Everyone is trying to make his life more comfortable and safe. However, steel cylinders that are most widely used worldwide do not ensure this, they are even hiding real risk to life.

There can be two reasons why LPG steel cylinders explode regularly in every country.

• Cylinder overfilling that exceeding 85% of content
• Cylinder overheating.

In April 2002 the United States were the first country to introduce additional safety accessories on cylinders, which prevent cylinder overfilling, called OPD valves. LPG distributing companies say that the demand for retrofitted cylinders increased on 30-40%. The Europeans are now considering such a rule.

Cylinders as a rule are equipped with a pressure relief device (PRD) to avoid cylinder explosion, when they are overheated. If a cylinder is engulfed in a fire PRD releases an important part of the energy from it, but a jet gas flame length could reach up to 10 meters. As the intensity of heat radiation begins increasing, the valve cannot have enough time to release the pressure, so the cylinder can explode or come to so-called B.L.E.V.E. effect.

At the PRD Symposium in Ottawa on October 2002 a number of papers demonstrated that PRD did not guarantee that burst would be avoided. A conclusion of the symposium was that it is not a time for general harmonization on PRD’s for pressure receptacles, but for looking at new technical progress in the years to come.

COMPOSAFER offer a simple and effective solution of all problems: the upper part of the cylinder has a safety overfilling control window with a LP gas level visual indicator, whereby the buyer can see that the cylinder is filled to the proper level. COMPOSAFER does not also have to be equipped with OPD, as it has a safety factor 10 times exceeding working pressure rather than steel cylinder safety factor is 3-5 usually. Furthermore, the COMPOSAFER is 100% explosion-proof due to the following unique design. If COMPOSAFER is engulfed in a fire, the inner gas-tight PET liner melts within several minutes allowing the gas to “weep” through the composite reinforcement overwrapped walls and let gas slowly burn out. It is the safest way of pressure releasing, so the explosion is actually impossible.

The cylinder weight is another important safety factor. Many countries have come to such regulations that set weight limits for manual handling, which should not exceed 16-20 kg. Since the conventional 10 kg steel cylinder weights more than 23 kg than filled by LPG, such cylinders do not comply with the safety regulations, so they can be forecasted to be replaced by more lightweight cylinders especially in those countries joining the European Union.

COMPOSAFER cylinder bonfire test:>>Download (5,46 Мb)