Is my co2 pressure safe?

Do these pressure readings look right? The system is off and the solenoid is unplugged. This is my first time bringing home a CO2 cylinder and I want to be sure the thing isn't going to shoot through the bottom of my aquarium like a rocket breaking through a silo.





Internal - 2000psi
Entering needle valve - 40psi

I thought these cylinders were rated at 1800psi?

 

Re: Is my co2 pressure safe?

The Azoo is a set-pressure regulator. There's no fiddling with it. My main concern was the tank pressure, which was waaaaay above normal. The tank was only rated for 1800psi. I called the welding place and he said the tank had to be overfilled and walked me through some tests to make sure nothing had been damaged. Then he told me to take the cylinder outside and slowly bleed it. My 10 gallon tank had about 14-15lbs of CO2 in it, over 50% more than the safe limit!!!





By removing about 4 lbs of liquid CO2 from my cylinder, my pressure dropped from 2,200 psi to 870 psi, which is a normal reading for my room temperature. That's insane how high it was. An aluminum cylinder and an Azoo regulator can handle some pressure people.

Put it like this, I bled the tank with the regulator removed for like 15 minutes to get the weight to where it should have been. 14.8 tare weight plus 10lbs o2 is 24.8. My tank weighed like 30lbs!

Sad thing is I had to watch 6 months of free CO2 evaporate.

But at least my cylinder won't become an airborne projectile.

The needle valve on this thing is wonderful. I can drop the bubble count waay low if I want to, which isn't necessary, but is a good indicator that the valve is sensitive to finite adjustments.

AND this proves that the Azoo can handle insane pressures for at least a short period of time, which is good to know.

 

Re: Is my co2 pressure safe?

Why did you have to return them?

 

Re: Is my co2 pressure safe?

I ran it last night at 1 bubble every 15 seconds and this morning I tested the ph and raised the bubble count to one every 10 seconds or so. Starting off SLOOOOW. I'm coming out of a GW blackout anyway so I'm slowly raising the lighting and ferts back up to normal. THis gives me a perfect opportunity to take the CO2 introduction slow and steadily.

He said they take the tare weight, add 10lbs for the 10lb tank and set a scale for that weight (14.8+10=24.8 in my case). Then they start to fill. Once the scale starts to balance, they shut the CO2 off.

Problem is that their system is setup to fill 50lb tanks, so from the time the scale starts to balance to the time they can react and cut off the CO2, a few extra lbs can be pumped into a "small" 10lb tank. That's what they told me anyway. He said sometimes it can be a little under.

So, it sounds like the guy that filled it committed a human error in judgement and timing. Even though the system was setup for 50lb tanks, they still had my tank sitting right there on the scale when everything was finished and it should have been obvious that the scale wasn't balancing.

The owner called me back at home last night to make sure the bleeding had gone ok and told me to call him if I could think of any more questions. Nice guy, but he needs to give someone a good talking to at work this morning.