as far as a I know 55 gallon drums arent expected to contain pressure. That is probably why you cant find a spec for it. I would imagine that the ratings are more orientated to impact resistance and resistance to chemical activity.
you could conduct a test on your own I suppose. Install a pressure guage on the side of the drum and then attach a line from an air compressor. Then -slowly- increase the pressure until you have a pressure leak. I would make a wild guess that a fill neck or soldered seam will split before you reach 20 psi. The flat rolled steel ends will more than likely be the first to fail soon after they bulge out. another way of looking at it, having bulged ends will make the drum inconvenient to use at best so that pressure reading where permanent end bulge happened could be your high end pressure rating. --- In biofuel@yahoogroups.com, girl mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi folks, > I'm having a devil of a time finding info about the bursting strength (?) > of closed head 55 gallon drums. I've been googling and keep finding these > government sites having to do with the state of New Jersey's requisition > form for windshield washer fluid and other Classic Literature of Bureacracy > and Red Tape instead of the actual specs. > > Here's the situation: > we got asked by someone in our host facility to put a pressure relief valve > on a closed processor that's made out of a 55-gallon drum. They're kind of > ignorant of what this equipment design entails and I think they are > somewhat unreasonably thinking up safety features- in reality, the sight > tube on the drum, and the type of lid we have on it (in our case it's not > exactly a tight head drum anymore- I cut off one end of it and fitted a lid > from an open head drum instead), would blow out before the drum would burst > (I think so, anyhow. Which isn't a good scenario anyway). But for > starters, I',m trying to find a spec on exactly what an 18 gauge steel > drum could tolerate if there were some kind of uncontrolled buildup of > pressure (er, an explosion). I could just throw a water heater pressure > relief on it and no one would know the difference, but I know that';s not > the right piece of equipment for the job, being in the public eye (and > trying to make homebrewer equipment comply with inspectors). > > Mark Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
