Man loses arm in beer keg explosion

[catcher]

Has anyone heard of a keg exploding and seriously injuring someone?

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2617586/gas-explosion-at-bar-beach-bowling-club/?cs=303

 

[Edak]

This got me laughing " One witness said he saw several people rip their shirts off to help apply pressure to the man’s injuries."

Remember this is at a bowling club, who's taking their shirts off?

 

[TSMill]

Glad you can see the funny side of it.

 

[Topher]

Yeah, critical injuries ain't funny. The bloke has lost an arm apparently.

What is the serving pressure at a pub?Could it be the coupler blowing off because of too much pressure? Something falling over and the gas bottle or keg exploding?

Edit: ABC says he was releasing pressure and the whole thing blew.

 

[Moad]

I was there last week! First reports were gas now they are saying exploding keg?!

 

[manticle]

There have been incidences of plastic kegs exploding, resulting in fatal injuries.
There was a member here with that name as a moniker - hope it's not him.

 

[Cervantes]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-11/man-loses-arm-tapping-beer-keg-at-newcastle-bowls-club/5806528

 

[sp0rk]

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/83117-exploding-keg/

 

[warra48]

Two topics on the same subject merged.

 

[mb-squared]

jesus, someone must have seriously over-carbed that keg, especially since it appears to have happened in a cool room.

 

[Cervantes]

My guess would be a faulty pressure relief valve.

You have to feel for the guy.

 

[Adr_0]

yeah I saw this today on my phone. have to feel for the guy. there are so many serious injuries caused from idiocy or blatant negligence (basically the people almost deserve it...) but this sounds bloody unlucky.

I'm keen to know more about what happened. My first thought was that a stainless keg is extremely tough and keeps its strength at low temperatures. Sometimes you can get brittle failure if you bleed high pressure off, due to cooling as the gas drops in pressure - but this is only valid for steel, plastics etc. I would have thought you wouldn't get near that sort of pressure in a keg, and stainless should be immune to it. What sort of keg was it, maybe not stainless?

As Cervantes said a faulty pressure relief valve would be a pretty likely cause too.

Poor bugger.

 

[TSMill]

No way could you get brittle failure in stainless in this scenario, you would need much higher starting pressures for sufficient cooling, and then a source of repressurisation to cause the failure. I'd say a regulator has failed catastrophically, or a loose coupling has gone flying.

 

[Bribie G]

Chinese keg?

 

[Adr_0]

No way could you get brittle failure in stainless in this scenario, you would need much higher starting pressures for sufficient cooling, and then a source of repressurisation to cause the failure. I'd say a regulator has failed catastrophically, or a loose coupling has gone flying.

Yeah exactly - stainless is fine to -200°C or so. So I wonder what it was actually made of.

That's another good point thought, "explosion" is a great word in the media and can mean 50 different things. It could have just been an unrated component going flying. It may have torn through his arm and destroyed muscle/bone and they have had to amputate.

 

[Dave70]

Theres something fishy here, I mean, even a scabby old PET will cop about 180 PSI or around 11 bar. How the living **** did a (pressure tested) stainless steel keg accrue enough pressure to fail catastrophically? Ever seen the Mythbusters episode where they boil one till it pops? ******* scary.

Pressure is scary. A tire fitter down the road from us spent nine months eating through a straw and endured a whole bunch of re-constructive facial surgery when the bolts holding together the split rim of a forklift wheel he was inflating let go at around 65 psi.

Sorry for the bloke, horrible.

 

[catcher]

My vote would be a fitting or the like on the coupler shooting off under pressure like a bullet and causing significant injuries. Could sound like an explosion. I'll speak to some people

 

[Martrix]

need more info. Was the keg empty or full of liquid? Im thinking its a pressure related accident. Maybe keg was empty, newbie not shown how to change kegs has a go at at it. Turns pressure waaaay up or reg fails, keg explodes. Considering he lost his arm he was probably doing something to the keg when it went, IE releasing the excessive pressure. Worksafe are investigating, there will be reasons for what happened. Things like that don't just happen on their own.

 

[pk.sax]

I hope the findings are made public.

As for the keg exploding, could've been a damaged keg, dropped too hard on some occassion, with how they are treated, left out in the sun and then near frozen, pressurized and de-pressurized over and over again, a defect introduced can cause fatigue failure seemingly out of the blue.
Remember those rubber coated kegs that came from Europe? They discontinued that stuff because it was impossible to tell if the internal steel layer was damaged.
Feel really sorry for the guy, losing his arm for doing his job.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Pretty useless to surmise what happened, but I would imagine that threaded fittings would give way before an actual keg exploded under pressure.