Safety Issues
The electrolysis of water creates a combustible optimized mixture of 2 parts Hydrogen (H) and 1 part Oxygen (O). The combustion of this gas mixture, also termed as detonating gas, again creates a few drops of water in vacuum. The combustion of the gas mixture by burning as a stable flame is, provided the needed knowhow is available, absolutely safe. Only very low gas pressure levels do exist and also there is only about a four liter of gas in the system at any time.
No gas storage, it is JIT (just-in-time) gas production synchronized to the consumption. This means almost 1/100'000th of energy stored when compared to pressurized gas bottles, eg acetylene.
The Spirflame® has several independent multiple level staged gas excess pressure safety circuits.
Even a flash-back introduced into the Spirflame® interns will be safely absorbed by the hi-strength tank volume design, patented USA 5,217,507 / Europe 0462825 / Germany DE 691 17 354.
A Spirflame model 250HP produces per hour a max of 250 liters of gas mixture, of which 2/3 are hydrogen (167 liter).
The LIL (lower ignition level), is 4 vol%.
That means a model 250HP could feed its full gas output for 14 minutes into a closed / sealed volume of 1 m3 before the LIL of 4% would be reached.
A free gasing-out of a Spirflame® in a normal room environment can be considered as 100% safe.
Physics of the combustion of a mixture of 2 part Hydrogen + 1 part Oxygen
- Mixture of 2H + 1O burns / recombines into some drops of water.
- Vacuum results from this combustion. No pressurized media, as caused by combustion of ordinary gas will remain in system.
- During combustion pressure spike duration is about 8 - 15 millisec. Spike might rise for a few ms to 18 bar.
- Total duration of such a pressure increase is 15 to 25 millisec.
- Energy released by the combustion is mainly an acoustic <bang> + heat safely absorbed by the fluid and tank material.