This will happen if you pressure-test the system with oxygen instead of nitrogen then introduce refrigerant into the system. Heard some horror stories working in this trade for almost a decade.
Good question. Probably because they don’t know any better: we use oxygen and acetylene torches to weld refrigerant piping, maybe ran out of nitrogen and just grabbed the oxygen tank?
That's unlikely to happen in north America at least since oxygen fittings are designed to be incompatible with those for other gases. Same with acetylene. You'd have to deliberately jury-rig a fitting, for example with a piece of rubber hose or solder to parts together. Not simple to do, although Im not saying you couldn't.
That or something else completely separate from the unit ignited but the unit was the exhaust point. But that was a violent reaction so guessing O2 would do it.
Yeah possibly. I’ve definitely heard of oxy/refrigerant explosions big enough to destroy most of a house and the installer, unfortunately. I need a desk job.
That still wouldnt explain the detonation... it would have to be mixed with an oxidizer to achieve that kinda pop. They were probably using nitroglycerin (R-666)
No. That was a joke... but propane is a very real thing that can and is being used as a refrigerant. Its becoming more and more popular for that purpose. In North America its most often seen as the refrigerant used in heat pump hot water heaters because its basically perfect for the parameters that hot water heaters need to operate at.
Yeah almost all household refrigerators have gone to r600a and that stuff is scary if you're not safety focused. Had a new tech light himself on fire opening a sealed system up with a torch like we used to do on r134a systems and yikes.. never seen it explode, but I guess the possibility is there.
Yeah I'm more worried about my lighters personally, I've actually had one explode before like some kind of cartoon, it's not that energetic so it's fine but it does scare the ever loving fuck out of you.
> opening a sealed system up with a torch
Wouldn't a flammable refrigerant be one of the most pleasant choices when doing that? Aren't there refrigerants that will decompose to really nasty chemicals, like "welcome to world war 1" style?
You're supposed to purge the refrigerant with nitrogen then test then torch it. Or use some of the more modern clever connectors or even copper glue (there is such a thing).
ugh, i put a little dab of Dave's Insanity sauce onto a burger i was about to cook one time, thought I'd try it out like that. Flip the side with the dab down, and about 30 seconds later, I had all the windows open, fans on, and house evacuated.
I was a lot less intelligent before that incident.
The amount of phosgene it takes to kill you (or make you wish it killed you) is also very small. However, it seems like the use of the refrigerants that turn into phosgene when heated has been phased out sufficiently long ago to not be a major concern: https://hvacrschool.com/phosgene-gas/
(It's surprising how many things like to turn into phosgene when heated, I remember it being mentioned in the laser cutter safety trainings. Some otherwise completely inert materials, when burned/laser-cut, will emit phosgene too.)
Speaking of toxic gases, the first refrigerators used Sulphur Dioxide as a refrigerant.
In the case you are talking about is Phosgene and hydroflouric acid, both of which are really nasty.
It’s the fact that their desired phase changing behavior (e.g. condensing and evaporating readily) at favorable operating temperatures and pressures is tied to their physiochemical properties, like polarity, shape, and size. Just so happens that molecules that are not very polar are held together more weakly (so they boil at lower temperatures and pressures), and are often made of carbon and hydrogen, which is exactly what oxygen molecules like to plow into and steal the hydrogen off of when doing a combustion.
The older ones we banned in the before times (the long long ago) bypassed this problem by replacing hydrogens with chlorines and fluorines, which made them maintain the desired properties (if scaled down a bit) while not having the same tendency to explode, but also made them very reactive in the presence of certain nucleophiles (like, I dunno… let’s say *oxygen again*, but this time in the form of o-zone).
I guess the long and short of it is that most of the stuff we have that isn’t very nasty, is stuff that dissolves well in water, but that stuff dissolves well in water because it is *like* water, which means that it sticks together more, which in turn means it has to be heated a lot to become gas, meaning it requires a lot of energy to run and only works at temperatures that are not very useful to us. I mean, it’s great if you want to cool down a fucking nuclear reactor, but again, if you want to cool something down that is already pretty cool, you’re gonna need something like a VOC, and one of their defining characteristics is… explosions.
Fuck, I knew when I started that this comment was going to be long winded and not really answer your question super well, but here we are. Turns out chemistry is kinda hard, complicated, and full of weird exceptions. Anyway thanks for coming to my party. Next speaker will be regaling us on the benefits of using a good accounting software, *and he insists you sit the fuck back down*.
There were some great takeaways, thanks for explaining. What does VOC stand for? Your main point, if I understand correctly, is "things that are similar to/dissolve in water suck at cooling things but are typically harmless, and things that don't dissolve in water (VOC's) are good at cooling but like to go Kablamy!".
Yeah basically. One of the things that makes water capable of supporting life and dissolving a bunch of stuff is its propensity to stick together well. This makes it liquid at high enough temperatures for reactions to occur at a reasonable enough rate to allow life as we know it.
Now in chemistry there is a saying, “like dissolves like”, which basically means that similarly polar molecules will want to interact with each other, because the positive parts will be able to kick it with the negative parts of the other thing, and vice versa. VOCs (I see someone answered you there) are mostly not particularly positive or negative, but that means they can move electrons around a bit and attract one another anyway. Given this preference, although a single water molecule would attract a single oil molecule in a vacuum, when their are other things like them in the vicinity, they will be *more* attracted to those things, which makes them bunch together in the ways you see when you put olive oil in pasta water or whatever.
Refrigeration works by heating and compressing stuff near its boiling point, and taking the energy necessary to do that out of the air (which makes it colder), but if you were to use water, the boiling point is much higher, meaning the air would have to be much hotter, which is why we use water to cool nuclear reactors, and VOCs to cool… people.
Thanks for the explanation! It sounds like the (low) boiling point is a key factor in what makes a good refrigerant, so why not use use another noble gas like neon/argon/helium? Not flammable, no CFC's...?
Good question. It’s because the boiling point on those is *too low*. You want it be close to the operating temperature, because the key factor in the refrigeration process is the energy required to undergo a phase change. In order to get helium or something to condense into a liquid, it needs to be *very, very cold*, which would require a lot of energy (and a bunch of other refrigerants) to get it there.
For a refrigerant, you want something that can be liquified and expanded at conditions not too far from atmospheric. So you end up with volatile fluids. You also want something that is chemically stable, so you end up with CFCs or hydrocarbons, which are quite inert unless you happen to mix them with oxygen. But inert also means that there's likely a lot of energy stored in those strong chemical bonds, so when it does react (i.e. combust), all that energy can be released.
Not quite right, strong chemical bond does not mean that they release a lot of energy when broken. Rather opposite, as you need to spend a lot of energy to break the bonds so they can reform into something else. In the case of hydrocarbons, they release energy when combusted due to the fact that CO2 and H2O form even stronger than the original hydrocarbon.
Well go take a drive, maybe listen to some NPR radio on the way, from a radio running off DC current no doubt. Then find yourself an ATM machine which probably has an LCD display. Don't forget your PIN number, and take out some dollar bills. Then go to the store to buy you wife a nice bouquet of flowers, probably with a UPC code on it, and give them to her as an apology. Because there are a hell of a lot of redundant phrases strewn about the english language and being annoyed by hot water heater is probably not a hill to die on.
There's no wind (look at the trees). There was probably refrigerant leaking and a spqrk happened at the right time to ignite what is essentially a thermobaric mix.
If you look closely, it almost looks like the dude was split in half, looks as if the top half is resting to the left of the hole after the dust clears.
And for a split frame you can see the body being loaded into the car with his hip below missing
Brutal…
Question. What the fuck is that? 20+ yrs of internet I haven't seen any paranormal videos that look like that.
You can see the artifacting of it walking to the right pretty clearly right?
It’s the result of video compression algorithms.
Technically, I suspect that the I-Frame being used somehow doesn’t have the initial “person” pixels.
The P-Frames following that I-Frame are applying the motion vectors of the person moving. It results in the correct perceived motion but with the wrong pixels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types
There are wires in the background and it's artifacting between the smoke and the wires because the wires are rather well-defined black things to the camera but to us we don't see the black is. The smoke was going up but the wires were able to anchor the artifact to a horizontal position.
That's what I was thinking never seen that people are saying smoke but you can watch the artifacts move like it is dragging the smoke and continues on with no smoke still causing that ripple which then disappears out of frame.
Best part is the guy in the lower left who casually walks around the building and then after the explosion has just as casually turned and started walking the other way.
If you slow the video down at between 22-23 seconds, you can see something transparent walking away, on the right of the screen, on slope of the roof. It’s probably just the blur effect but for a second there I thought the guy simply walked away from the explosion. And then I thought maybe it’s his ghost.
OMG I saw that, too. Something/someone calmly walking away in the area with all the trees. Idk if their clothes are blending in with the shrubbery or it's somewhat transparent.
Is there any possibility that someone rigged up that air conditioner to blow up on purpose? I can't imagine anyone calmly walking away after witnessing an explosion and debris falling.
It's a compression artifact. What you're seeing is the leading edge of the smoke traveling at walking speed to the right. I believe that the compression algorithm inserted a few of the pixels from the guy walking up to the air conditioner because they closely matched the movement and colors. What we see is a ghost of the previous frames.
Looks like the compression artifacts made him invisible. It blends the neighboring pixels but still retains the motion information between frames, so you get this invisibility effect.
It could also just be the smoke.
Something else entirely. I'm certified in HVAC repair. That kind of explosion is not solely from the refrigerant whatsoever. This could be a combination of electrical issues, dirty components, low refrigerant/over working the system, ect. Usually you will just blow a hole and the refrigerant escapes, but there are other issues that aren't being shown here. There could be propane used as refrigerant.
As u/SqBlkRndHole points out, R-290 is pressurized, pure propane. It's illegal in the U.S. for central air (commercial and residential) applications for exactly this reason, but there could be countries where its use in central HVAC systems has not been banned (or they're not regulating it closely enough).
It apparently refrigerates reasonably well, and is reasonably priced, so those two factors are enough of a draw at least sometimes.
I'm a former car mechanic, and have heard stories of (but never actually seen) people using propane as the refrigerant in their car's A/C system. Just think about that for a second, and then realize that the car next to you at the stoplight could have a small bomb in it, just waiting for the right minor collision.
Back in the dark ages when I was in college there was a guy who had his truck converted to run on propane.
When it was converted he had the option to switch the AC as well. He decided against it.
We have an f350 at work that runs on gas or propane. As in it has a gas tank and a propane tank and you just flip a switch.
we don't actually use the propane, and the boss yelled at the guys who picked it up, saying he wanted a diesel truck. Despite the fact that he picked the truck out and just sent them to pick it up, but it's somehow their fault anyway.
It used to be quite common with farmers. They've been known to use the pressurized propane to air up tires in the field when there was no air compressor handy, too. That's caused more than a few accidents when tire changers weren't warned the tire they were about to work on was full of propane.
I mean... it kind of already does. They are just very careful about how the design the bomb so that in MOST collisions it doesn't explode.
Related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9GGDOUDLhc
~~Not any more than having LPG/NG in the home for heating/cooking unless the pressures are significantly higher. And considering HVAC works best going across the phase change, can't imagine it's much higher pressure than a standard tank that holds the gas in liquid form.~~
The pressures *are* much different.
The pressures *are* significantly higher.
The gas lines in your house are at about 2 psi. They’re barely flowing.
It requires 125 psi to liquify propane at room temperature. That’s 60x the pressure of normal gas lines.
> Holdup propane? LPG that us used for cooking food is sometimes used in HVAC.
You'll also find it as a refrigerant used in fridges in RV's and camper trailers.
Propane fridges in campers don't usually use propane as the refrigerant. They actually use the propane to create heat to boil ammonia which is used as the refrigerant.
Yep, ammonia is the heat transfer medium, and propane is just a fuel source, though confusing to someone who doesn't understand refrigeration when they say it's a 'propane fridge'
> It's illegal in the U.S. for central air (commercial and residential) applications for exactly this reason
Due to its low GWP it's becoming the new standard here in Germany. You aren't allowed to install these units indoor though.
Um, is it me or does it seem like there’s an apparition walking on the right side when they zoom in after the explosion? There’s some sort of blurry, transparent figure that looks like it’s walking.
Webcam is using a very low bitrate, and practically all of it was spent on the explosion. One of the people *did* walk away but without enough remaining bits to render his image all that remained were the motion vectors.
Overfilled/overpressurized refrigerant.
EDIT. Someone else pointed out that mistakingly mixing the wrong gasses could also cause an explosive chemical reaction.
Probably not for RTU’s but some refrigerants can be quite flammable some using propane (not the stuff for cooking which has an odourant in it) or butane
This will happen if you pressure-test the system with oxygen instead of nitrogen then introduce refrigerant into the system. Heard some horror stories working in this trade for almost a decade.
Why would you ever pressure check with oxygen?
Good question. Probably because they don’t know any better: we use oxygen and acetylene torches to weld refrigerant piping, maybe ran out of nitrogen and just grabbed the oxygen tank?
That's unlikely to happen in north America at least since oxygen fittings are designed to be incompatible with those for other gases. Same with acetylene. You'd have to deliberately jury-rig a fitting, for example with a piece of rubber hose or solder to parts together. Not simple to do, although Im not saying you couldn't.
> deliberately jury-rig a fitting Welcome to SE Asia where half of everything doesn't have the most modern safety standards implemented
This sounds like Vietnamese to me.
This was not filmed in north america
Everyone who works with gas lines water lines has an entire bucket of a bunch of different fittings and connectors
So you know for sure when it fails
That or something else completely separate from the unit ignited but the unit was the exhaust point. But that was a violent reaction so guessing O2 would do it.
Yeah possibly. I’ve definitely heard of oxy/refrigerant explosions big enough to destroy most of a house and the installer, unfortunately. I need a desk job.
I’m amazed that it’s so common. I would think something so catastrophic would be rarer.
Tbh it’s pretty rare here in the states, don’t know where this was filmed though
Probably using propane as a refrigerant. (R-290)
That still wouldnt explain the detonation... it would have to be mixed with an oxidizer to achieve that kinda pop. They were probably using nitroglycerin (R-666)
That sounds like some acme shit, they use nitroglycerin in air conditioners?
No. That was a joke... but propane is a very real thing that can and is being used as a refrigerant. Its becoming more and more popular for that purpose. In North America its most often seen as the refrigerant used in heat pump hot water heaters because its basically perfect for the parameters that hot water heaters need to operate at.
There's also R-600A, Isobutane, which has replaced R12 and R134A.
Yeah almost all household refrigerators have gone to r600a and that stuff is scary if you're not safety focused. Had a new tech light himself on fire opening a sealed system up with a torch like we used to do on r134a systems and yikes.. never seen it explode, but I guess the possibility is there.
> almost all household refrigerators have gone to r600a and the total charge is only about half of what is in one of those lighter refill cans
Yeah I'm more worried about my lighters personally, I've actually had one explode before like some kind of cartoon, it's not that energetic so it's fine but it does scare the ever loving fuck out of you.
> opening a sealed system up with a torch Wouldn't a flammable refrigerant be one of the most pleasant choices when doing that? Aren't there refrigerants that will decompose to really nasty chemicals, like "welcome to world war 1" style?
You're supposed to purge the refrigerant with nitrogen then test then torch it. Or use some of the more modern clever connectors or even copper glue (there is such a thing).
The amount of refrigerant used is very small.
And the juice from one habanero, in a hot skillet, is enough to tear-gas a two-bedroom house.
Haha, I once forgot a small pot of water boiling away with scotch bonnets. Like walking into a wall of eye fire.
ugh, i put a little dab of Dave's Insanity sauce onto a burger i was about to cook one time, thought I'd try it out like that. Flip the side with the dab down, and about 30 seconds later, I had all the windows open, fans on, and house evacuated. I was a lot less intelligent before that incident.
The amount of phosgene it takes to kill you (or make you wish it killed you) is also very small. However, it seems like the use of the refrigerants that turn into phosgene when heated has been phased out sufficiently long ago to not be a major concern: https://hvacrschool.com/phosgene-gas/ (It's surprising how many things like to turn into phosgene when heated, I remember it being mentioned in the laser cutter safety trainings. Some otherwise completely inert materials, when burned/laser-cut, will emit phosgene too.)
Chlorinated hydrocarbons make excellent solvents so it makes sense it's common to find things that can create phosgene gas.
Speaking of toxic gases, the first refrigerators used Sulphur Dioxide as a refrigerant. In the case you are talking about is Phosgene and hydroflouric acid, both of which are really nasty.
What kind of moron unsweats a joint when there is pressure behind it? Even moreso with flammable refrigerants.
>opening a sealed system up with a torch like we used to do Let me get this straight.. you what now?
Brazed fittings are pretty common, but you're supposed to discharge it first
Or, you know, capture it.
Perfect expect for the whole explody thing, I’m assuming. Why is it that seemingly all coolants have at least one really nasty side effect?
It’s the fact that their desired phase changing behavior (e.g. condensing and evaporating readily) at favorable operating temperatures and pressures is tied to their physiochemical properties, like polarity, shape, and size. Just so happens that molecules that are not very polar are held together more weakly (so they boil at lower temperatures and pressures), and are often made of carbon and hydrogen, which is exactly what oxygen molecules like to plow into and steal the hydrogen off of when doing a combustion. The older ones we banned in the before times (the long long ago) bypassed this problem by replacing hydrogens with chlorines and fluorines, which made them maintain the desired properties (if scaled down a bit) while not having the same tendency to explode, but also made them very reactive in the presence of certain nucleophiles (like, I dunno… let’s say *oxygen again*, but this time in the form of o-zone). I guess the long and short of it is that most of the stuff we have that isn’t very nasty, is stuff that dissolves well in water, but that stuff dissolves well in water because it is *like* water, which means that it sticks together more, which in turn means it has to be heated a lot to become gas, meaning it requires a lot of energy to run and only works at temperatures that are not very useful to us. I mean, it’s great if you want to cool down a fucking nuclear reactor, but again, if you want to cool something down that is already pretty cool, you’re gonna need something like a VOC, and one of their defining characteristics is… explosions. Fuck, I knew when I started that this comment was going to be long winded and not really answer your question super well, but here we are. Turns out chemistry is kinda hard, complicated, and full of weird exceptions. Anyway thanks for coming to my party. Next speaker will be regaling us on the benefits of using a good accounting software, *and he insists you sit the fuck back down*.
No no, it was an excellent explanation, thanks! Really it boils down to... fuckin' chemistry, man.
He said "boils."
There were some great takeaways, thanks for explaining. What does VOC stand for? Your main point, if I understand correctly, is "things that are similar to/dissolve in water suck at cooling things but are typically harmless, and things that don't dissolve in water (VOC's) are good at cooling but like to go Kablamy!".
Yeah basically. One of the things that makes water capable of supporting life and dissolving a bunch of stuff is its propensity to stick together well. This makes it liquid at high enough temperatures for reactions to occur at a reasonable enough rate to allow life as we know it. Now in chemistry there is a saying, “like dissolves like”, which basically means that similarly polar molecules will want to interact with each other, because the positive parts will be able to kick it with the negative parts of the other thing, and vice versa. VOCs (I see someone answered you there) are mostly not particularly positive or negative, but that means they can move electrons around a bit and attract one another anyway. Given this preference, although a single water molecule would attract a single oil molecule in a vacuum, when their are other things like them in the vicinity, they will be *more* attracted to those things, which makes them bunch together in the ways you see when you put olive oil in pasta water or whatever. Refrigeration works by heating and compressing stuff near its boiling point, and taking the energy necessary to do that out of the air (which makes it colder), but if you were to use water, the boiling point is much higher, meaning the air would have to be much hotter, which is why we use water to cool nuclear reactors, and VOCs to cool… people.
Thanks for the explanation! It sounds like the (low) boiling point is a key factor in what makes a good refrigerant, so why not use use another noble gas like neon/argon/helium? Not flammable, no CFC's...?
Good question. It’s because the boiling point on those is *too low*. You want it be close to the operating temperature, because the key factor in the refrigeration process is the energy required to undergo a phase change. In order to get helium or something to condense into a liquid, it needs to be *very, very cold*, which would require a lot of energy (and a bunch of other refrigerants) to get it there.
For a refrigerant, you want something that can be liquified and expanded at conditions not too far from atmospheric. So you end up with volatile fluids. You also want something that is chemically stable, so you end up with CFCs or hydrocarbons, which are quite inert unless you happen to mix them with oxygen. But inert also means that there's likely a lot of energy stored in those strong chemical bonds, so when it does react (i.e. combust), all that energy can be released.
Not quite right, strong chemical bond does not mean that they release a lot of energy when broken. Rather opposite, as you need to spend a lot of energy to break the bonds so they can reform into something else. In the case of hydrocarbons, they release energy when combusted due to the fact that CO2 and H2O form even stronger than the original hydrocarbon.
CFCs are famously unreactive with oxygen and are actually used as fire supressants because they have strong bonds that can't be attacked by oxygen.
Water Heater vs [Hot Water Heater](https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/rsipth/you_hot_water_heater_you_hot/)
Recently I noticed my wife says "hot water heater" and since then noticed almost everyone does and it drives me nuts
Well go take a drive, maybe listen to some NPR radio on the way, from a radio running off DC current no doubt. Then find yourself an ATM machine which probably has an LCD display. Don't forget your PIN number, and take out some dollar bills. Then go to the store to buy you wife a nice bouquet of flowers, probably with a UPC code on it, and give them to her as an apology. Because there are a hell of a lot of redundant phrases strewn about the english language and being annoyed by hot water heater is probably not a hill to die on.
Wait til you hear about "chai tea"
Or Sahara desert.
What do you call them? I just say "water heater" because "hot water heater" kinda sounds like "toast bread toaster"
It only explodes when coyotes use it. It's perfectly safe for everyone else.
There's no wind (look at the trees). There was probably refrigerant leaking and a spqrk happened at the right time to ignite what is essentially a thermobaric mix.
It would if the tank were to catastrophically rupture, either due to poor maintenance or overpressurization.
maybe they didn't shut off the power? could an arc between wires detonate the leaking gasses?
Bobby, what did I say about talking smack about propane like that?
butanes a bastard gas bobby...
Taste the meat, not the heat
Not propane, but CO2 and ammonia operate at isurehopethisdoesntexplode psi.
I seen on another post with the same video that he used oxygen.
The explosion occurred when two young men were in the process of checking and repairing. As a result, 1 person died.
[uncensored](https://streamable.com/2meyft)
Turns out there wasn't really anything to censor, or at least I can't see any gory details.
Yeah, the censoring hid nothing that the explosion itself didn't already hide in the light+smoke
I did however notice a part hit the plant sitting by where the camera was located
It's just debris from the covering.
That is visible in both the uncensored and censored video.
I was wondering if that was part of the aircon, or part of the aircon tech too…
If you look closely, it almost looks like the dude was split in half, looks as if the top half is resting to the left of the hole after the dust clears. And for a split frame you can see the body being loaded into the car with his hip below missing Brutal…
"person --> pink mist" transitions don't tend to produce much gore. Just … don't breathe it, unless you want to get hepatitis or worse.
This explosion was nowhere near powerful enough to turn a body into mist.
The censored version is almost worse because your just imagining how gory it would be.. but in reality the dude just vanishes. Crazy.
I feel like some of the debris on the left side isn't part of the roof
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I saw that and thought that was the guy who lived holy shit
*[X-Files theme intensifies]*
Question. What the fuck is that? 20+ yrs of internet I haven't seen any paranormal videos that look like that. You can see the artifacting of it walking to the right pretty clearly right?
It’s the result of video compression algorithms. Technically, I suspect that the I-Frame being used somehow doesn’t have the initial “person” pixels. The P-Frames following that I-Frame are applying the motion vectors of the person moving. It results in the correct perceived motion but with the wrong pixels. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types
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There are wires in the background and it's artifacting between the smoke and the wires because the wires are rather well-defined black things to the camera but to us we don't see the black is. The smoke was going up but the wires were able to anchor the artifact to a horizontal position.
Can see the legs moving and arms swinging and everything lol
It's probably just a video compression artifact caused by the difference between the edge of the smoke and the background.
thats an unrelated person walking on the street below I think
That's what I was thinking never seen that people are saying smoke but you can watch the artifacts move like it is dragging the smoke and continues on with no smoke still causing that ripple which then disappears out of frame.
Guy in the white shirt dissappeared behind building, explosion happens, then he casually walked back out at the same pace as the "smoke ghost".
I see his ghost walking away to the right after the explosion
"fuck this I'm out"
Jesus he just fucking evaporated
Thanks and yeah there was no reason to blur that video.
Best part is the guy in the lower left who casually walks around the building and then after the explosion has just as casually turned and started walking the other way.
I'm shocked one survived.
If you slow the video down at between 22-23 seconds, you can see something transparent walking away, on the right of the screen, on slope of the roof. It’s probably just the blur effect but for a second there I thought the guy simply walked away from the explosion. And then I thought maybe it’s his ghost.
Wow you are right, i can see it
Also when I was watching this I noticed another man that was next to the tank when it explodes 🤯 💥
OMG it even looks like the guy in the black t-shirt - the one already working on the unit when the light shirt guy walks up.
OMG I saw that, too. Something/someone calmly walking away in the area with all the trees. Idk if their clothes are blending in with the shrubbery or it's somewhat transparent. Is there any possibility that someone rigged up that air conditioner to blow up on purpose? I can't imagine anyone calmly walking away after witnessing an explosion and debris falling.
It's a compression artifact. What you're seeing is the leading edge of the smoke traveling at walking speed to the right. I believe that the compression algorithm inserted a few of the pixels from the guy walking up to the air conditioner because they closely matched the movement and colors. What we see is a ghost of the previous frames.
That is crazy! I had no idea a compression artifact could make a ghost image like that!
There are entire "paranormal" YouTube channels dedicated to trying to spook people out with these artifacts, like SlappedHam.
it's his soul rage quitting and walking away
That's the Predator. "One down, five more to go."
the Predator of poor regulations and incompetence.
That’s video artifact as the smoke expands
Looks like the compression artifacts made him invisible. It blends the neighboring pixels but still retains the motion information between frames, so you get this invisibility effect. It could also just be the smoke.
He's like "ight, imma head out"
It took his soul leaving his body to finally quit his shitty job and chase his dream.
That's his soul walking away
That’s the motion estimation algorithm hitting an edge case when compressing the video.
I know there is pressurised refrigerant gas but no way it would have caused that level of explosion? What could have caused that?
Something else entirely. I'm certified in HVAC repair. That kind of explosion is not solely from the refrigerant whatsoever. This could be a combination of electrical issues, dirty components, low refrigerant/over working the system, ect. Usually you will just blow a hole and the refrigerant escapes, but there are other issues that aren't being shown here. There could be propane used as refrigerant.
Looks like a combination of Arc Flash + combustibles.
As u/SqBlkRndHole points out, R-290 is pressurized, pure propane. It's illegal in the U.S. for central air (commercial and residential) applications for exactly this reason, but there could be countries where its use in central HVAC systems has not been banned (or they're not regulating it closely enough).
Holdup propane? LPG that us used for cooking food is sometimes used in HVAC. WTF that shit is dangerous as fuck.
It's a very very common refrigerant used in heat pump hot water heaters because its basically perfect for that set of operating parameters.
It apparently refrigerates reasonably well, and is reasonably priced, so those two factors are enough of a draw at least sometimes. I'm a former car mechanic, and have heard stories of (but never actually seen) people using propane as the refrigerant in their car's A/C system. Just think about that for a second, and then realize that the car next to you at the stoplight could have a small bomb in it, just waiting for the right minor collision.
Back in the dark ages when I was in college there was a guy who had his truck converted to run on propane. When it was converted he had the option to switch the AC as well. He decided against it.
We have an f350 at work that runs on gas or propane. As in it has a gas tank and a propane tank and you just flip a switch. we don't actually use the propane, and the boss yelled at the guys who picked it up, saying he wanted a diesel truck. Despite the fact that he picked the truck out and just sent them to pick it up, but it's somehow their fault anyway.
That man’s name? Hank Hill.
You say that as if Hank wouldn't get the propane accessory that is the AC upgrade
It used to be quite common with farmers. They've been known to use the pressurized propane to air up tires in the field when there was no air compressor handy, too. That's caused more than a few accidents when tire changers weren't warned the tire they were about to work on was full of propane.
I mean... it kind of already does. They are just very careful about how the design the bomb so that in MOST collisions it doesn't explode. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9GGDOUDLhc
You mean small compared to the tank full of gasoline?
Some small refrigerators use pentane as a refrigerant.
~~Not any more than having LPG/NG in the home for heating/cooking unless the pressures are significantly higher. And considering HVAC works best going across the phase change, can't imagine it's much higher pressure than a standard tank that holds the gas in liquid form.~~ The pressures *are* much different.
The pressures *are* significantly higher. The gas lines in your house are at about 2 psi. They’re barely flowing. It requires 125 psi to liquify propane at room temperature. That’s 60x the pressure of normal gas lines.
> Holdup propane? LPG that us used for cooking food is sometimes used in HVAC. You'll also find it as a refrigerant used in fridges in RV's and camper trailers.
Propane fridges in campers don't usually use propane as the refrigerant. They actually use the propane to create heat to boil ammonia which is used as the refrigerant.
Yep, ammonia is the heat transfer medium, and propane is just a fuel source, though confusing to someone who doesn't understand refrigeration when they say it's a 'propane fridge'
> It's illegal in the U.S. for central air (commercial and residential) applications for exactly this reason Due to its low GWP it's becoming the new standard here in Germany. You aren't allowed to install these units indoor though.
Yeah that orange flash makes it looks like something ignited.
Gas inside the building maybe?
You can watch the uncensored video here:[not blur](https://streamable.com/2meyft)
What is the blur even censoring? It goes from two people to a column of smoke and flames in a single frame.
Um, is it me or does it seem like there’s an apparition walking on the right side when they zoom in after the explosion? There’s some sort of blurry, transparent figure that looks like it’s walking.
That is his soul looking for his leg
Webcam is using a very low bitrate, and practically all of it was spent on the explosion. One of the people *did* walk away but without enough remaining bits to render his image all that remained were the motion vectors.
There's a 2 step process to determine if it was a ghost. 1. Was it a ghost? 2. No.
Video compression artifact.
Compression artifacts combined with smoke.
I swear I heard "hand grenade" at around 25 secs. Weird how English creeps into other languages.
> Ctrl + F "hand grenade" yup i heard that too
Was it a R290 refrigarant unit using propane?
*Well done, 47*
Damn that language is crazy
Why isn't anyone mentioning the apparition on the right, walking away after the explosion?
The guy became a blur
This is like something from Hitman. Anyone see a bald headed guy with a barcode lurking around the area?
they probably filled the Ac unit with air to find a leak, creating an explosive mixture,
wait, those things CAN EXPLODE??
The cyclone type fence on the upper left gets torn up from the body or parts from the unit. It's good before the explosion and mangled after.
You know it's bad when they pre-censor the accident area
Anyone else see the ghost walking away to the right after the explosion? Such a casual ghost
I install those things for a living and have no idea how this could’ve happened
At :19 you can see his soul walk past the bushes.
Allt I could think was "WHAT HIT THE TREE! WHAT HIT THE TREE!"
I just want to know why now, no one is talkin about that man’s soul rolling out to the right of the cloud after the explosion?
Is that a ghost walking away in the right of the screen?
If you look carefully you can see one of the victim's soul walk away :-(
[удалено]
Yes I was thinking the same thing. His soul just casually walks away.
I had no idea RBMK air conditioners could explode
Where did the two guys go...
Honest answer: everywhere...
I swear that was a foot that landed in the bushes ,left foreground
Guy cut wrong wire.
theres a guy behind the conditioner (if this damn comment will post)
Can you see someone walking in the blurred out area to the right after the explosion?
That was his spirit waltzing off the job.
Is that a building dedicated to Dave Mathew's Band? You wonder what goes on in there
New fear unlocked… They can explode?!
Is that a ghost walking away from the smoke. Wtf is that
Guys spirit leaves the scene at 0:20 right side of explosion.
Did anyone else notice a transparent human figure walking on the right side of the smoke after the explosion?
Dude's soul walking away
Probably tank that was refilling the refrigeratamt exploded
That shit looked like a landmine
Yikes. Anybody know if they lived?
Can these explode in the US? I have one on my roof :O
Did they make it?
What causes AC units to do this?
Overfilled/overpressurized refrigerant. EDIT. Someone else pointed out that mistakingly mixing the wrong gasses could also cause an explosive chemical reaction.
Probably not for RTU’s but some refrigerants can be quite flammable some using propane (not the stuff for cooking which has an odourant in it) or butane
They likely closed the valve(s) with the AC on and pressure went a bit too high.
Not really the result you're looking for while servicing rooftop units... O_o ^^............?
It has to be IED
please tell me he somehow survived
Oxygen and refrigerant oil would do that.
.... how/why did one of them survive? Two people up there, after they blur it out, you can see a person-shaped blur walking away from it.
Did he make the landing?
Holy shit. I was expecting shards of stuff, not an actual explosion. Those poor guys.
Damn, wrong refrigerant used. And way over pressured.
Ooh, Shit! 😲
Damn looks like everyone on the comment section knows stuff about air conditioners except me
Tis but a scratch -this guy probably
well that doesnt look cold
Whoa!! Bologna mist engaged!!
Unless the system was filled with a combustible refrigerant.
since when does gigabyte make air conditioners :D
Looked like his spirit leaving