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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

The one where a box factory blew up because of a chemical safety issue was a real eye opener. Who knew that if you make cardboard boxes, you have to be aware that sometimes municipal water has too much oxygen in it and it will cause your machinery to randomly blow up, destroy the neighborhood, and kill 4 people one day? I had no idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGVbGNdx7g0

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Air pressure is bad enough, but any time you've got water above 100c and/or 1 atmosphere of pressure, you're at risk of a steam explosion, which is far, far deadlier. Water expands to about 1800 times its volume in the process of flashing off to steam, and it can displace all the air in a room, leading to people inhaling steam, and being burned from the inside.

Steam explosions are terrifying. Boilers are extremely hazardous things to operate without proper training and supervision.

That’s a pretty charitable summary of the issue of pressure vessel safety. I’m just a hobbyist with tools in my garage and I’ve avoided buying an air compressor for air powered tools because I don’t want to have a pressure vessel to maintain. If I know this, industrial operations definitely should.

Sure, pressure vessel rusts, pressure vessel explodes is pretty understandable, but it's surprising that you need a pressure vessel to make boxes.

Eh, they needed steam to make the cardboard. Sounds reasonable.

A lot of the risk scales with size. I have a 2.5 gallon air compressor that does everything I need. Even if it has a blow out, it’s just not large enough to be risky.

You're obviously right that the risk scales with size, but I'm still suspicious of pressure cookers. Yeah, it won't destroy the house, but I could still be seriously injured by it if the pressure release valve was clogged and I wasn't paying close enough attention.

Pressure cookers are a bit different. They have a large movable opening that's the weak point. When that fails, it tends to send the lid sailing (with 15ps across the diameter).

Air compressors seem to end up with cracks. They'll release air, but don't have the tendency to create a projectile.

> I’ve avoided buying an air compressor for air powered tools because I don’t want to have a pressure vessel to maintain.

You shouldn't worry about that at all. My fathers old machine shop ran on an air compressor manufactured in 1948 and the tank never ruptured in its 50+ years of service. Never mind the myriad of little compressors who's tanks are all that's left after the cheap compressor gave up the ghost (they make nice portable tanks or buffers or toss another compressor on).

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