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Safety -- Make sure you are safe!

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  #1  
Old 2007-06-20, 3:09pm
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Default Chlorine smell

I was working the other night and was told the house reeked. I went outside and came back in and it smelled like Chlorine to me (not the same as bleach but close). I was working Boro and have found where some of my ducting had come loose. Has anyone ever noticed this odor before?

Thanks,
Bonny
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What happens in Rockland, stays in Rockland.....
Hellcat, Two M-15s, propane and finally no tanked oxy.
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  #2  
Old 2007-06-20, 3:35pm
Carols Glass Carols Glass is offline
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I have! And it has only been since I've been working boro. I don't notice it any more. Maybe our shorts were cleaned with bleach? I haven't been using them lately and haven't noticed the bleach smell either. (I also tucked them away in an empty White Castle box, so they are not exposed). Just a wild guess and not that there is anything wrong with using bleach. I use alcohol for cleaning my glass.
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  #3  
Old 2007-06-20, 3:37pm
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Nitric Oxides formed from NO emissions in the combustion products. Greatest concentrations occur when using an oxidizing flame. Volume depends on oxygen flow rate, which is usually quite high when working boro. NOx continues to react with room air and humidity for several hours after torching (up to 24-36 hours) and results in nitrogen dioxides and tetroxides.

Need to completely air out the room.

You can google nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and nitrogen tetroxide.

Me

p.s. NOx desensitizes the bodies ability to smell, as it is produced - thus the flameworker seldom smells it while working in the same room. Usually a friend comes in, with a 'fresh nose', and remarks about the swimming pool smell.
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  #4  
Old 2007-06-21, 8:24am
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hmmm...I'm smelling garlic lately. I thought maybe an animal got under the house and died. Now I'm going to check my hoses!
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  #5  
Old 2007-06-21, 9:27am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Holly Cooper View Post
hmmm...I'm smelling garlic lately. I thought maybe an animal got under the house and died. Now I'm going to check my hoses!

Could that also be propane? I had a propane leak at my barbeque grill and we kept looking around the yard for a dead animal...
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  #6  
Old 2007-06-21, 11:06am
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if it smells like garliç it's probably propane, manifacturers of gas deliberatly add garlic like scents to gass since propane itselve is odorless. Check your hoses and connections

I definetly know the chlorine smell
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  #7  
Old 2007-06-21, 11:08am
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Yes propane can also smell like a dead animal. Smell is a strange thing. 1 in 1,000 people cannot smell the odorant added to propane. Our olfactory sense is not very precise. Generally, women have a better sense of smell than men.

Ethyl Mercaptan (an odorant added to LPG), smells like rotten eggs to some, to others like onions or garlic, or even a small dead animal. It 'smells bad' and can make you nauseous, but does no physical harm. It 'warns' before explosive levels of propane are reached. The odorant added to propane is specifically selected and intended as a human warning signal. Thus, one can usually smell it at very minute, trace amounts. But, as for smell... it's not pungent.

NOx has a pungent smell, a sharp biting smell, with a sense of 'acidity', even a 'burning sensation' in our nostrils; to some it's like a swimming pool, or chlorine, or chlorox. Actually, it is only 2 specific chemicals in the NOx family that produce that olfactory notice... the others are odorless.

NOx odor results from a chemical reaction of oxygen with the nitrogen in the air. NOx is formed as a reaction of the oxygen (the O oxygen part from the torch oxygen, and from room air) reacting at high temperaure (in torch flame) and room air (the N nitrogen part)... resulting in NO. It is always created to some extent by a torch flame. It is created during the thermal plume entrainment of room air (a turbulence field located on the surface area of a thermal plume - which is why we should keep our breathing zone separate from the thermal plume - a not too easy thing to do since both are invisible). The NO then goes on to react with room air to create N2O4, NO2, Nitric Acid, etc., etc., (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_oxide) which shift balance over time (hours). If interested here's a little purdue chemistry link.
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/demos/...ages/21.1.html

Here's the thing... the nose is poor NOx detection/monitoring system... by the time NOx reaches the PPM level where the olfactory can detect it, it is already past the permissible exposure limit (PEL) and moving it's way up to the immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) level. If you smell it, it's time to stop and air out the room. Now, the really tricky part is... NOx turns off the nose sensors just as fast as the the nose 'recognizes a smell'... so it does not appear to us to 'increase', as it slowly builds up, and up, and up... so you might smell it only a very leeeetle bit, or not even smell it at all unless you take 'nose breaks', outside the studio.

A good ventilation system is the first line of defense. The second is ensuring that we do not place our breathing zone in the thermal plume zone.

Me
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Last edited by bhhco; 2007-06-21 at 11:17am.
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  #8  
Old 2007-06-21, 11:13am
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This smell is definitely garlicky. And it's at the lower level of the studio where propane would settle. It could be coming from the inside or outside since that door is near the tank.
I'm so glad I read this thread. Thanks Bill!!!

Oh...and I'm outside the thermal plume zone. Since you told me about it I've been cautious!
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  #9  
Old 2007-06-21, 11:30am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bhhco View Post
Nitric Oxides formed from NO emissions in the combustion products. Greatest concentrations occur when using an oxidizing flame. Volume depends on oxygen flow rate, which is usually quite high when working boro. NOx continues to react with room air and humidity for several hours after torching (up to 24-36 hours) and results in nitrogen dioxides and tetroxides.

Need to completely air out the room.

You can google nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and nitrogen tetroxide.

Me

p.s. NOx desensitizes the bodies ability to smell, as it is produced - thus the flameworker seldom smells it while working in the same room. Usually a friend comes in, with a 'fresh nose', and remarks about the swimming pool smell.

Thanks for the info. It's good to know the cause and therefore the remedy. I am curious because I noticed you are also in Texas; I live very close to Galveston and it was extremely humid the two times I noticed this. Could the amount of humidity be helping this reaction to be more intense?

Thanks,

Bonny
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What happens in Rockland, stays in Rockland.....
Hellcat, Two M-15s, propane and finally no tanked oxy.
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  #10  
Old 2007-06-21, 1:11pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by playingwithfirebeads View Post
Thanks for the info. It's good to know the cause and therefore the remedy. I am curious because I noticed you are also in Texas; I live very close to Galveston and it was extremely humid the two times I noticed this. Could the amount of humidity be helping this reaction to be more intense?

Thanks,

Bonny
You are correct that humidity does increase intensity and enables certain specific chemical reactions. There is a very complicated interplay between all the chemicals in the NOx family based on temperature and water vapor (humidity), as they interact with room air changing from one chemistry to another. The most prominent chemical produced is N02 at torch flame temperatures, but it can change to N2O4 at lower temperatures (NO2 + NO2). The room atmosphere is very chaotic and is impossible to predict the PPM levels of specific chemicals. About the best that can be said, with absolute certainty (and this is not something we want to guess at), is if the 'pungent smell' is present, then NO2 (Nitrogen Dioxide) is present, and at a level greater than is permissable.

"Nitrogen dioxide is toxic by inhalation. ... low concentrations (4 ppm) will anesthetize the nose, thus creating a potential for overexposure. Long-term exposure to NO2 at concentrations above 40–100 µg/m³ causes adverse health effects [1]." (extracted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide)

If there is a 'pungent smell', then too much Oxygen has chemically reacted with too much Nitrogen from the room air, and NO2 has been created at a too excessive level. The suggested action is to cease torching, and ventilate the room.

I had a major computer failure this past week and all my documents are now on a secondary hard drive, and I do not have my word processing or excell s/w loaded yet to access them. Nor do I have my combustion algorithm or ventilation design software reloaded. So I'm relying on Wiki and what I remember in my head . NOx production, and thus NO2 production, is directly related to a oxidizing flame and the O2 flow rate. Thus, for any torch, the more oxidizing the flame, and the more oxygen being used per minute, then the greater the NOx and NO2 that will be created.

Me

p.s. N. Padre Island... the other Galveston
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Last edited by bhhco; 2007-06-21 at 1:15pm.
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  #11  
Old 2007-06-21, 2:17pm
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Here is an excerpt from a paper by Stan Wolfersberger that is on the ISGB website.
"The combustion gases released when your torch is burning include: Carbon dioxide, water, nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide, as well as trace amounts of unburned fuel and other contaminants. One of the most popular “urban legends” of beadmaking is that carbon monoxide is the principle agent to be worried about. However, in general this is not supported by actual measurements. The chief “bad actors” are the nitrogen oxides, especially nitrogen dioxide, which are produced by any high-temperature flame.11,12 In addition to producing the familiar “torch smell”, nitrogen dioxide is a severe respiratory irritant with a very low acceptable air concentration.13

Your ventilation system should be actively pulling fumes away from the place they are generated – at your torch. Additionally, fresh air should be entering your beading area so that uncontaminated air is in your breathing zone. "
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  #12  
Old 2007-06-22, 12:28am
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awesome information!!!Thanks all for taking the time to explain what exactly is happening, and how to prevent it
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Old 2008-04-28, 7:07pm
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Just came upon this thread ,I have also smelled the chlorine smell.
Thank you so much for the safe info

Karen
Volkano Exotik
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