Dry ice

DanHolohan

I recently had an interesting (terrifying?) experience with dry ice. Have you ever used dry ice in your work?

Intplm.

Once to bring the temp of a cylinder down to do some type of liquid transfer. This was a very long time ago.
Also had it used on me for a medical procedure. That was also a very long time ago.

@DanHolohan . May I ask? What was so terrifying?

DanHolohan

It did things I didn't expect it to do. Like weld itself to our kitchen sink and go berserk. I suddenly had a Pink Floyd concert on my hands and afraid Marianne was going to come home before I could stop the special effects.

Erin Holohan Haskell

You doing ok, Dad?

Jamie Hall

Aw... you should have let it, to see what she would do! Um... then again, maybe not.

Fun stuff -- and very dangerous, because it is so cold. Only time I've used it is to cool a part for a shrink fit.

Intplm.

@DanHolohan . Hope you didn't get burned. It sure can burn your skin badly.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Goes directly from a solid to a gas i thing. Forgot what the temp is. Sublimation rings a bell

JUGHNE

You weren't trying to make a "soda bottle bomb" were you?

DanHolohan

Actually, it involved a very expensive carrot cake my brother sent me for my birthday.

JUGHNE

Years ago I had an unpopular school teacher as a tenant in a duplex, a disgruntled student or 2 put dry ice in a soda bottle with a tightly sealed cap and tossed in under her parked car.
The pressure build up eventually exploded the bottle with all the vapor coming out from under the car.
Police and fire were on site...and of course the landlord gets called.

Schoolboy pranks can be dangerous....don't try this at home.

STEVEusaPA

When I was 18-19 I was working at an airline catering place while going to school. We used it a lot. But 'for fun' we used to make all kinds of dry ice bombs. Back in the 80's it didn't involve police/fire or a bomb squad.
But yes, you can build pressure fast, and it sticks like crazy glue to you fingers/bare skin.

KC_Jones

Never for work, but we experimented with it in the ice box on my grandfathers boat many years ago. We used to live on it for 1 week every summer, traveling the Chesapeake bay. My dad tried dry ice so we didn't use so much regular ice (and no chance of things getting wet). It turned the ice box into a freezer. The next year he made small insulated boxes with sliding lids to control the temp better, same problem everything was frozen. After that we just abandoned the ice box and used coolers. They are simpler.

I do remember him handling it with insulated gloves and telling me not to touch it as it would "burn" me.

JUGHNE

My wife's hospital lab would use dry ice, get some with incoming lab whatevers.
They would then just dump it into their SS sink until it evaporated, if someone run water over it then the CO2 would steam up.......I wonder if it could crack the finish on cast iron sinks??

For outgoing specimens they put them in Styrofoam coolers but would only loosely seal the container for outgassing.

jeff_25

Litte pc into a alcoholic punch makes a good Halloween prop like a smoking cauldron
Witches brew

EdTheHeaterMan

STEVEusaPA said:

When I was 18-19 I was working at an airline catering place while going to school. We used it a lot. But 'for fun' we used to make all kinds of dry ice bombs. Back in the 80's it didn't involve police/fire or a bomb squad.
But yes, you can build pressure fast, and it sticks like crazy glue to you fingers/bare skin.

Did they have airplanes back in 1819?

Illinoisfarmer

Not dry ice, but liquid nitrogen. Also, fair warning, this is PG-13.

Back when I was in college, someone had the brilliant idea of forcing the crop production kids to take a class called Livestock Production Skills. Different professors would rotate in for a class or two, teach us some skill that they thought we really needed to know. We were less than enthused and probably a little surly if I'm being totally honest. A professor that had a reputation for being ill tempered came in to take his turn. He didn't like us, and the feeling was mutual. We were to meet him at the University Farm for class for a couple sessions, and we were not really cooperating, or caring about what he was teaching.

One day, we met him in the Beef Barn and he had a lot of equipment that I didn't immediately recognize, and a few cows that were milling about in a pen, minding their own business. One of the pieces of equipment he had was a metal tank that was about 2 feet tall and maybe 18" around at the bottom with a narrow neck and a large metal lid. I'd seen a movie on artificial insemination in another class, and quickly realized that we were headed for what was going to be not my best Thursday.

Long story short, we all had to extract a vial called a 'straw' (of what we'll call bull 'product') from the cylinder of liquid nitrogen - which if memory serves me is around -300 degrees. It also had the 'Pink Floyd' effect when the lid was opened, but all things considered, I'd rather have seen Pink Floyd at that point. We used tongs and really thick gloves. The vial was warmed in water, then inserted into a long metal tube. I knew I was in real trouble when he had me corral a cow (I didn't get her name) into a squeeze chute and handed me the tube and a single, really long plastic glove. I was 'getting' to go first. I was terrified, and I can't imagine how the cow felt, no dinner, not even a box of chocolates - just a scrawny farm boy with shaky hands. I followed directions - I never, ever remember being so totally focused on not screwing up, and it was over with quickly.

For the rest of the semester, we had to occasionally monitor our cow. Mine was doing well, and fortunately, the semester ended before she calved.

The Crop Production kids were more cooperative from that point on. I have faithfully avoided both dry ice and liquid nitrogen since 1985.

CLamb

One time I spilled liquid nitrogen on my pants while filling the trap on a Helium mass spectrometer leak detector. I immediately jumped up to drop my pants when I realized nothing bad was happening. The LN2 just soaked into my cotton blue jeans and sat there with condensed water vapor steaming off it. It didn't even make the fabric brittle. I suppose it my pants were made of a synthetic fabric it would be different.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Is dry ice Co2?

ratio

Yeah. But frozen. Neat stuff.

heathead

Sugar Factory "restaurant" makes drinks look cool with what I think is dry ice. Don't put dry ice in drinks unless under lots of ice or in a tea strainer, ie you don't want to ingest dry ice. It can also displace oxygen if enough of it is in a small space. Cool for teens birthday parties. Do this at your own risk.

PC7060

Dry ice and magnesium foil; two great tools to motivate teenagers to learn chemistry!

retiredguy

Before I retired I used it to freeze water lines in buildings when the water valves would not shut off completely and I had to make a downstream repair of some kind. The largest line I froze was a 3" copper line. The dry ice I bought was "shaved" since it was easier to use than block ice.

One important note, even though the dry ice would not hurt the sink, if your wife thought it would you might spend the next few days in the "dog house".

DanHolohan

Thanks, @retiredguy I was mostly concerned about the putty under the drain.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@DanHolohan

It's ok . If you have to stay in the "dog house" bring the carrot cake with you!

pecmsg

DanHolohan said:

Actually, it involved a very expensive carrot cake my brother sent me for my birthday.

Happy Birthday @DanHolohan

DanHolohan

A day early, @pecmsg, but that makes it even nicer. Thanks!

Solid_Fuel_Man

We used to get it as kids from a buddy's dad who worked in a food processing plant. 

White styrofoam cooler. We used to build "haunted houses" for the neighborhood kids in another buddy's parents garage. 

After the first year I discovered dry ice in water, just evaporates quickly until the whole thing turns into a frozen mess. 

The next few years I actually used an old pressure cooker on an electric hot plate with some green garden hose to out "Fogg" areas. It worked great. Just a bit of heat once and awhile. Cant remember if we put water in there as well. 

I was in middle school, come to think of it....those adults put a lot of trust in a bunch of middle schoolers. We had no supervision whatsoever. 

And I'm still alive, have all 10 fingers, 2 eyes, and some hearing left.

jumper

Isn't their a blast cleaning system that uses dry ice instead of sand or high pressure water?
No sand or water to remove later.

FDNYRETIRED

Use to play with dry ice when I was a kid. Selling ice cream and orange drinks for good humor walking the beach. Always some guy wanting some to throw in the ocean. Watch it bubble with his kid standing there. Or wanting to keep his beer cold in the cooler.