Australian gas bottle colors

General Questions
#1

Any Aussie welders here? Just got done seeing Danny Deckchair, where a bloke in Sydney floats away on a deckchair and a bunch of balloons. Hours later he’s accidently shot down by fireworks and has adventures in the small town he finds himself in. On the goofs page it’s asserted that, being filled with helium, the balloons shouldn’t have exploded when the fireworks struck them. I noticed that in the scene and thought, “Huh. Must have been filled with hydrogen.”

So, after all this exposition (pant, pant) comes the question. The gas bottles Danny and his mates were filling the balloons with were tan. Hydrogen or helium?

#2

I don’t think the colors of the cylinders mean anything at all.
Right now I have a white helium tank, several 40# ‘silver’ propane tanks and a freon tank which off the top of my head is either white and/or yellow. At home I have white and gray propane tanks.

Of course all tanks should be labeled to tell the user what is in them.
Gas cans on the other hand are different. IIRC red=gasoline, blue=water, yellow=kerosene.

#3

IANAAussie and IANAWelder, but looking at the BOC Australia website:

Oxygen - Black
Nitrogen and oxygen-free nitrogen - Pewter
Argon - Blue
LPG - Aluminium
Acetylene - Claret
Hydrogen - Signal red
Carbon dioxide - Green grey
Helium - Brown
(Cite)

Australian Gas Cylinder ID chart (PDF)…

#4

Thank you, Szlater. Looks like helium it was, then. No boom.

#5

:smack: Missed the Aussie part. I mean I saw it, but I didn’t think about it when I answered. At least in the states, from what I can tell, the color of the tanks seems to have nothing to do with the contents.

#6

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially when it comes to medical gases.

#7

Maybe it’s different with medical gasses. But for the consumer, I know I’ve seen multiple colors for the same gas.

#8


http://www.scif.com/safety/safetymeeting/Article.asp?ArticleID=26