109LWB:
It’s ethanol I think, so is probably worse than petrol.
It is ethanol but where are they taking a lot of it:?:
GasGas:
The liquid petrol will burn…the vapour will, at the right concentration in the atmosphere, explode!I could be wrong, but I thought petrol tankers now had vapour recovery systems, so the benzine etc didn’t vent to the atmosphere. Can a tanker driver enlighten us?
I think you’ll find, that you could actually extinguish a lit match with liquid petrol! It’s vapours that burn, the liquid actually has no volatility.
cracker-bar:
, the liquid actually has no volatility.
I’m gonna be pedantic here mate and say I think that you’re getting your terms slightly mixed up. Petrol liquid isn’t very flammable but it is very volatile, volatility meaning the speed it turns to vapour, volatility has nothing to do with how flammable or not a substance is, there are some very volatile liquids out there that you’d struggle to set fire to.
fuel air mixture think carbaretter
flour in the right mixture can explode
also the americans have the blu 96 air fuel bomb
In answer to the first question about if tanker drivers live to old age I drove tankers from 21 years old in 1966 until I retired at 65 and have never had to tie a knot on a rope.
I started on tar/ creosote/ acid tankers which were loaded up to the level of various washers hanging on a wire dangling from the manlid which meant that when it was getting near the level I had to put my head in the steam and fumes to try and see the level. These fumes I now know are carcinogenic which is why you can not get creosote for the garden fence anymore. I always had a lovely sun tanned looking face though.
I also used to help with the repairs on the trucks and blew out countless brake drums with the airline breathing in all that dodgy dust as well. All the valves and manlids on the tankers were packed with asbestos . A lot of pipework was lagged in asbestos that we used to mix up like plaster and smear on the pipes by hand. Old stuff was removed by smashing it off with a hammer. All of this with no mask of course.
I moved onto petrol tankers in 1976 and spent years breathing in the lead and fumes as you had to hold the lever open on the loading arm and were right next to the manlid. If there was no management about you could wedge the lever open with a dipstick and stand back in the fresh air.
Must have been the late eighties when all this additive was introduced and we had a tank of it in the lorry yard.We would carry a bucket full of it up the ladder and pour one in each compartment before going round to the fuel depot and load. This was replaced with a tank carried on the tanker and it was injected while unloading. I had this tank leak on the road one day and someone rang the fire brigade who guessed which supermarket I was heading for and arrived in force the same time as me. Turns out the additive is carcinogenic as well and they put all the safety gear on to deal with it. The additive tanks were done away with not long after.
I had a few years of breathing in Benzine fumes before bottom loading became the norm and survived to retirement.
I am now 71 and have just got home from my house in Portugal where I had to move about 5ton of sand and chippings with a wheel barrow because they have not heard of dumpy bags and it was dumped in the road.
I do admit to getting a bit breathless nowadays though, I wonder why.
Regards All Phil.
Bloody marvellous what we used to (hopefully) get away with when we were younger and less well informed. Hope you’ve got another good few healthy ish years to go numbum.
GasGas:
The liquid petrol will burn…the vapour will, at the right concentration in the atmosphere, explode!I could be wrong, but I thought petrol tankers now had vapour recovery systems, so the benzine etc didn’t vent to the atmosphere. Can a tanker driver enlighten us?
You’re correct GasGas.
A tanker full of recovered vapour is only one side of the fire triangle because the vapour concentration is 100% and well outside of the fuel/air flammability limit (exceeds UEL) for most flammable liquids, so there’s another myth busted. 
A petrol (other flammable liquids are available) tanker that discharges having opened a manlid to equalise the vacuum caused by discharge would of course contain a potentially flammable fuel/air mixture because as the cargo disappears, it is replaced with fresh air.
Hence vapour recovery systems. 
robroy:
Of course it is did you not see the Stobby episode about their tanker driver, apparently it was a ‘Mobile bomb’ that he drives, or some b/s like that
In my petrol tanker driving days I ran out of hours delivering to a Tesco petrol station. I called the police and they evacuated the whole town to be on the safe side. I was flown by helicopter to a five star hotel 50 miles away and back in the morning. The towns residents had to sleep in the leisure centre two towns over. Thems were the days. Safety first and all that
robroy:
Of course it is did you not see the Stobby episode about their tanker driver, apparently it was a ‘Mobile bomb’ that he drives, or some b/s like that
I saw that one and he was leaving to the depot to do his deliveries with his lift axle up on the unit!
098Joe:
He was leaving to the depot to do his deliveries with his lift axle up on the unit!
So what, I used to leave loaded for my deliveries with the unit lift axle up!?
There is a thread on facebook’s fuel tanker’s forum, along these lines:
“If any drivers old n new who worked on top loadin gantry are showin symptons similar to Altsheimers get checked for lead poisoning …check symptons on web…”
Is bottom loading safer than top loading?
Is there much top loading still being done, and where, what companies still top load fuels?
vapour recovery…the tanker dumps the petrol into the underground tanks,and receives a tankfull of recovered vapour…the tanker drives back to base and fills up,dumping his vapour into the storage tank.the storage tank gets filled,and blows the vapour out everywhere,hence protecting the environment. or is that not how it works. I used to own a petrol station and that’s what the delivery drivers used to tell me before I decided to bin the petrol sales ad ake some money for myself instead of being a tax collector for the government… 
cracker-bar:
GasGas:
The liquid petrol will burn…the vapour will, at the right concentration in the atmosphere, explode!I could be wrong, but I thought petrol tankers now had vapour recovery systems, so the benzine etc didn’t vent to the atmosphere. Can a tanker driver enlighten us?
I think you’ll find, that you could actually extinguish a lit match with liquid petrol! It’s vapours that burn, the liquid actually has no volatility.
well done sir , liquid will not burn only vapour with the correct percentage of oxygen added will burn thats why an empty tanker is more dangerous especially if struck by lightning or affected by static electricity ,propane gas carried in a tanker at roughly 30,000 ltrs when you think that one litre of compressed gas if released will cover an area equal to one and a half football pitches before the correct amount of oxygen is mixed with it to allow ignition,happy to help
Knew a young lady once who had this thing about being made love too on a plastic sheet while covered in Duckhams oil…no she didn’t state what viscosity to use but gave a whole new meaning to an oil change with full service, would that have been classed as dangerous? And would I have had to wear my hi-vis jacket? I never took her up on that offer, looking back I may have missed out on something, shame.
To all the people sending pm’s on my post above, sorry fellers it was a long time ago I don’t have her phone number anymore.
Ossie
scrotumscratcher:
I think you’ll find, that you could actually extinguish a lit match with liquid petrol! It’s vapours that burn, the liquid actually has no volatility.
liquid will not burn only vapour with the correct percentage of oxygen
[/quote]
It’s not as simple as that.If/when the ‘liquid’ itself is exposed to the atmosphere it has all the oxygen it needs to ignite and burn instantaneously in its own right.IE ignition of large quantities of ‘both’ liquid ‘and’ vapour.If that was just an empty tank the explosion would be less if at all. 
ok, i wasnt going to answer again as its each to there own but here goes my pennies worth , if you watch the video closely you will see the vapour heating up and creating pressure when this pressure is great enough it opens the safeteyvalve on the top of the tank,look closely as the gas vapour spurts out of the valve it passes through a flame but it is more than a metre above the valve before it ignites into flames and it stays like that until the valve closes ,that is because there is no oxygen in the gas but as it rises and creates a vacuum the vacuum ■■■■■ in the surrounding air .air contains oxygen and when the percentages are right it ignites .this is repeated many times and the liquid gas because of the heat is trying to turn back to a gas thus increasing the pressure in the tank , now because of the heat the metal in the tank is becomming fatigued but at no time up until this point has the liquid gas or the vapour set on fire because it cant because there is no oxygen available for it to do so ,now things are going to change ,the tank cant take any more and bursts the hot gas and liquid start to escape the vapour mixes with oxygen and as the pressure is taken off the liquid gas that then reverts back to being a vapour and follows the path of the original vapour and mixes with oxygen , because you haven,t got a controlled release ,and if you look closely there are two explosions and then it burns it self out the danger with a bleve is the shrapnell ,to have a fire you need three elements fuel heat/ignition oxygen you cannot have a fire without these three components and if you were to ask the fire service what they dread the most although all goods carried under adr regs have there specific problems class 5 is an oxydizing agent creates its own oxygen and is virtually impossible to put out
Only if it catches fire.
cracker-bar:
I think you’ll find, that you could actually extinguish a lit match with liquid petrol!
There was an episode of Mythbusters where they did exactly that. They poured a load of petrol on a relatively cold concrete floor, then had serious trouble trying to set light to it. They could only get it to burn if they kept a lit blowtorch pointed at it.
MrFlibble:
cracker-bar:
I think you’ll find, that you could actually extinguish a lit match with liquid petrol!There was an episode of Mythbusters where they did exactly that. They poured a load of petrol on a relatively cold concrete floor, then had serious trouble trying to set light to it. They could only get it to burn if they kept a lit blowtorch pointed at it.
I really do hope that neither of you two hold ADR.