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Re: Reinventing the CO2 Wheel



Chin See Ming wrote:
<<<Thanks all for the postings.Robert H. and Don Duerte might like to know I 
got a $266 quote from my local Air Products rep for the Air Products General 
Purpose 2 stage regulator, E12-215.>>>

Thanks for the heads-up on this. That price sounds just about right compared 
w/ the other 2 stage regulators that are priced on that comparison sheet in 
the article. One thing that I did not put down and that Tim Conwayte pointed 
out to me is that the regulators made by Air Products, Victor and BOC Gases 
are made for industries that have very specific and very precise needs. 
That's why the regulators are very expensive compared to beer tap 
regulators. In a way, putting beer tap regulators and the other types of 
regulators side by side is a bit unfair and can be misleading for the 
following reasons -

1)Someone who is trying to save money will immediately balk at the prices 
mentioned for the high quality regulators and might be turned off from going 
the compressed CO2 way. What I think I need to do is put something down in 
that article that shows the URL for the various CO2 setups that people use, 
which is found at http://www.geocities.com/bwe407/poll.html .  (Sidenote: 
I'll have this page updated real soon with some more editorial comments. 
There are a couple more people who I haven't included in there. I've been 
really busy and distracted lately.) This URL might show people that you do 
not have to go and get a $100-250 REGULATOR to have a good and reliable 
compressed gas system. Erik Olson, Tom Barr and customers of Dave Gomberg's 
regulator have used cheap beer tap regulators for years with great success. 
(Note: Don't anyone start a "flame-war" here about how good or bad Dave's 
system here. Dave warns that his system will "dump" gas when liquid CO2 runs 
out. This is the case w/ ALL regulators. Some regulators are better than 
others in not dumping. Dave's REGULATOR does exactly what it's supposed to 
do - regulate pressure. Thus, I can state that it's a successful REGULATOR.)

2)Quoting Tim Conwayte - "The regulators shown ... are industrial specialty 
gas cylinder regulators and comparing them to beer tap regulators or 
norgrens is like comparing a Land Crusier to an Isuzu Sidekick...These 
regulators are intended be used for deleverying CO2 to GCs or other 
sophisticated and demanding lab type equipment or experiments, not Cletus's 
beer keg." Very well put by Tim and something that should be included in 
that article. I want to update that article soon but with my friend's death 
I haven't had much time for a lot of things.

The thing to remember is that both beer tap regulators and industry 
specialty gas cylinder regulators are adequate for our purposes. They both 
will work great and do exactly what they are supposed to do ( regulate 
pressure ). It's what happens when liquid CO2 is no longer in the CO2 
cylinder that sets these regulators apart from each other in terms of price 
and quality. Beer tap regulators, from what I have gleaned, "dump" more gas 
per drop in input pressure than the industry regulators.

<<<The Victor model numbers mentioned by Don appear to be obsolete.  They do 
not appear on the victorequip.com site.  >>>

See http://www.victorhpi.com/ and look at the General Purpose Regulators and 
the High Purity Regulators.

<<<The "ultimate" system may well be an Air Products regulator with a Nupro 
needle valve, but I fear that the price will be daunting.  I figure over 
$300.>>>

Hehehehhe... what will this consist of? Nickel-plated, High Purity, 
Dual-stage, Dual-gauge regulator??   :D That's WAAAAYYYY overkill but I 
guess it would be fun to have if you have money to burn.

Don
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