Cutting an oil tank

[Heyseed]

I picked up an old heating oil tank and want to cut it in half. I am going to make a large smoker out of it. It is pretty empty but has a little oil in it. What is the safest way to cut this thing. Should I flood it with water? I want to use a circular saw with a metal cutting blade.

 

[Gary in da UP]

Sawszall

 

[RickieBlue]

Circular saw will work just fine and does a good job too! I never had any problems....once opened up, you will be surprised at the fuel jell on the surface..I usually start on one end and let the flame front progress slowly to the other end..have a hose ready to help control that!

 

[bill b va]

when i did mine i piled up a big pile of dead limbs and old lumber in the back field put the tank on top saturated the wood with diesel fuel lit it and ran back aways . didn't go boom but made a loud noise like a jet enginefor awhile

 

[old]

BTDT and the only safe way is to build a fire under it first and make sure any and all opening on the tank are open. Also have that burn site in and open area because that tank may go for a long flight. Yep seen them go flying and if your not in an open area it can be bad. Any way of cutting one that can cause a spark is a go way to die unless it is burner out first like I say to do it

 

[Wardner]

You are all going to call me crazy, but I have cut (the long way) more than forty 275 gallon tanks with an oxy-propane torch. They all had heating oil and sludge in them. For about a year I was scavageing oil. I now have a lifetime oil/Diesel supply considering my current usage rate.

Never had an anxious moment. I did not use CO2, water, dirt, or anything else. I did absolutely no prep, period. I now store scrap metal, cord wood and coal in the half tanks.

Many years ago I talked to the cutter at a tank disposal company. He had probably torch-cut several thousand tanks without incident. These were mostly condemned gas station tanks. I draw the line on gas tanks but oil is safe.

 

[Wardner]

Old,

Next time you see one fly, get a photo. I don't believe you. You have no concept of what is going on inside that tank. I can tell you because I have been there.

The only flame will be over a puddle. Keep the puddle small and the limited amount of heat produced will not ignite any residue that might be on the walls. Should you be foolish enough to have a large puddle, you may get a larger flame but it is self limiting because it will be oxygen starved. The tank will never achieve flight.

Here is a perfect example of what is occasionally wrong with this site. "Conventional wisdom" is prevalent and it overrides actual experience. Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong. We saw a ton of conventional wisdom from all the fruit-loop experts re the Chile miners. Most of that advice and preparation was over-kill and unnecessary. All that was needed was a couple of people who knew how to drill and a few more to stay in communication with the miners so that they could get what they needed for their comfort. This should get a good response.

 

[circus]

At night I once drilled a bunch of 3" holes then torched one in half. You could see the fumes building up inside while torching then wooop, the fumes ignited with flames shooting out the holes ten feet. Scared the heck out of me but no harm done.

 

[Bus Driver]

Oil as a flash point above 150 deg. On a cold day, use a sawzall.

 

[showcrop]

As others have said Fuel oil is not explosive.After many years in fire service, when training with fuel fires you had to plan ahead and have good weather or you may not get enough heat to get it to burn. I repaired the drain fitting on a fuel tank last spring while the little bit of fuel was burning inside.

 

[MarkB_MI]

The problem with cutting tanks and oil drums is you have no idea what might be in them. Forty tanks is a lot of unknowns; all it would take would be one tank that a homeowner decided to use to dispose of some old gasoline and you would be reading this post in braille.

If someone torched a thousand gasoline tanks without an explosion, then none of them had an explosive mixture of gas inside. The odds of that have to be astronomical. There's more to that story than you're telling.

 

[Heyseed]

Thanks for all the ideas, I still plan on using the circular saw, but I am going to try and flush the tank with soapy water first. I figure that will remove or dilute most of whatever oil is still in there.

 

[old]

But the problem is you can not be 100% sure what all has been in one and if at any point it had gas in it then it can in fact be a big bomb BTDT and seen more then one fly or at least made a big flame shoot out. I'll burn them before I cut them to be on the safe side only takes one blowing up in your face to make for a dead day

 

[Anonymous-0]

Cutting any tank without any safety precautions is just an accident waiting to happen. I've welded fuel tanks but rinsed them with hot water/steam a couple times and then lit a piece of paper and threw it by the opening just in case there was still some flammable residue left. You can never be sure what was in a used tank. Dave

 

[old]

Yep that is why I do the trash pile burn before I even think about cutting one open. Seen way to many take off like a rocket when some one tried to cut one open

 

[Anonymous-0]

drop a little dry ice in there and you should have no problems.

 

[rlp in Co.]

My boss told me to braze a hole on a diesel tank on a truck. I told him no way, he said diesel won't explode. I said well if it won't explode then YOU braze it. So he did, but about 10 seconds after he started, it exploded. Luckly he wasn't hurt but the tank looked like a big balloon and had several splits in it. My advice would be use dry ice like someone else said, or put a hose with exhaust from a little motor. I used the exhaust hose trick once with no problem. Don't use a diesel engine, they have excess oxygen in the exhaust. I know a welder who uses carbon dioxide or argon gas. He will weld a tank when it's half full of gas or diesel.

 

[PJH]

My buddy worked at a Mack truck dealership. I stopped to pick him up after work one evening. I walked into the shop area (he was a body man/painter) and all of the mechanics were hiding behind trucks and peeking over at him welding a spout on a diesel fuel tank. You could hear the fuel sizzling as the hot metal dropped into the tank. I got out of there.

It didn't flash.

Crazy, in my opinion.
Paul

 

[tiresntracks]

Don't let any of these guys tell you that heating oil won't explode. Technically they're right, and technically, gasoline won't explode, either, but the vapor from gas, heating oil, or any other petroleum product can and will explode. You may not heat the oil enough to vaporize it, or maybe you will, do you want to take that chance?

 

[Anonymous-0]

Sawzall.

 

[trucker 40]

It might not explode as easy as gas will,but it can explode.The thing is the fumes.A tank thats not full will explode easier than a tank thats full.This is one of those things that lots of people will get away with a bunch of times and then one day they will blow a tank up.

Around here a few years back they were working on a grain elevator with a torch and grain dust blew up.I think it killed a couple of people.Well Im sure most people would think that grain dust will not explode,but it did.If the conditions are right a lot of things can explode.

Another thing too,there were 2 or 3 people around here that did this.They were fueling up a diesel truck and had accidentally grabbed a gas nozzle instead the diesel nozzle and while they were filling it up,lit a lighter or a match to see how much fuel they had in the tank and it exploded.One of them burned both of his ears off.Gas and diesel mixed makes a mixture than can be set off by static electricity.Its real dangerous and a spark can set it off and it will explode.

Now say you buy a tank.You decide to cut it.Somebody had gas and diesel in the tank.

 

[mmidlam]

put some chunks of dry ice in the tank an hour before you start cutting. Make sure there is always some dry ice left as you cut. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide (CO2).

 

[crazylocha]

Agree. Its all in the cleanout first. If not THOROUGHLY cleaned, almost any type of residues can be ignited. Depends on what using to cut open as to yours odds of getting ignition. Even electrical saws and sawzalls can spark one under right circumstances.

Worked at a scrap metal yard for while. Was only thing that stopped everyone from working. Would kick all the customers out and our little guy that did cutting would set off the burn out with an oxy/cet and run like crazy. Had one of those big 1000 gallon jobs jump 2 piles and several junked cars. Was a sight to behold. Had another "diesel" tank that fumes sure did smell like something else. Our man had fun that day. Yard closed at noon and about 2p.m. he end cut it and sure enough it traveled about 75 feet through piles. He had the biggest grin I had ever seen. He won 10 bucks off the boss betting it would go more than 20 feet after boss had us pile all kinds of stuff in front of it. Now those guys were nuts. Same place had a few pins shear on the knuckles of the big grappler while tossing cars onto tall pile by the shredder. More than once did grapple and all end up in neighboring scrap yards parking lot. Think they stopped parking over there... eventually.

Depending on how they were sitting when set off, YES I have seen a few get airborne etc. Always a case of not cleaned out. Just be careful.

The dry ice(co2) is about displacing free oxy and bringing ambient vapor temps down to make it harder to combust.

 

[JDseller]

Now that I have a wire welder I keep argon around. So I fill any fuel tanks with it before any welding/cutting. Before that I usually washed the tanks with hot water and soap. It takes several times to get all of the fuel residue out of diesel tanks.