General Chat

Gas alert closes roads
1:32pm Saturday 29th June 2013 in News By Andy Nicholls
FIREFIGHTERS have sealed off an industrial estate to deal with a nitrogen alert.
Crews headed to the Blandford Heights Industrial Estate site when
>>> nitrogen <<<
began to escape from a container outside a unit. Police closed roads while firefighters dealt with the emergency just after 11am on Saturday.

By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

Basic science teaching must be even worse than our never ending efforts to recruit numerate and literate staff led me to believe.
:-(

say no more!!

well, you often get claimants claiming to be giving 110%,effort,

dont you??

wonder if it was in a liquid state? they could've scooped it up in buckets?

If the container was faulty there was a chance that it could explode, damaging others containing more dangerous substances, thus causing a large explosion.

It is impossible for a nitrogen gas cylinder to explode as (a) they are fitted with relief valves in case they get too hot (abt 30 C) or there is a fire.
and (b) nitrogen gas will not react with any other atmospheric gas eg oxygen. Even if the cylinder fractured for some reason the dispersion area would be very confined.

However if a very large amount of nitrogen escapes due to say, a warehouse fire, then there can be a local short term risk of asphyxiation in a confined space. The fire brigade are aware of this but nevertheless they suffered some fatalities in a large fire in the Gt London are a couple of years ago when the head FB honchos ignored warnings.

The chances of such an escape affecting a whole area are zero - I am sure if you managed to stay awake in physics you will have come across Boyle's Law.

0/10

I didn't do physics at school. We did General Science, which in my case meant one year of biology and then we had to choose between that and an Arts subject. I did german.

Everything I know about science generally has been learnt since I left school and is called General Knowledge. I have heard of Boyle's Law, but couldn't tell you what it says.

Methinks that if it is already leaking then it wont explode as the pressure will be constantly dropping...........

as Rollo says if its leaking into open atmosphere, it wont be overtly lethal,but if in a confined space then it will cause asphixiation........

as a couple of youngsters found out while inhaling Helium

Like Andysmum I did not do physics at school, just General Science then Human Biology. All of this was 40/50 years ago anyway.

If I need to know anything I read up on a subject, or Google.

If asked about anything associated with the profession in which I worked & I can still reel of the relevant information.

Without actually knowing why they were called if there was no immediate danger, surely we cannot call the Fire Service & Police Force who acted the way they did innumerate and illiterate.

There is the chance that once called they took the opportunity to do a bit of training in coping with possible hazardous leakages.