Nitrous oxide bottle failure.

[disastra98]

Stumbled across this on Facebook. Never thought of the consequences of a bottle failing when it is in the car.  No other info other than the pics.
Terrifying really.

[stealthstylz]

Only way this can happen is if the owner deserves it - they'll have jammed the relief valve shut so they can heat the bottle with a blowtorch to get the pressure up.

[Jonny69]

Wow, I was about to say I bet that made a bit of a pop when it went, then saw the second picture!

If you want an idea how much energy is contained in a gas bottle, back when I worked in special effects we made a nitrogen gas cannon from a 146cm tall nitrogen bottle. We cut the top off it and welded on a 4" ball valve so we could fill it with nitrogen and release the entire contents at once. That was mounted in a substantial steel frame weighing several hundred kilos. On the end of the ball valve was a giant flexi rated to about 10,000psi connected to 1.5m long thick steel firing nozzle with about 100mm ID. Over that slid a snug fitting capped steel pipe welded into a frame that we fired off. That frame weighed about 75kg. With the bottle filled to 750psi, it would fire that frame about 125m and right up into the sky. Once loaded up with various stuff like a grand piano, bathroom suite, garden shed loaded with tools etc, it would fire those about 65-70m. When we used on the second series we were firing a Ford Escort van off the end of it into various things. For the final gag which was 'how far will a van go through a house', for which they'd built a house with no front wall at Pinewood, we topped out the pressure at about 2000psi. The van smashed straight through the house, but the energy release ripped the entire front cage off the cannon with the firing nozzle and it flew up unto the sky and landed about 50m back where the crew were standing well* clear, far enough** back where nothing*** could possibly reach them.

So yeah, a nitrous bottle probably holds about 1/4 to 1/3 of that energy so no wonder it blew the back of the car apart!

[disastra98]

Jun 20, 2024 9:07:55 GMT stealthstylz said:

Only way this can happen is if the owner deserves it - they'll have jammed the relief valve shut so they can heat the bottle with a blowtorch to get the pressure up.

Many of the comments on Facebook were saying the very same thing. 

Worked at a steelworks many years ago and one of the mill operators liked to throw a can of WD40 on the red hot steel,
the bang from that was loud enough so that must have been a proper boom.

 

[jimi]

Article about that bottle and that car
nitrous-bottle-explosion-what-causes-it/

[jimi]

Jonny69
Sounds like a very enjoyable job
Even low pressure on a large surface area can cause devastation, this is a film I got shown many years ago when I started offshore called "Don't Tease the Tiger"
Worth watching all the way through