'No loading delays with Explosafe' by Paul Brockington NO LOADING
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or discharge delays are said to result from use of Explosafe, a new material designed to stop fires and explosions in road tankers carrying inflammable materials. At a demonstration of the material (CM last week) a spokesman for The Expanded Metal Co Ltd, which is marketing Explosafe, said that tanks with the material could be refuelled or emptied by gravity at the normal rate.
Explosafe is an expanded aluminium alloy which is packed in the storage vessel in rolls or layers and divides the space into a " multitude of tiny cells " and the limited volume of each cell is said to reduce the oxygen level to below that required for combustion.
Whether or not it would reduce filling and discharge rates was cited by an officer of a fire brigade as an all-important question, particularly in the case of tankers. Ideally, quick filling and discharge should be combined with slow leakage if the tank were gashed in an accident. Could the pack be designed to provide this ideal ? A spokesman of The Expanded Metal Company emphasised during the demonstration that the range of possible applications of the material would be fully explored with the help of potential users.
Later in the event an Ex plosafe tank containing petrol and petrol vapour was welded without incident and burning petrol was poured from one tank into another. These proofs of some of the claimed benefits of the material were perhaps more impressive in a practical way than blowing up non-Explosafe drums with explosives (the ones which were not packed with Explosafe did not disintegrate) or by firing incendiary bullets into them from close range.