will turn into liquid.
So high pressure gas is pretty amazing.
"the air will turn into liquid." Actually, no, air won't liquefy under any pressure at room temperature (at least, nitrogen and oxygen, which make up 99 % of air, won't)
i do this with g size mig weling gas. but the receiving bottle had a check valve in it, i guess to stop people refilling them. so i took it out. then i filled it.
My disposable r134a bottle had the same, just ripped out and transferred it anyway
You always seemed like a cat guy lol. Love the videos.
Assuming nothing ruptured what would happen if you opened the valve really fast
Really useful video, Mr Krasnow! Could you tell me how or where can I get the temperature-pressure data or diagrams related to the state of matter? Or phase diagrams of specific compounds... The ones you represent in handmade plots. I've been thinking and searching about that kind of data since I started following your work.
Cheers!
Getting phase diagrams can be challenging. I found one for ethylene here: www.elinko.co.kr/cata/SM-RI-P-handbook.pdf.pdf I found it after a fair bit of plain old googling and skimming the results.
Really thank you! Your work is excellent!
Applied Science Hello if you have trouble finding phase diagram for gasses try this website encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp
Mmmh, I'm completely surprised; I've never noticed that section of the Air Liquide page! Really thanks!
Applied Science Wolfram Alpha to the rescue...
www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ethylene+phase+diagram
www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=carbon+dioxide+phase+diagram
www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oxygen+phase+diagram
Anything goes..
Cracked me up! Did he say passing gas?! :)
cool
Wouldn't it be possible to do a liquid-liquid transfer by cooling both tanks and using gravity to transfer the fluid from one tank to the other. If they contain dip tubes the same can be accomplished with a tank-tank height difference giving you a liquid siphon. In a true liquid system you should be able to bring the other tank completely down to vapor pressure with enough cooling.
atomgonuclear Maybe. Here is a problem. There is no air in the tanks except the ethylene. The gaseous ethylene in tank B would have to travel up the same line as the liquid ethylene in tank A for it to fully work. As the liquid falls you will start to have a difference in pressure. When the force of gravity is equal to the force due to pressure differential the process will stop. Think about holding the top end of a straw with liquid in it.
I do the same thing with r-22 bottles :p
Nice. I'd weigh the gas before I rented from that company again.
I would consider using up all the gas in the rental cylinder, then weigh the cylinder as a tare. Next time you rent, you can figure out how much gas you've actually been given.
There SHOULD be a take weight in the cylinder from the manufacturer. Nice though though!
When you opened the valve at 2:10 and saw the frost on the high pressure line, it occurred to me that you could use a longer line, coil it and place it in contact with the water. Use the cooling effect of the expanding gas to cool the water in the receiving cylinder and be able to get more gas across. Well, I'm sure it would not be that much, but every little bit counts if you do this often...
The problem with that would be that the ethylene would condense in the copper tubing. The idea is probably to have the entire system above the boiling point of ethylene except for the receiving cylinder, so that's the only place where liquid exists.
True. Didn't think of that. I guess some bugs to work out in this design...
Isn't it the case that the densities of the liquid and the gas so close to the critical point are still very similar? That would explain why you got only a bit more than half the mass transferred. You should be able to get more Ethylene transferred by cooling the whole setup.
Yes, this is a really good point. At 40 bar, the density of the gas in transmitting cylinder is only slightly less than it would be if supercritical at 55 bar. So, my plan of condensing the gas in the receiving cylinder did not lower the pressure enough to be as useful as it could be.
he said passing gas...
adyagiler thanks, I am already an expert.
😆
What kind of pump is that?
Vacuum pump
Is 5 Lbs of Acetylene that Expensive?
Ethylene.
👍
Could you show how to transfer helium safetly?
Why not cool both cylinders so all the gas is liquid and then turn one upside down and let gravity do it's work?
Why didn't you turn the rental bottle upside down? The liquid in the bottle would be covering the exit port and then would be pushed into your bottle. Great videos, keep them coming!
kewl
You should make an OLED
Pressure equalized, the receiving cylinder is the same as the delivery cylinder.
Why not treat it as liquid, just put the source in a higher place and rotate it upside down and wait for gravity to do it's job?
your on to it.
Applied Science Could you have inverted the source tank first then transfer the liquid. Then stick the receiving tank in a freezer, and repeat the process to recover more gas?
Why you just don’t use upside down method like filing lighters!
I should get a scale like that. Also wish I knew a safe way to get rid of a lecture bottle full of HCl gas someone left behind from the labs.
Ask NurdRage
Need to turn the tank upside down that u are taking it from...if any liquid was inside it would come out as a liquid first then the gas would come out... this is why you reclaim refrigerant as a liquid first before gas...it's much quicker and if you run out of room (and I know that you are not supposed to vent refrigerant into the atmosphere)...your losing only a little...need to get a reclaimer and it will make your life easier...
There's only a couple here that have got the gist of how to do it, even the guy who made the video has missed the crucial point. As an Outback bush mechanic all I
can say is, If you can't work out the basic basics God help you all if the World falls apart and Anarchy reigns.
You should have put the receiving cylinder in a bucket of dry ice it works a lot better trust me
Why didn't you use your alcohol cooling unit to cool the receiver cylinder to -60C, also turn the donor upside down, you want to transfer liquid not evaporating the ethylene and then condense it back, heating the top of the donor increase the pressure of the gas on one side pushing the liquid into the receiver. With your setup at 7C your condensation rate is way too slow.
Think about how do you fill up a butane gas lighter.
I disagree.
1) Using lower temperatures wouldn't increase the yield extracted from the donor, so you'd just be wasting your time dealing with the more complicated alcohol system.
2) The donor contains only gaseous ethylene, so turning it upside down would have no effect.
3) The gains made from heating the donor side would be negligible, as the heat would distribute itself fairly easily across the system to the cold side. You'd lose more money on electricity to heat the donor tank than the value of the small amount of extra ethylene gas.
@@Paradox3121 "2) The donor contains only gaseous ethylene, so turning it upside down would have no effect." not necessarily if it is cooled ... the idea is having both tanks cooled so that gaz is liquid in both, then pooring (somehow...) all the liquid in one of the tanks rather than playing on a small vapor pressure difference...
The stupid part of me says just flip the one on the left upside down. But I know that wont change anything.
Why was I becoming so cold? I thought pressurising gas caused it to heat up?
The gas coming out of the source was expanding into the empty bottle, not pressurizing. When it gets done, the pressure in both bottles will be lower than what he started with.
So there's no way you can EMPTY the rental tank? only equalize the 2 tanks leaving a fair amount of gas in the rental tank. What about a transfer pump. I'd like to see a video of someone topping off say a argon tank via the transfer pump
My cylinders have a tare weight stamped into the metal.
I know ethyne (acetylene) is highly unstable and requires special cylinders with a stabilizing sponge inside. I assume this is not true for ethene as you used here, but I do know that it can polymerize into Polyethylene, however i think you need a catalyst for this to happen?
Ethylene doesn't have the triple bond that makes acetylene so unstable.
the pressure will attain equilibrium and half of gas will remain in the cylinder
Celsius scale has less than half the resolution of the Fahrenheit scale, from water freezing to boiling.
Without using decimals anyway.
I don't see whats wrong with the inch either, as long as you divide it by a power of 10.
Machinist so we work with 1/1000 of an inch all the time.
Celsius resolution is the same as Kelvin résolution. As for the rest of the metric system, it is not a matter of resolution (as you pointed out we have decimals) it is a matter of converting from one unit to the next and it also allows simple relations to be found between the different units.
What's wrong with the inch?
1) People do use fractions, all the time. See how hard it is to find a 1.4 inch drill bit and a 1 1/4 inch bit if you don't believe me.
2) If you measured the distance across rooms in thousands of inches and the distance between cities in millions of inches, it would be fine and dandy. The problem isn't any one specific unit, it's having the multiples go 1000 ->12 -> 3 -> 1760 rather than 1000 -> 1000 -> 1000
3) For scientific purposes, S.I. units. One kg.m2.s-3 equals one V.A and that's the way the scientific world works.
IMHO a bit overcomplicated...
why not just liquefy the gas in both cylinders and turn one upside down, and let it flow slowly, this should in theory get you quite a bit more gas.
one potential problem though, gas transfer back.
wait isnt ethylene stored in acetone
thats acetylene
I saw you giggling at 00:03
Copper and Acethylen is a very critical explosive combination?
In Germany my home country it is forbidden to refill this gascylinders!
There is a special hard Material and Aceton in this bottles
This can solfe only an es ti ma Ted Volumen of acethylen,!
Be safe dont do this. Best wishes for the future!
This is not acetylene, its ethylene
I hate to sound critical, but please give an overview of DOT requirements for high pressure cylinders. From what I recall, in SCUBA, hydrostatic test are required every 5yrs to be filled by a commercial suppliers. While the vapor pressure of ethylene may not be high, the application of other materials could prove more dangerous w/o proper observations. Even the uses of copper (brass) valves, can be detrimental when using reactive agents such as ammonia.
واو
Comments are full of people who don't know the difference between Ethylene and Acetylene
Thanks, for the comment! Ethylene is for growing fruits and fabricating Polyethylen. Acethylen is very reactiv for Gaswelding and very dangeros to handlel!
Right...there a few things that couldve gone horribly wrong here but the main thing.....did you seriously use a heat gun whilst transferring a highly flammable gas? You see no problem there. Forget about the PPE. Nothing wrong with what you are doing but putting it out there chances are people less experienced/qualified will try to replicate and you dont set a good example my friend.
supercritical