Overview
Unnecessary cylinders stored within the laboratory
- Lecture bottles – 25 total
- Typical cylinder size
The NFPA regulations limit the total number of lecture-sized cylinders in a laboratory to 25. The NFPA regulations also limit the total standard cubic feet (scf) of gas, ordinarily contained in typical, standard-sized cylinders, but we would rarely expect to see that type of situation. The more controlling part of the NFPA regulation is that which limits the storage of typically-sized cylinders to those that are in use and one spare for each process. A cylinder is considered “in use” if it hooked up to a delivery system or if it staged to be hooked up to a delivery system. Besides these cylinders, one of each type of gas for each system can be stored as a spare. You are most likely to cite this when a laboratory has an excessive number of lecture bottles, or when they have an excessive number of back-up cylinders for any given process. This requirement pertains to all types of compressed gas cylinders, whether inert or exhibiting another physical or health hazard.
Additional requirements apply to compressed gas cylinders, which will be discussed elsewherein the training. This checklist item is only dealing with the quantity of compressed gas cylinders in a lab.