carbonating in "Better Bottle" PET Carboy

You could email the people who market them and ask.

Or you could *experiment*, but not filled with root beer :)

steveb

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: : Can anyone see a problem in carbonating root beer with dry ice in a 6 : gal "better bottle" PET Carboy?

: I would seal it up, with pressure regulator that would not allow : pressure to get past 15psi...

: Would a PET carboy have any problem handling that?

You must have a cheap source of dry ice... :) I don't know if the 6 gal PET carboys are pressure-rated... I'm pretty sure they are not.

People *have* been pretty successful (myself included) in making mini-kegs out of 2-liter and 3-liter PET soda bottles. Not exactly the size you're looking for, but they *are* pressure rated. People have hydro-tested them to more than 100 psi without bursting. Even at that, you'd need pressure relief for dry ice. People have also made bombs out of 2-liter bottles and dry ice without pressure relief.

Consider this: A 1 liter bottle filled with 15 psi of air contains 100 joules of energy. Dissipated in 1/100th of a second (e.g. when the bottle bursts) that's

10kW of power, or 13 horsepower. Not earth-shattering, but not exactly safe.

If you dial that up to a 10 liter bottle, the energy goes up by the same factor. If you increase the pressure, the energy goes up by the same amount. Considering that you're looking for 6 gallons at soda carbonation pressures (probably about 30 psi), that's about 5kJ of energy. You definately don't want to be near that if it bursts.

-Cory

If I remember right CO2 must be pressurized to 82 atmospheres at 30 C. to make it liquid. Each atmosphere is 16 psi 82X16 = 1312 psi that the bottle can get up to. I do not know of too many plastic bottles that can withstand that kind of pressure. The metal syrup containers that are rated for 175 psi may also become a bomb.

I do have a suggestion that you may try before the event. rent a CO2 bottle with a regulator and get some fish tank hose with a bubbler and put the bubbler in the bottom of the tank with some dry ice to get the effect. just turn on the CO2 before the event to put CO2 in the mix and the dry ice should keep the CO2 level up. CO2 is not that expensive.

BTW: My idea about the CO2 gas is to be used with the open garbage container. DO NOT USE WITH A CLOSED PET BOTTLE.