A lot.
A compressor at a friend's business exploded this morning, taking out a bathroom in the process. There are a few more photos of the damage on the GRM Facebook page. Yes, he says it made a loud bang.
A lot.
A compressor at a friend's business exploded this morning, taking out a bathroom in the process. There are a few more photos of the damage on the GRM Facebook page. Yes, he says it made a loud bang.
What was the failure mode? Did the high pressure cut off fail or did the tank just fail? That's scary...makes me want to move my compressor outside into a shed.
I've always wondered, as my compressor is pumping to 150psi, what would happen if the regulator didn't work.
Does not look like something you could walk away from if you were standing next to it.
Just saw that on Facebooks. Most of the comments from the other photos suggested corrosion caused a weld to fail.
Wow.
How does one prevent this? Aside from draining often? That's scary.
Enough to kill one of my family members years ago.
Yikes! How old was it? My compressor is over 20 years old and I'm starting to think it may be due for replacement.
Was he using synthetic oil, cambell hausfeld listed on their site switching oils can cause an explosive reaction. Something with carbon... That looks like an explosion happened not the tank failing from corrosion. The corrosion scenerio would just make the spring tension in the tank release. At worse there would be a hop of the tank...Not nearly as dramatic.
A good warning for everyone to isolate their compressor tanks no matter the cause.
last compressor I saw fail.. split the seam on the tank from one side to the other due to rust.. Makes you wonder why they put the seams on the bottom of the tanks.
Thankfully nobody and nothing was damaged.. except for my shorts when it went
That looks like a weld failure to me. That's a lot of destruction for a small compressor tank. I'd hate to see what would happen if the 80gal tank in my shop cut loose at 120psi.
Yeah... it kinda makes me re-think my desire to install a 80 gal compressor in my basement. 
Granted, when I do get a large compressor like that, I plan to add an automatic drain at the same time. My current compressor (a Craftsman similar in size to this one) has been drained far too infrequently. 
New thread topic coming soon- Learn me: compressor draining.
My speculation is in an explosion/combustion the tank would rupture at the weakest points like the rusty areas/ seams.
I have had 2 40 year old tanks go from rust now without any boom. This stuff freaks me out anyway. As a precaution I have separated the motor/compressor from the tanks. If anything blows it will be the rubber hose first like a fuse. This takes the spark away from the combustion chamber.
I always leave the drain cracked just a tiny bit to avoid any puddling inside the tank.
SOP at most places I've worked was to drain the compressors every night. Open the breakers and open the valves and walk away.
Where I am now, we don't like to waste precious compressed air (that costs electricity to make you know 
) so about 8 years ago we have an automatic valve that opens it for a couple seconds every hour or so. It empties into a 5gal bucket that I put a hardline into so the air goes in tangentially so it swirls around instead of spraying.
After two years of forgetting to check the bucket every now and then, it finally overflowed
Me thinks I need to look into an automatic drain valve....
Makes me think I shouldn't mount a compressor next to the bathroom.
And suddenly I'm glad that I drain my compressor every 2 weeks or when I'm not going to use it for a while....
I've always wondered what that would happen and it's just as scary looking as I imagined.
Yeah, I think it was the oil and the carbon thing. 
It most cases, a large leak would occur letting the air out with a whoosh.
This had to have been a catastrophic failure for sure.
Compressed air is hugely powerful. Years ago I was working with my dad testing truck split rim failures. We had to test various scenarios. We had a test cadge we put the tire and rim in made from 3 inch chrommolly steel tuning spaced 6" on center. We had one fail and it bent the tubes on the side of the cadge 6-8" out on both sides. We changed over to testing with water after that one.
For what it's worth, the maybe 3/4hp compressor and 20 gallon tank that used to struggle along at our machine shop went something like 20 years without being drained. The tank was almost full of water.
Got a pair of three phase 5hp compressors on an 80gal tank now. Air volume NOT a problem.
(that also has an auto-drain, and I put little standpipes on the compressor oil drains so that you can change the oil easily without removing the compressor or making a huge mess. Just a foot or so of pipe, an elbow, another short length, and a cap. Maintenance that is easy is maintenance that you won't avoid doing)
Scary stuff. Other than auto release valves, is there any other 'engineered' weak spot that could be added to prevent a full bore explosion?
Knurled wrote: For what it's worth, the maybe 3/4hp compressor and 20 gallon tank that used to struggle along at our machine shop went something like 20 years without being drained. The tank was almost full of water.
Years ago when I drove commercial, company bought a new used truck. I went up to upstate NY to get it and I thought it was aweful. It rode well, had good power, but the brakes sucked something terrible.. first truck stop I got to, I got under it to check the air tanks over the rear axle.. each one has a press release for draining them.
I get on my back like I did with my usual truck, and pushed up on both of them with my feet.. the amount of nasty, dirty, and smelly water that ran down my legs was unheard of.
In short, both tanks were almost completely full of water.. and eventually the entire rear braking system needed to be replaced because some nitwit couldn't be bothered to drain the tanks even annually
Gearheadotaku wrote: Scary stuff.
Air compressors have a pressure relief valve that should open if the tank pressure gets too high, but since tank failures can happen from other reasons (like corrosion or failed welds) at lower pressures it would be hard to protect against them.
I once saw the aftermath of a home air compressor where the pressure switch that controlled the motor failed, plus the pressure relief valve was stuck shut. It just kept running until the tank exploded. It made a mess of the car that was parked next to it, fortunately no one was in the garage when it went off.
Gearheadotaku wrote: Scary stuff.
If you are on the rusty tank theory then there are aluminum tanks. Or you could pump into a small tank before the big tank and let the small sacrificial tank collect the water. Then replace the small water tank periodically. If you are on the over pumping theory you could match the power of the compressor to the motor so the motor stalls and trips the breaker rather than over pumping.The auto drain setups are only like $10 for the hft cheapies. Or the suggestion i mentioned already for the carbon synthetic CH theory. Isolate the tank from the compressor head via some length of hose.
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