Oily rags - how dangerous?
Steve Thrasher wrote:
Years ago...I watched a guy pour liquid oxygen into a small container.
He then added motor oil. Before he could rig the heavy weight, on a
shaft held up by a pin, to drop into that container...I saw him rapidly
pull his head back and twist it. At that point the mixture exploded.
He was wearing an outfit that looked like what the bomb disposal guys
wear now a days so seemed to have escaped relatively unharmed, perhaps
he's deaf in one ear, who knows.
Hydrocarbons and oxygen...it's a mixture to drive you...
Liquid oxygen is indeed powerful stuff. Did you know that asphalt is
flammable when exposed to it? The pads that those tanks sit on have
to be of concrete.
However it is unlikely that you will have Lox on a sailboat.
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