CO2 Monitoring

[Ochiburi]

Personal portable CO2 monitors. Who uses them? Have they actually helped you avoid incidents? Are they "worth it"? Do they help improve safety or is it a case of "by the time they go off its too late"? All thoughts welcome.

Laurence.

[BrewinLou]

We do not use personal detectors. We have two systems on our draft cooler. One is a flow detector that lets you know if co2 is flowing in the line, which only helps if you know no one is pouring a beer. The other is a CO2 level alarm. A siren and flashing led go off when the CO2 level reaches 3500 ppm. I have seen it hit 3000 when there was a loose fitting on a tap, we have only had it installed 2 years, so yes it is worth it. I train all of our bartenders on the system. Cheers

[dick murton]

I worked in a couple of breweries where the FVs were manually cleaned, and although the guys weren't allowed into the vessels until cleared by a separate check, they still wore the monitors. And yes, they did work. They had to get out of vessels a couple of ties due to increasing CO2 levels (many of the open FVs were joined together so CO2 could spill over from one to another.) So they were invaluable there, and the guys at these two were please to have them - bear in mind that 3 of them died a few years before I was at one of them due to CO2 spilling over.

Other breweries when working in confined spaces which FVs etc will be classed as, say for inspection or maintenance (even tho CIP'd), they take a portable unit in with them and sit it on the floor whilst in there (after a gas check as part of the permit to enter). Under these circumstances, I am not aware of any problems, but......