Even worse smelling than acetylene generated from carbide
with plain water was that generated using urine. It was not uncommon
when water was scarce for people to pee into their lamps. I've even
had to do that in a low crawlway, which requires a bit of
acrobatics. I don't know what got added to the gas in those cases,
but it was foul.
Acetylene is not poisonous, but it is an asphyxiation hazard
in confined space. However the hydrogen sulfide, phosphines and
ammonia generated from impurities in carbide are highly
poisonous. It's not a good idea to breathe any significant quantity of these.
Mark
At 01:37 PM 8/24/2012, Diana Tomchick wrote:
On Aug 24, 2012, at 11:37 AM, Carl Kunath wrote:
> With experience, cavers became expert in firing a lamp by
beginning a flow of water, sniffing the tip for the tell-tale odor
of acetylene, trapping just the
It's not the acetylene you smelled--acetylene has no odor--but the
impurities in the carbide, which are sulfur containing compounds
(hence the "rotten egg" or hydrogen disulfide smell of burning
carbide). When I went caving in the Slovak republic about ten years
ago, many of the local cavers used carbide as batteries were quite
expensive there at that time (this was before they entered the
European Union). The first trip I went on was in a region of the
country near the capital city of Bratislava, and one of the cavers
knew I was trained as a chemist. He pointed out to me that the
carbide he was using, which was from a Slovak factory, had different
impurities than the American carbide I was used to, as it didn't
smell like rotten eggs, but had more of a phosphorus smell to
it--and he was right. You'd have to be a synthetic chemist to
recognize that smell as originating from phosphorus compounds, but
anyone with a normal sense of smell would correctly differentiate it
from the rotten egg smell of American carbide.
Diana
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