As a fire inspector, I am curious as to why a small jewelry manufacturer would have Anhydrous Ammonia tanks. I understand the oxygen for welding and molding purposes, but don't know why the Anhydrous Ammonia would be there. Any suggestions?
Not sure if this is quite something a SMALL manufacturer would use,
but some types of annealing, melting, soldering, or heat treating
furnaces use a controlled atmosphere to prevent oxidation. One very
common way to do this is to “crack” ammonia into hydrogen and
nitrogen. The nitrogen/hydrogen gas mix is then fed to the furnace
where the hydrogen scavenges any oxygen present, leaving the metal
clean. Most smaller machines do this, however, with welding tank
size tanks of what’s usually labeled “forming gas”, which is the
same mix, I think. Ammonia has other uses, as a degreaser, etc, but
that usually doesn’t require anything as nasty as anhydrous ammonia.
It might have uses in refining, especially refining silver (solvent
for silver chloride) but again, this isn’t common to most smaller
jewelery manufacturers.
My suggesting is to ask them what they use it for. This isn’t such
gentle stuff to have just sitting around unless it’s needed. I
understand your concern…
Peter Rowe