If a full (or any, by weight) bottle of co2 leaks out all in a short time, like in a basement, with nowhere for the gas to go, how high will the “pool” of co2 be ?
How is this calculated ? Bigg bottle, small basement, beds on the floor…thats why I started trying to find out. Google’d a lot, but nothing gave me any answers.
1 mole of “any” gas molecule occupies ~22.4 Liters of volume at STP (standard temperature and pressure).
I believe that STP means 1 Atmosphere of pressure and 20 degrees C.
The molecular weight of CO2 is 44 grams/mole.
So if I’m looking at this correctly, under “specifically” STP conditions every 44 grams of CO2 will occupy 22.4 Liters of volume.
And from there these four gas laws should come in handy:
PV = nRT
P1V1=P2V2 [for T1=T2]
V1/T1=V2/T2 [for P1=P2]
P1/T1=P2/T2 [for V1=V2]
n = moles = grams/[molecular weight]
R = a constant ~= 0.0821 at zero degrees C (273 degrees K) = 22.4L/273K
T = temperature in degrees K (Kelvin)
V = nRT/P
But you will surely want to read this (and more like it): https://caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/v71/cave-71-01-100.pdf
The other thing to keep in mind is that the gas will tend to diffuse somewhat with the air in the basement due to Dalton’s law of partial pressures. Although CO2 is heavier than air, there will be some natural mixing that will occur.
THIS
Put a fan in there to speed up the mixing and you should be fine unless you are storing ridiculous amounts of CO2. If you are really worried you can get on oxygen meter with an alarm on it, a standard item in many laboratories that use compressed gases.