Question

I have a dumb question. I moved into a home that has a 22 year old oxygen tank concentrator. Well I was going to throw it out so I wanted to rip it apart and throw it piece by piece to make it easier. Stupid me, not realizing there were three oxygen tanks inside with a do not disconnect warning.

I just want to get rid of it and was hoping someone on these forums may have come across one. With it being 22 years old, can I continue ripping it apart or look for a special place to take it to be destroyed?

Where are you located? Maybe someone here close by may come and take it away for you?

Schuylkill, PA. Anything large metal wise, etc. I always leave out separated from anything I put out so it makes it easier for people to scrap. Normally something like this I would just leave out or craigslist alert but I was just afraid of someone new-ish grabbing it due to the metal and not realizing the potential hazards. I did find a place nearby that deals with home oxygen systems that I may call but if it may be someone that does this for a living can make some money off of I'd rather a local scrapper grabbing it.

*Had to edit this twice:

I spoke to the old home owner and the cylinders aren't oxygen. You put water into the machine and it converts the home's air into breathable O2 for an elderly person. It's just the cylinders have a pressure warning up to 1000 lbs I believe. It's 22 years old so who knows?

Id call a plummer in your situation. I know a plummer installed one for my grandparents. Better safe than sorry with 1000 lbs of pressure. Even I wouldn't mess with that before someone who is experienced looks at it first.

Thank you, that's what I figured. I'll call the oxygen business around here and if they can't then I'll call a plumber. It's too risky in my opinion to leave out for someone to try and scrap.

Wow! Weird?
I found a oxygen concentrator a few days ago, attached ropes to it and carried it the ten blocks to home.

I never ever thought I'd find one, ever. This is a beige (not a word we use in NZ) ' suitcase on its side' sorta one.
The oxygen concentrator thing is something I have seen on American TV shows, but I have never seen one used in NZ.

So, I took it home thinking if its got a plug, its probably got a motor or pump, since there's a gas fitting on its side, Copper or Brass piping. And a gas flow meter.
But, I was sorta thinking that I maybe be able to use it for ozoneosis with a industrial ozone generator. For fun.

OK, when I get home I will have a look inside it.

Take it apart and tell what happened. Oh yea, pics would be great.

That is weird, haha. I felt the same way when I moved in and saw a giant clunking R2D2 looking thing. The one here is huge, it actually has wheels so it's easier to move around. If I were to guess, even with the casing taken off, it's about 50 lbs.

I'm not exactly an expert but for the sake of curiosity I looked at it a little, just to give eesakiwi an idea. I have left over neodymium magnets from projects so I figured it best to use those. There is some brass piping inside. There definitely is a motor but not going to go into it much more due to time. The rest of the piping, etc and the cylinders themselves the magnet really didn't stick to. Since I'm not really educated in the matter I'm not going to mess around with the thing much more than that. So if you didn't rip it open yet you should find a decent enough surprise inside.

Even if you wanted to salvage it into something more useful you probably can. I did some googling and people did find creative ways to re-use the machines.

I opened mine last night, the plastic hoses have gone hard and brittle and the foam has deterorated so if you touch it it crushes and falls into a dirty mess.
Now, those 3 tanks are not pressurised when its not in use. There's also no oxygen stored in it.
They have two tanks full of zeolite or something and a expansion tank.
What it does is pressurize the zeolite tanks with normal air. When under pressure the zeolite adsorbs
nitrogen. Then they pipe that pressurised, now high oxygen air, into the expansion tank, while now pressurising the other zeolite tank.
The oxygenated air in the expansion tank is let out thru a regulator to the oxygen mask.
That's about it......

So, inside theres three Ali tanks, two fulla zeolite. One very nice double ended air compressor. It looks just like a vacuum pump.
A bunch of hoses and some random electronics, nothing fancy or Goldish.

Brand new these things are expensive. Used, theres probably a great market for them in 3rd world countrys.
NZ isn't a third world country (yet). From the amount of metal in it, well there's gotta be a better use for it.
The compressor, well, always a use for it, but not worth putting much time into and I wouldn't try pressuring those tanks either.
I will go and see what other uses it has, supplying oxygen to a gas torch is the most obvious, though it would have to be a small gas torch.....