Emptying fire extinguishers

   / Emptying fire extinguishers #21  
AlanB said:
We thought about a wet vac with a drywall filter in it, have not tried it yet though.

A regular vac will clog the filter pretty quickly. The only way the cyclonic gets away with it is to spin separate most all the dust out of the airstream like a centrifuge clarifys a fluid and settles out particles by putting it under some "Gs"... Since this stuff is designed to be propelled/disbursed by a gas stream, IMO, the cleanest way to do it is by moving as little air as possible.
 
   / Emptying fire extinguishers #22  
I guess what I'd do would be find an appropriate cyclone, and then make a nozzle that adapts to the fire extinguisher that you then force air through to "fluidize" the fire extinguisher media. That's how the stuff is designed to work, the air you pump into the thing will help the material flow out. Optimally this nozzle you design will also contain an outlet for the fluidized extinguisher media to go.

I'm going to venture a guess you shouldn't need too much air flowing into there to help the powder want to come out. The filter will likely be necessary though, otherwise you'll get a big cloud. You might try it on one or two with very low air pressure, and tipping it into garbage bags or something, might get lucky and not make too big of a cloud, if you use super low air pressure to fluidize.

You might want to consider some PPE if you haven't already, such as HEPA respirator cartridge, just so you don't end up breathing too much of it. Whether it's necessarily harmful or not, a bunch of fine dust in the lungs probably isn't the best thing to have.
 
   / Emptying fire extinguishers
  • Thread Starter
#23  
Mike, Hazmat, thanks, I called those folks today and the guy I was speaking with is going to run it by their cheif engineer and get his reccomendations and then get back with me.

We are thinking along the lines of the 2hp Gorrilla, coupled to a 35 gallon discharge barrel, but will go with what they reccomend.

For scale, so far this month, just shy of 300 to dispose of.
 

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