Can’t for the life of me figure out tank sizes for inert gas. Can someone ELI5?

[maka]

Hello all. I've been doing research and reading up on the inert gas method for HOURS and I'm just too stupid to understand the math around the tank sizes and it's making me feel even worse. Pretty much everything else makes sense, but for some reason I'm just to stupid to get the numbers part.

I found a website of a place close to me that sells nitrogen tanks but I just don't know what size to get. Some posts say 400l, some say 600l, some let 20l, some say 2. I know that there's liquid (which can't be used for this method) and gas (the one you need) but all of the conversions are really complicated for me to understand. Can someone give me a link to a tank or at least explain like I'm 5/incredibly slow how to find the right size?

Thank you all in advance.

 

[WAITING TO DIE]

According to the inert gas resource, you will need a minimum of 600 litres of nitrogen gas.
Medical grade nitrogen is needed, and not the industrial kind.
I can't see a 600l tank of medical grade nitrogen on the link you provided.

 

[ipmanwc0]

Go there and ask for 20 cubic feet cylinder of their standard purity this is my method too

 

[painful existence]

The tank volume and the amount of compressed gas in it are two different things.The volume of my tank is around 10l but that is not the thing you should be looking for in general.You should be looking for how much compressed gas it can hold(I think a 10l tank might have upto 1000 l of compressed nitrogen though I am not completely sure)
The amount of compressed gas that cylinder must be able to hold should be around 600l ( 0.6 cubic metre or 22 cubic feet)
Also as far as I know purity above 99 percent would be fine

 

[ClownWorld2023]

The gas cylinders are referred to by their water volume.

A 5L gas cylinder can be filled with 5L water.

To get the gas volume, multiply the water volume with the pressure.
Most nitrogen cylinders in the EU are pressurized at 200 bar.

So gas volume for the 5L cylinder (in liters gas): 5 * 200 = 1000L


You should remove the source in your post by the way.

 

[PrisonPlanetBreak]

See attached picture for explanation and formula. Basically, there are two ways a tank can be advertised. Some providers will list its capacity as water volume, whilst others will list the gas volume. Looking at the ones from the link you posted, it's likely they use the gas volume. But here's an example of how to do conversion. A popular tank configuration marketed by beer manufacturers is: 2L at 200bar.

First, convert 200bar to PSI, you get 2900PSI. Then, multiply the pressure by the water volume: 2900 * 2 = 5800. Last but not least, divide by 14.7 (explanation for magic number in attached picture). You get 394, where this is the amount of compressed nitrogen in the tank. If you want to know how many minutes it lasts, divide by 15 (as in 15L/min is the recommended flow for your regulator). You get about 26 minutes worth of gas flow.

To recap, for a 2L tank at 200bar pressure, you get 394L of compressed nitrogen, by the formula. Which should suffice for CTB, but an amount over 500L (30+ mins of flow) offers a great safety margin. Let's also do a reverse exercise to find out the water volume, with the recommended compressed volume in the Mega-thread, which is 600L. And let's assume the tank has a higher pressure, of 250bar. First, multiply 600 with 14.7, you get 8820. Then let's convert 250bar to PSI. That's roughly 3626PSI. Now, we can divide 8820 by 3626 to get the water volume, which is 2.43L.

I hope this sheds some light on the math. Trust me, I was just as confused as you when looking up tanks and volumes.

 

[ClownWorld2023]

See attached picture for explanation and formula. Basically, there are two ways a tank can be advertised. Some providers will list its capacity as water volume, whilst others will list the gas volume. Looking at the ones from the link you posted, it's likely they use the gas volume. But here's an example of how to do conversion. A popular tank configuration marketed by beer manufacturers is: 2L at 200bar.

First, convert 200bar to PSI, you get 2900PSI. Then, multiply the pressure by the water volume: 2900 * 2 = 5800. Last but not least, divide by 14.7 (explanation for magic number in attached picture). You get 394, where this is the amount of compressed nitrogen in the tank. If you want to know how many minutes it lasts, divide by 15 (as in 15L/min is the recommended flow for your regulator). You get about 26 minutes worth of gas flow.

To recap, for a 2L tank at 200bar pressure, you get 394L of compressed nitrogen, by the formula. Which should suffice for CTB, but an amount over 500L (30+ mins of flow) offers a great safety margin. Let's also do a reverse exercise to find out the water volume, with the recommended compressed volume in the Mega-thread, which is 600L. And let's assume the tank has a higher pressure, of 250bar. First, multiply 600 with 14.7, you get 8820. Then let's convert 250bar to PSI. That's roughly 3626PSI. Now, we can divide 8820 by 3626 to get the water volume, which is 2.43L.

I hope this sheds some light on the math. Trust me, I was just as confused as you when looking up tanks and volumes.

That attachment shows the actual correct formula.

I suppose for simplicity purposes they must've rounded down 1 atmosphere to 1 bar (in reality it's 1.01325 bar).
But then again, in the EU they apparently fill the cylinders to a bit more than 200 bar.

 

[outrider567]

The tank volume and the amount of compressed gas in it are two different things.The volume of my tank is around 10l but that is not the thing you should be looking for in general.You should be looking for how much compressed gas it can hold(I think a 10l tank might have upto 1000 l of compressed nitrogen though I am not completely sure)
The amount of compressed gas that cylinder must be able to hold should be around 600l ( 0.6 cubic metre or 22 cubic feet)
Also as far as I know purity above 99 percent would be fine

99.0% is also fine, as per Greenberg and GasMonkey the experts

Hello all. I've been doing research and reading up on the inert gas method for HOURS and I'm just too stupid to understand the math around the tank sizes and it's making me feel even worse. Pretty much everything else makes sense, but for some reason I'm just to stupid to get the numbers part.

I found a website of a place close to me that sells nitrogen tanks but I just don't know what size to get. Some posts say 400l, some say 600l, some let 20l, some say 2. I know that there's liquid (which can't be used for this method) and gas (the one you need) but all of the conversions are really complicated for me to understand. Can someone give me a link to a tank or at least explain like I'm 5/incredibly slow how to find the right size?

Thank you all in advance.

Compressed gas should be at least 500 Liters Nitrogen at 2200 PSI, 99.0% purity or higher, personally I would want higher than 500 Liters, this is something you should not be cheap about

 

[ClownWorld2023]

99.0% is also fine, as per Greenberg and GasMonkey the experts

Compressed gas should be at least 500 Liters Nitrogen at 2200 PSI, 99.0% purity or higher, personally I would want higher than 500 Liters, this is something you should not be cheap about

5L cylinders are actually great. You can just transport them in a backpack and get them refilled.
I wish I bought a 5L one.

 

[paris010203]

we measure in lbs from where im from. The largrest N2 tank is 50lbs, the biggest cylinder like the ones in hospitals. If I convert this to liters, then its only about 22.5L? Please advise. Thanks.

 

[PrisonPlanetBreak]

we measure in lbs from where im from. The largrest N2 tank is 50lbs, the biggest cylinder like the ones in hospitals. If I convert this to liters, then its only about 22.5L? Please advise. Thanks.

I would assume that 50lbs is in fact the weight of the tank. It's neither the water volume, nor the compressed gas volume. But I'll still try to help you out. I see a manufacturer from my country, sells an N2 tank that has a weight of 26.8lbs and a water volume of 10L. So by doing some simple math, the water volume in your case turns out to be about ~18L. If you apply the formula from my post above, assuming your tank has a 200bar pressure (most common), you can calculate the compressed gas volume to be ~3500L. Divide by the recommended flow (15L/min) and you get about ~230 minutes of flow. In short, that's a huge boy, like you said. A bit overkill if you ask me, but if that is your only option and you think you are able to safely handle such a heavy tank, then yes, it gets the job done and then some.​

 

[paris010203]

I would assume that 50lbs is in fact the weight of the tank. It's neither the water volume, nor the compressed gas volume. But I'll still try to help you out. I see a manufacturer from my country, sells an N2 tank that has a weight of 26.8lbs and a water volume of 10L. So by doing some simple math, the water volume in your case turns out to be about ~18L. If you apply the formula from my post above, assuming your tank has a 200bar pressure (most common), you can calculate the compressed gas volume to be ~3500L. Divide by the recommended flow (15L/min) and you get about ~230 minutes of flow. In short, that's a huge boy, like you said. A bit overkill if you ask me, but if that is your only option and you think you are able to safely handle such a heavy tank, then yes, it gets the job done and then some.​

Thank you so much!! :)