liquid nitrogen cocktails

A British teenager had to undergo emergency surgery last week to get her stomach removed after she drank a liquid nitrogen cocktail at a wine bar. According to the Guardian, Gaby Scanlon from Lancashire, England, was celebrating her 18th birthday last Thursday when she began to feel sick, "becoming breathless and developing severe stomach pain." The teen was taken to the hospital, where she was "diagnosed with a perforated stomach."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/gaby-scanlon-british-teen-liquid-nitrogen-cocktail-stomach-removed_n_1948433.html

Don't they teach them anything in school nowadays? Who doesn't know that liquid nitrogen will do harm?

Use it to cool it down if you must, but never actually drink any of it.

I saw a promo on TV where they had what appeared to be a person handling a very large block of dry ice with their bare hands. Same Caveat applies here too.

BTW when you watched the show you saw they weren't really handling it with bare hands, but that's what was in the promo. With our headline ONLY reading public how long before people begin handling dry ice with their bare hands?

They will only do it once.

I am trying to wrap my head why she would suffer from a perforated stomach and no cryo burns of the mouth and esophagus. I am also trying to figure out how quick you would have to drink it too. I was a cryo tech in the marine corps and handled the stuff daily. I don't care if the jäger was 0*, if you put liquid nitrogen in it it's gonna gas off really quick. Think of how quick an ice cube melts when it's dropped in boiling water. The temperature difference is nearly twice that between jäger and liquid nitrogen.

We used to make stuff called Rocket Fuel with grain alcohol, Sprite/7up, and dry ice.

In reply to Duke:

We used to do the same except with Hawaiian punch and served it out of a gas jug....looked like off road diesel.

Anti-stance wrote: I am trying to wrap my head why she would suffer from a perforated stomach and no cryo burns of the mouth and esophagus. I am also trying to figure out how quick you would have to drink it too. I was a cryo tech in the marine corps and handled the stuff daily. I don't care if the jäger was 0*, if you put liquid nitrogen in it it's gonna gas off really quick. Think of how quick an ice cube melts when it's dropped in boiling water. The temperature difference is nearly twice that between jäger and liquid nitrogen.

The liquid nitrogen probably froze a layer of water around it, which then melted after it reached her stomach.

Best practice would probably be to pass the mixed drink through a strainer before serving so that any coasted LN2 lumps large enough to cause harm would be removed.

What happened to the good ol' days of teenagers using beer bongs and making mix drinks in fast food cups?

RossD wrote: What happened to the good ol' days of teenagers using beer bongs and making mix drinks in fast food cups?

You ended up with stupid songs like red solo cup, that's what.

In reply to HiTempguy:

Soooo true

fromeast2west wrote:

Anti-stance wrote: I am trying to wrap my head why she would suffer from a perforated stomach and no cryo burns of the mouth and esophagus. I am also trying to figure out how quick you would have to drink it too. I was a cryo tech in the marine corps and handled the stuff daily. I don't care if the jäger was 0*, if you put liquid nitrogen in it it's gonna gas off really quick. Think of how quick an ice cube melts when it's dropped in boiling water. The temperature difference is nearly twice that between jäger and liquid nitrogen.

The liquid nitrogen probably froze a layer of water around it, which then melted after it reached her stomach. Best practice would probably be to pass the mixed drink through a strainer before serving so that any coasted LN2 lumps large enough to cause harm would be removed.

The only problem I see with that is the expansion rate of liquid nitrogen to gas form is almost 700:1. I wouldn't think a layer of water going to hold back that kind of pressure from expansion and water isn't exactly a good insulator for heat transfer(is it?).

I have probably made hundreds of liquid nitrogen bomb at the lox pad using anything from 20oz coke bottles to gatorade bottles. Due to the lack of threads and the surface area of thy\e cap on Gatorade bottles the cap would just pop off instead of blowing the bottle itself apart. It couldn't handle the pressure and would shatter the cap or break the seal in seconds. I just don't know how a thin layer of Ice could hold back pressure but then again its a smaller scale. Also, the chick did get injured so there has to be an explanation.

I tested some dangerous E36 M3 though. I tried duck taping the bottle, then filling it and putting the cap on. It basically made the cap shatter. Then I decided to tape the cap after filling it. That was loud as E36 M3.

In reply to Anti-stance:

A buddy split the junction of his thumb and palm playing with dry ice bombs. Lots of stitches.

I play with dry-ice professionally as a stage tech... fun stuff and potentially dangerous if done wrong

Anti-stance wrote:

fromeast2west wrote:

Anti-stance wrote: I am trying to wrap my head why she would suffer from a perforated stomach and no cryo burns of the mouth and esophagus. I am also trying to figure out how quick you would have to drink it too. I was a cryo tech in the marine corps and handled the stuff daily. I don't care if the jäger was 0*, if you put liquid nitrogen in it it's gonna gas off really quick. Think of how quick an ice cube melts when it's dropped in boiling water. The temperature difference is nearly twice that between jäger and liquid nitrogen.

The liquid nitrogen probably froze a layer of water around it, which then melted after it reached her stomach. Best practice would probably be to pass the mixed drink through a strainer before serving so that any coasted LN2 lumps large enough to cause harm would be removed.

The only problem I see with that is the expansion rate of liquid nitrogen to gas form is almost 700:1. I wouldn't think a layer of water going to hold back that kind of pressure from expansion and water isn't exactly a good insulator for heat transfer(is it?).

Liquid nitrogen forms a vapor layer around itself, the heat from a body is enough to generate it. You can hold it in your hand's if you are so inclined for a period of time. You can even submerge your hand for a short period of time as long as the temp of your hand does not drop to much. The layer acts as a isolation barrier.

Having said that you can definitely drink the stuff. Your going to be dead or in a world of hurt though. Most time it will leak down into the lower stomach and then blow the intestines out. There are cases of people loosing 75% of there lower intestinal track and having there stomach blow out.

In reply to wearymicrobe:

Well, that is a good point. The outlet/waste liquid from one of liquid to gas exchangers, you could run your bare hand through the stream quickly, even splash it at someone. Specifically it was for filling LAU-7 tubes on pre-Delta model F-18s.

Edit: Because I love to hotlink... the tan tube in the pic is the said LAU-7 tube. I probably filled a thousand of them on 3 continents.

You would think any thing you can order at a bar/restaurant SHOULD be safe.

Unfortunate for her.

Didn't she watch Terminator 2?

The perfect drink for washing down my milipedes

In reply to Anti-stance:

Ok cool, but what does it do?

this sounds like a old NCIS episode

Anti-stance wrote: I have probably made hundreds of liquid nitrogen bomb at the lox pad using anything from 20oz coke bottles to gatorade bottles.

Add warm water and ping pong balls. Same process, but a lot more fun to watch (...and more work to clean up afterwards):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfiR1Rde7dI&feature=player_embedded

Who knew that this hand puppet could have taught physics?

Where I work we measure LN2 in tons rather than gallons.

In reply to nickel_dime:

In air separation, we measured in tons, but in our service equipment we went by gallons.

In reply to Strizzo:

The LAU-7 is the launcher for sidewinder missiles.