[dmolony]

In contrast, the worst that could happen with compressed air was a burst pipe; this would not be a good thing to be standing near, but since the pipes ran through the sewers the chance of this was very small.

Even more reason to avoid standing near a burst pipe.

[walshemj]

Actually its a burst reservoir that is nasty.

I was told at college that in the event of the small full service (electricity water and air on tap) lab block's compressed air reservoir blowing it would take most of the building with it.

Steam is even worse BTW

[dsfyu404ed]

But reservoirs pretty much never burst unless relief valves fail or oil gets into them.

(inb4 a bunch of hand wringing about rusty compressor tanks, those just leak and are generally harmless)

[dublin]

This is what the ASME was formed for - to create standards for safe pressure vessels. At the time it was founded, there was just over one steam boiler explosion a week in the US...

[walshemj]

Exactly the lecturer was making the point about how those lessons had been learned - and it was in thermo dynamics class so we where doing a lot of work on steam tables and the like