Tank Killer

This EPA nightmare was part of an Integrated Environmental Services clean-up.

A bulging acetylene tank.

Jeff Gold found his niche in 1983 addressing a compressed gases market that had very few resources.

The Cornell graduate, with a degree in natural resources, had secured a contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers for his new company, Earth Resources Corporation, for the disposal of 183 damaged and unknown gas cylinders at the Chemical Control Corp. site in Newark, N.J. Gold found that there was no technically feasible way to safely sample, identify, and re-containerize the contents of the cylinders. This led to the design and patent of a mobile cylinder-processing device, the Cylinder Rupture Vessel, which he used successfully to fulfill another Army Corps of Engineers contract for the elimination of methyl bromine cylinders.

Several years later, Gold started Integrated Environmental Services, his present company that continues to clean up hazardous materials from military and non-military sites. The company continues to design, patent and construct new equipment for specific situations. "The job is never routine. There's constantly a need to think up new solutions," Gold said.

Until the 1970's, waste was just something to bury out behind the shop or in a landfill. The establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, followed by the Love Canal case and the creation of the Superfund, made the practice of dumping industrial wastes illegal, and led to the rise of companies that specialize in clean-up.

Industrial waste cleaning can present countless problems because of the ways that wastes can combine in dumpsites, and the gathering and cleaning of compressed gas cylinders presents a special problem. Discarded compressed gas cylinders require several levels of planning and care: The chemical composition of each gas has to be considered; the energy inherent in the compression of the gas within the cylinder is another factor; and the ability for gas to move and flow freely when not contained has to be taken into account. Even inert gases pose dangers if they are under pressure, and tanks can be corroded and weakened after years of exposure. Additionally, cylinders may not contain gases only — many are found with condensate liquids that also must be removed and disposed of properly. On top of that, compressed gas cylinders are not always known or visible in dumpsites. As with many other industrial wastes, the locations of buried tanks often are not kept on record.

Identify and dispose
The basic cylinder rupture vessel used by Integrated Environmental Services involves an explosion-resistant pressure containment vessel into which a cylinder is placed. The vessel is equipped with internal cutting tools that release the cylinder's contents, which then can be sampled and treated, or transferred to another container for disposal later. Different containment vessels in the company's arsenal can be pressurized, evacuated, or filled with a gas that makes the waste gases passive. The company's most sophisticated unit, the Phoenix-class Cylinder Management Device, is housed in a tractor-trailer. A remote operator, up to 600 ft. away, can run the system's drills and cutting tools. There is also a system to rotate the cylinder inside the pressure vessel to pour out any liquids. A separate 14 ft. cube van contains a portable laboratory that includes a gas chromatograph, a Fourier-Transform Infrared Detector, a mass spectrometer, and a water testing wet-lab.

The company expects that the cylinders it finds are not properly labeled or properly valved.

"We've learned the hard way. We've encountered cylinders labeled ‘argon,' with a proper 580 valve on it, yet we open the valve and flame shoots out. We do a positive ID on everything," says Gold.

One case handled by Integrated Environmental Services demonstrates the reason that cylinder markings aren't always trustworthy. In 1994, Gold and his team were hired to assist in the cleanup of the Divex Company Superfund site in South Carolina. Gold described the area as a 20-acre stockpile of various military surplus materials, including bombs, mines, Stinger missiles and Russian ordinance. There were 420 pressure cylinders of different shapes and sizes, some with contents that included hydrides, hydrogen sulfides and metal alkyls. Most of the cylinders didn't have labels.

Then there were several 800 lb. cylinders, the kind that can hold about 100 to 110 gallons of liquid. The cylinders originally were painted green, but the owner of the salvage yard had re-painted them silver and put "propane" labels on them to mislead state inspectors who might happen by. "We hooked up to the first cylinder, ready to process propane. We then went to take our usual precautionary sample. As soon as we open the dust cap on the cylinder, we got a big pop and a flash and a big green flame, which is not the color of a propane flame," Gold said.

As it turned out, the cylinders contained pentaborane, a compound that was created as a rocket fuel. The chemical also was used as a jet fuel additive, but was found to produce oxides so abrasive that jet engines using it were wearing out in flight. According to health authorities, safe exposure to pentaborane is no more than 5 parts per billion, about the same as VX nerve gas. Integrated Environmental Services had to modify its handling equipment and develop a way to dispose of the substance safely.

Remediating remediation
The company also participated in the remediation of the Smith Junkyard in Maine. The site, spread across 50 acres, still is not completely cleaned up of the rusted boxcars and tractor-trailers that once held thousands of industrial gas cylinders containing acetylene, argon, oxygen, helium and nitrogen. More cylinders were found buried at the site under brush, debris and old cars.

When Gold first visited the Smith Junkyard, one particular item caught his eye. "I had never seen acetylene cylinders that have experienced internal detonations and yet remained intact," comments Gold. "The fusible plugs were not released, the valve wasn't blown off, nor was the cylinder ruptured, but the tanks were deformed with big humps where the detonation occurred." Those tanks posed multiple levels of dangers that the company had to handle.

Other remediation projects included Department of Energy research sites that tend to contain oneof-a-kind, non-production materials. Uranium-enrichment research labs at Oak Ridge, Tenn., for example, had cylinders that contained heavily fluorinated materials and were equipped with unusual valves and connections that complicated cylinder removal. At Fort Dietrich, Maryland, a Department of Defense site, the landfill yielded 90 unlabeled cylinders. The style of valves used on those cylinders did not suggest what was contained within which, after samples from the exterior of the cylinders were analyzed, turned out to be weaponized biological materials.

Gold is happy to see that the industry is exercising better stewardship over its products.

"People have become much more educated about how to properly handle cylinders, in part due to proper labeling and marking of cylinders which, in turn, has led to better cylinder management," says Gold. The increased use of computer programs to track cylinders and their contents by the gas companies that own the cylinders will reduce the number of cylinders in the waste stream.

In 1984, Gold and his original partner estimated there would be four or five years' worth of work to perform, after which cylinder removal jobs would drop. As things turned out, Integrated Environmental Services is as busy as ever.