Stainless Steel Lpg Gas Tank Fermenter

[seravitae]

I would suggest that if you are going to use a container like this, washing it out might not get rid of all of the residual vapours, which is bad for health/taste and also the aformentioned explosion hazard.

Since it is a pressure vessel likely it can tolerate a small vaccum, I would suggest clean the hell out of it as best you can with water and ethanol, and then use a refrigeration line dryer (vacuum pump) to pull a hard vaccum on it - this will lower the boiling point of the volatile liquids such that they boil at a room temp, and will get sucked out the vacuum pump.



Your fellow fridgie might not appreciate this, so make sure he knows what you're doing, and I would suggest putting a cold trap in line with the vessel. Easy to build. The bonus of this is that as you are pulling a hard vacuum on the vessel, the oxygen is removed preferentially due to statistics, so even if you boil the vapour, there will be little to no oxygen in the vessel to cause accidental ignition.

I do this pretty much every day in the lab with extremely explosive/flammable solvents like ether, so it's safe. When you go to bring it back up to atmospheric pressure, use a valve to connect an argon/nitrogen cylinder to it, such that it repressurises with the inert gas.

 

[domonsura]

Been there done that, not worth trying unless you want to do a huge amount of work for nothing. The caps on the ends of these cylinders are pressed, and when inserted into the cylinder itself and welded in, they leave a lip of 8-10mm protruding on the inside. This provides a 'ledge' on the inside at the bottom of the vessel that sediment will build up in, and is near impossible to clean effectively enough to use as a fermenter. The same reasons also make it virtually impossible to grind the lip down to remove it without perforating the wall in the vicinity of the weld, it makes it even harder that all of this needs to be done at arms length..........
I had two goes at it just to satisfy myself that it was a waste of time, the first was a disaster that now houses a citric acid bath, and the second was also completely unacceptable for a fermentation environment and ended up being turned into a BBQ for want of something useful to do with it - which it does an awesome job of by the way.
I flushed mine with water, drained, then purged with CO2 prior to cutting open with plasma cutter, but unless you wanted a BBQ I can't see why you'd bother.

 

[Carbonator]

Thanks domonsura, for putting an end to my wine storage idea!

I do have one SS LPG tank thats been on the "gunna" list for the last 8 years to fit to my car to run the Nathan P5 Locomotive Whistle. The whistle array is about the same size as a 4 cylinder engine, so not much available space for that, let alone the tank!

Shame about that internal lip!

 

[Sammus]

Been there done that, not worth trying unless you want to do a huge amount of work for nothing. The caps on the ends of these cylinders are pressed, and when inserted into the cylinder itself and welded in, they leave a lip of 8-10mm protruding on the inside. This provides a 'ledge' on the inside at the bottom of the vessel that sediment will build up in, and is near impossible to clean effectively enough to use as a fermenter. The same reasons also make it virtually impossible to grind the lip down to remove it without perforating the wall in the vicinity of the weld, it makes it even harder that all of this needs to be done at arms length..........
I had two goes at it just to satisfy myself that it was a waste of time, the first was a disaster that now houses a citric acid bath, and the second was also completely unacceptable for a fermentation environment and ended up being turned into a BBQ for want of something useful to do with it - which it does an awesome job of by the way.
I flushed mine with water, drained, then purged with CO2 prior to cutting open with plasma cutter, but unless you wanted a BBQ I can't see why you'd bother.

haven't seen you around for a while, welcome back! :icon_cheers: