Welding & Gases Today Editor’s Blog 
  

Cool compressed oxygen released from under-seat gas cylinders

Ford Motor Company is bringing to market the world’s first automotive inflatable seat belts, combining attributes of traditional seat belts and air bags to provide an added level of crash safety protection for rear seat occupants.

The advanced restraint system is designed to help reduce head, neck and chest injuries for rear seat passengers—often children and older passengers who can be more vulnerable to such injuries.

Vehicle safety sensors determine the severity of the collision in the blink of an eye and deploy the inflatable belts’ air bags.  Each belt’s tubular air bag inflates with cold compressed oxygen, which flows through a specially designed buckle from a cylinder housed below the seat.

The inflatable belt’s accordion-folded bag breaks through the belt fabric as it fills with air, expanding sideways across the occupant’s body in about the same amount of time it takes a car traveling at highway speed to cover a yard of distance.

The use of cold compressed gas instead of a heat-generating chemical reaction—which is typical of traditional air bag systems—means the inflated belts feel no warmer on the wearer’s body than the ambient temperature. The inflatable belt also fills at a lower pressure and a slower rate than traditional air bags because the device does not need to close a gap between the belt and the occupant.

The inflated belt helps distribute crash force energy across five times more of the occupant’s torso than a traditional belt, which expands its range of protection and reduces risk of injury by diffusing crash pressure over a larger area, while providing additional support to the head and neck. After deployment, the belt remains inflated for several seconds before dispersing its air through the pores of the air bag.

Ford is introducing inflatable rear seat belts on the new Ford Explorer, which goes into production this year for the North American market. Ford eventually plans to offer the technology in vehicles globally.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released a new video safety message asking for nationwide adoption of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Pressure Vessel Code to reduce the number of accidents involving major pressure vessel failures.

In the message, CSB Chairman John Bresland warns that “pressure vessels store tremendous amounts of energy and you should never become complacent about the risks.”

Particular danger exists when vessels are improperly installed, welded or modified, or when they lack effective pressure relief systems, Bresland says, and provides the following examples:

• An explosion at a natural gas well in Louisiana killed four workers when a tank rated only for atmospheric pressure was exposed to gas pressure up to 800 lbs. per sq. in.
• An eight-foot tank used to heat sugar caramel exploded when the vent line became blocked. The explosion killed an overnight operator, released large amounts of ammonia and forced a community evacuation.
• A 50,000 lb. pressure vessel that exploded at a chemical plant was found by CSB to be improperly modified and welded by the company that owned it.

The ASME Code provides the fundamental safeguards for pressure vessels including design, welding procedures and fabrication, testing and pressure relief.

Here’s an interesting twist on why some gas cylinders may go missing and where some of them may be ending up.

A metal recycling factory has been causing quite a stir among its neighbors because of loud blasts emanating from the operation. The cause? Gas cylinders hidden inside junk vehicles that are exploding when the vehicles are crushed or shredded.

 According to a manager at the British scrap metal company, the reason the cylinders are being hidden in the vehicles is that the people scrapping the cars want them to be as heavy as possible, because extra weight means more money. While all vehicles are visually inspected on site before demolition, if hidden carefully enough, the cylinders remain undetected until the recycling process causes them to explode.

A local businessperson estimated that there had been close to 40 such explosions so far this year. “It’s like an earthquake; everything shakes,” she said.

 The manager said that the scrapping machinery is built to withstand the impact of the cylinder explosions and that there is little or no danger to anyone. He added that the company is working with a government environmental agency and keeps records of all explosions. The recycler also recently suspended deliveries from one supplier after a series of explosions from its metal.

Considering that cylinder tracking through bar coding has become such an important part of many gases and welding distributors’ businesses, I thought you might be interested to know that today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent for the bar code.

Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent in 1949, which was granted on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in a bulls eye pattern so that it was scanable in any direction.

In the world of gas cylinder distribution, the bar code is a technical innovation that has become an essential part of business. So much so, in fact, that the feature section of most recent issue of Welding & Gases Today devotes considerable space to the topic of bar codes as an invaluable tool for your business.

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check it out at Welding & Gases Today Online.

You can learn more about the history of the bar code here.

How well are you managing your number one asset?

For the latest issue of Welding & Gases Today, I spoke with a number of distributors on the importance of keeping a sharp eye on cylinder inventories.

Beyond knowing how many cylinders these distributors own, by maintaining an electronic tracking system—typically bar codes or transponders—they are able to know precisely how many cylinders are sitting idle at the main facility or accumulating at branches, how many are with customers, how long they’ve been with customers, the type of service they’re in, which cylinders are due for retesting…the list of benefits goes on and on.

To be honest, I was surprised to learn that more welding and gases distributors do not employ tracking systems. Considering the cash value of a single cylinder, the idea of losing even one is tantamount to lighting a cigar with a $100 bill.

Then there is the strain created on business relationships – like when inventory records show that a customer has 20 cylinders but he claims to have only 15 – resulting in a pitched battle over who is in error and ultimately responsible for paying for the lost assets.

In “Managing Your Number One Asset,” GAWDA distributors who have become real experts in the field of tracking technology share their wisdom and experience and explain why they can’t imagine operating their companies any other way.

It’s interesting stuff—and just may help you decide once and for all if the time has come to invest in a cylinder management system for your business.

I am very pleased to announce that the latest issue of Welding & Gases Today is now in the mail and already available online.

The issue is chock full of information that is not only invaluable to those in the welding and gases business, but those working in allied industries as well.

Topics include:

Managing and Safe Handling of Cylinder Assets

An Update on the Economic Recovery

Liability Issues for Business Owners who Provide Company Cars

Advice for Family and Non-Family Members working in Family Businesses

An Update on GAWDAwiki

Ways to Make LinkedIn, the Professional Networking Site, Work For You

And that just scratches the surface. Visit Welding & Gases Today online and load up on all sorts of information that will help you and your business succeed.

I welcome your feedback on the latest issue and encourage you to contact me with topics you’d like covered in the future.

It’s your input that insures we are covering the stories you want and need to read about.

Customers for heavy equipment are exploring the concept seriously

Hybrid cars are all the rage these days, made increasingly attractive by concern for the environment and rising gas prices.

An interesting twist on hybrids is that they are no longer strictly in the realm of passenger vehicles. Industrial vehicle manufacturers are also being approached to create hybrids for heavy-duty use.

One such example is the Queens, New York, sanitation department, which has placed orders for seven hybrid garbage trucks.

The trucks will use two types of hybrid technology and are expected to use 30 percent less fuel than traditional garbage trucks.

One type uses hybrid electric technology akin to the system in the Toyota Prius, in which the energy from braking is stored in batteries. The other is hybrid hydraulic technology, which stores energy in a cylinder of compressed gas instead of in a battery.

Hydraulic hybrids use three main components to power a vehicle at slow speeds and to augment the gasoline engine. Fluid is stored in a low-pressure reservoir. A pump moves the fluid from the reservoir to a high-pressure accumulator. The accumulator holds not only the fluid brought over by the pump, but also pressurized nitrogen gas.

So enjoy the sexy hybrid car commercials while you can. They may soon be replaced by even sexier ads for hybrid dump trucks, bulldozers and, yes, ever-fragrant garbage trucks.

Gas cylinder smugglers from Iran caught, sentenced in UK

In my day-to-day research for stories for Welding & Gases Today, I often find myself talking with distributors and their employees about the basics of the business—products and inventory, sales and service, and the many other ingredients that go into successful operations.

Every so often, however, I come across a story that reminds me that welding and gases is far from a simple industry—it is very serious business that deals with hazmat, government regulations, volatile materials, controlled substances and more.

The latest addition to this “serious business” list is the category of international intrigue.

This summer, three Iranians who had been granted asylum in Great Britain were sentenced to two-and-a-half to five years each for breaching an arms embargo against their native country by acting as middle-men supplying military hardware—including gas cylinders—to Iran, until British officers uncovered their network of illegal shipments and fraudulent documents.

The conspiracy first came to light when HM Revenue & Customs officers at Heathrow Airport stopped a Tehran bound consignment of eight liquid oxygen cylinders from being shipped in contravention of a 1993 UK embargo on military goods to Iran. The technical equipment, which is vital in enabling fighter pilots to breathe at high altitude, is specifically tailored for military jets and has limited civilian application.

Astonishingly, the items were bought on eBay in the U.S. The goods were typically dispatched from Florida under misleading descriptions to Iran via the UK, Romania or Hong Kong so as to overcome U.S. export controls and obscure the final destination. The three defendants also had liquid oxygen converters seized in Romania and the U.S.

The defendants claimed the items were for use in the health sector, specifically for breathing apparatus in an ambulance. The accused fabricated documents and trade catalogues to reinforce their claim but court evidence from technical experts showed this to be untrue.

The true purpose of the shipments was to support Iran’s ageing jet fighters, including F-14 Tomcats, F4 Phantoms, F5 Tigers and Cobra Attack Helicopters, which can only be kept in service through parts purchased in the U.S. and then illegally shipped to Iran using fraudulent paperwork and bogus supply routes.

It’s quite a story, the details of which I encourage you to read at the UK’s wired.gov.net.