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.

George Clooney may be the lead star of the new Hollywood film Up in the Air, but a major supporting role was provided by planet Earth through some amazing footage shot by the movie’s aerial director of photography, Dylan Goss.

Clooney plays businessman Ryan Bingham, a man who spends the majority of his life in airplanes and hotel rooms as he crisscrosses the country for his job as hatchet man for corporations that are downsizing and laying off employees.

During many of the airplane scenes, the audience shares Clooney’s airline-window view of the dazzling Earth below.

To capture these images, Goss spent a week in the ice-cold backend of a Cessna airplane flying at 15,000 feet (aerial photography is typically filmed at less than 1,000 feet), wrapped in winter clothing and breathing oxygen through a mask connected to a gas cylinder.

To keep his camera lens from clouding over in the frigid temperatures, Goss sealed the camera in a glass sphere that was attached to the plane’s fuselage. The sphere was then pumped full of argon gas to prevent the lens from fogging.

The result? Some amazing aerial cinematography that would not have been possible had it not been for Goss’s resourceful industrial gases applications.

The clock is ticking for NASA to stock the International Space Station with all the oversized parts necessary for the station to continue to function beyond 2010, when the Space Shuttle Program ends. After that, according to NASA, there will be no U.S. spacecraft big enough to carry large replacement parts to the station.

Atlantis docked at the space station on Nov. 16. Shuttle and space station astronauts are now hard at work unloading a staggering shopping list.

There are two express logistics carriers (ELCs) that are being installed on the station’s truss. Bolted to the ELCs will be 27,250 lbs. of spare parts, including two 600-lb. control moment gyro assemblies; a 415-lb. latching end effector; 1,702-lb. ammonia tank assembly; two 780-lb. cooling-system pump module assemblies; and equipment for future experiments. 

Crucial parts related to the industrial gases industry that were included in the Atlantis payload were two nitrogen tank assemblies weighing 550 lbs. each that will be used to pressurize the ammonia tank assemblies for the station cooling system; and a 1,240-lb. high-pressure gas tank filled with 220 lbs. of gaseous oxygen for the station’s ventilation system.

A significantly emptier Atlantis will return to Earth on November 27.

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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.