dry ice

[jacoviii]

i have made tons of dry ice boms

do you think you could use it to make psi for a water gun

[C-A_99]

Dry ice is the first thing explained here: http://forums.sscentral.org/t3876/ Stay safe and don't let dry ice have anything to do with water warfare. Also, as a side note, clean up your posts a bit. Capitalization, punctuation, and other basics to posting help make them easier to read.

With that said, welcome to the Super Soaker Central forums.

[Specter]

dry ice bombs are unsafe. I've seen videos of them on Youtube. One blew up early while the person was setting it down, lets just say it didn't end well.

As for using it with water guns, no it's not recommended and EXTREMELY unsafe to use. The extremely low temperatures expanding gas is not safe for PVC and I wouldn't recommend it with any other pipe type either because of the low temperature. You have to be really careful when handling dry ice unless you don't want to feel your hand for a week or two.

And Welcome to SSC (one year later) lol, I see your join date is July 07. I guess you joined but never posted till now.

[Silence]

Welcome to Super Soaker Central!

Dry ice may be possible with a metal water gun (which can take more pressure and lower temperatures than PVC), but we're still not recommending it. Experiment at your own risk.

[Hunt_and_Annoy]

I say if you can control dry ice well enough to make predictable bombs, and know enough chemistry to predict the expansion and not blow yourself up doing it, go ahead and try it. Just be careful and write out all the equations first, and make sure to reinforce it twice as much as you think to need. Make careful note of the use of equations. If you're a professor at MIT in chemistry, I would have no fears in saying go ahead. But unless you know what you're doing very well, tread lightly.

[Drenchenator]

If you are going to try this, use steel pipe. PVC will most certainly break from both the high pressures (about 900 psi) and the temperature. All that you would be doing is making a giant bomb. Please run through the correct equations beforehand as well; this kind of gun has been thought of before and is possible, albeit highly dangerous if done incorrectly.

[Silence]

Fortunately, I don't think the pressure will hit 900 PSI. That's the vapor pressure for carbon dioxide, the pressure at which it becomes a gas, but if you put a little dry ice in a large compartment, the pressure should equalize and drop.

[cantab]

I'd say it's a bad idea. The low temperature makes the materials you might use not behave very well (not just plastic, some metals weaken when cold as well). You might even freeze the water!

If you really want to go ahead with it, be as safe as possible. Use a pressure release valve (or better, more than one) set to well under the rated pressure at low temperatures of the pipework, and surround all pressurised parts with a robust outer case (to contain any explosion if one did happen).

Also, even if you think it's safe, don't be surprised if people won't let you use it in wars with/against them. And if something does go wrong and it injures someone, you could be in for a civil or even criminal lawsuit against you. I really don't think it's worth it. High pressure isn't what you need to create a high range and/or output gun (CPSes use lower pressures than XPs), and convenience isn't worth the hazards.

[Ben]

With CO2 or HPA being significantly more predictable and easy to work with I don't think there's a reason to use dry ice if you just want something you can put on your gun and start firing with. Dry ice is very dangerous if not used correctly. A CO2 tank on the other hand gives you the same product without the danger. There's no real reason to use dry ice unless you just want to be different or dangerous.

Use dry ice at your own risk. I can not and will not recommend its use.

[cantab]

I was wondering, how well do those little CO2 canisters work?

[Silence]

They work well enough. They store the carbon dioxide as liquid, which is about 500 times denser than gas (it depends on the temperature though), so CO2 canisters store a lot per their volume. The only problem is that you have to go and get them filled up at a shop.

[Ben]

From what I've read CO2 can be inconsistent due to temperature changes. A good regulator fixes that for the most part. Aside from that it should work well if you don't use it with plastic pipe.