Re: Nitrogen VS Compressed air quenching

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Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

Arpit wrote:
 >
 > How's carbon dioxide for quenching? I pinched an old (bit rusty) water
 > heater made in 1988 off another house in my street which was going to be
 > demolished, and carried it home. I'm using it as an air tank, and might
use
 > it to power an air blast gap. Another potential use would be to put some
 > chemicals in which would react and generate carbon dioxxide at a pressure
 > of about 6 or 7 atmospheres. I'd then use that to blast the gap :)

I'd be a bit careful about filling a "bit rusty" tank with gas under
pressure.  If a water heater fails full of water, it just leaks, because
water is incompressible, so there's no "springyness" trying to make it come
apart (other than the pressure of the water supply, which is limited in flow
rate).  That is, there's no stored energy in the pressurized water. Filling
it with pressurized gas makes a potential bomb, because the gas acts like a
spring and stores a lot of energy. Even a fairly small container (<1 liter)
when pressurized makes a pretty spectacular bang if it suddenly fails.

This is why pressure vessels (i.e. scuba tanks, boilers) are tested full of
water (or some other fluid) in a hydrostatic test.