My Personal Research Regarding Gas Cylinder Expiration - What You Should Know

Information is crucial, but only when it is accurate. Inaccurate information can lead to a variety of issues, including the loss of priceless lives and properties. It is more important than ever to confirm information before fully ingesting it into one's mind because we are living in a period of information freedom that has resulted in the rise of platforms that are censorship-resistant. However, incorrect information isn't just a problem for decentralized platforms because it continues to plague many centralized sites as well.

Why am I saying all this? A few years ago, a piece of information about gas cylinder expiration dates went viral on social media. The fact that the information was disseminated in reference to a gas cylinder explosion that occurred in an apartment and was shared on almost all the social media platforms and this made the information more intriguing. Here is an example of a post shared on Facebook and the one shared on Twitter

_Twitter

One can observe that there was engagement on both the Twitter and Facebook post, infact the Twitter post has the highest number of engagement and I didn't see any user disagreed with the information, which is evidence that many individuals accepted the notion of gas cylinder expiration. Unconsciously, the information was also registered in my brain, and I have always associated time-limited items with gas cylinders.

So, last week, I went to a nearby gas plant to refill the 6 kg gas cylinder for my home use. The salesman informed me of the gas cylinder's corroding base and what could be done to stop it. Then I realized that, despite the information shared in the social media post, I had never attempted to check my gas cylinder's expiration date. On second thinking, I kept pondering what could cause a product made completely of metal to expire. Is it the metal's atomic structure that changes, or something else? I sensed that something was off.

So when I got home that day I made the decision to learn more about gas cylinder expiration. During my research, I discovered that the information about gas expiration has been debunked long time ago by an Indian Oil Corporation, in a post they publish on Facebook.

_Facebook

The Indian Gas Cooper's statement put an end to the uproar over gas cylinder expiration.

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Gas Cylinders Doesn't Expire, But It Can Still Explode

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Even though it has been indicated that gas cylinders do not expire, handling the metallic cylinders requires extra caution due to the way gas molecules naturally respond to temperature.

The kinetic theory of gases states that as temperature rises, gas molecules move more quickly and collide more frequently. The pressure inside the cylinder will rise as the molecules collide more frequently. Pressure increases linearly with temperature.

In order for the gas molecules inside a metallic cylinder to become more kinetically energetic, the cylinder must first have reached a temperature at which heat can be convectively transmitted to the gas molecules. An explosion will take place if the pressure exceeds the gas cylinder's maximum capacity.

This is among the causes of my decision not to install gas cylinders outside, where they could be heated by the sun. And anytime I need to go refill gas, I always wait till evening when the sun has set, and I bring the gas cylinder back home as fast as I can.

If gas cylinders are left outside on hot days, their temperature may rise above the point at which explosions will occur.

Contrary to popular belief, however, shaking gas cylinders hardly ever results in an explosion. It would be difficult for shaking of gas cylinders to result in a pressure build-up that will exceed the one being utilized to contain the gas, based on the internal pressure at which gas cylinders hold gases. Gas molecules will jostle against the cylinder walls due to shaking, but this cannot create an explosion-causing amount of pressure.

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Conclusion

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Gas cylinders should be kept away from heat sources and areas with sufficient ventilation in order to prevent unintentional explosions. Once precautions are taken to prevent the cylinder's temperature from going above normal, the likelihood of an explosion is quite low.

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Reference Source

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_{https://medswift.co.ke/how-to-prevent-gas-cylinder-explosion-in-5-ways/}

_{https://socratic.org/questions/how-does-entropy-change-with-pressure}