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Nitrogen or CO₂. But you will not be happy with it, there is a reason more expensive mixtures are preferred. Also, the required protective gear against the NOx
by corty 6y ago
Nitrogen or CO₂. But you will not be happy with it, there is a reason more expensive mixtures are preferred. Also, the required protective gear against the NOx and added postprocessing of your workpiece more than make up for the gas price...
The cheapest way overall is actually the commonly used Argon. Its just not cheapest if you just stare at the price of the gas alone.
- exabrial 6y agoInteresting. It is the third most abundant gas in the atmosphere,; more than water vapor and carbon dioxide actually according to Wikipedia. It is produced via fractional distillation. We really should be using this stuff instead of helium where possible. I'm guessing it's density makes it more of a renewable resource than helium.
- corty 6y agoWe do use it where possible. But at higher temperature like for welding, Nitrogen is no longer inert. And liquid nitrogen is too warm for the things you need liquid Helium for. Other alternatives are usually even more expensive or dangerous. You would never use liquid O₂ for cooling if you can avoid it...
- corty 6y agoAh, maybe you meant CO₂, it is similar to N₂ in all those aspects. Just even more reactive, warmer in liquid form than even nitrogen. And in addition never liquid at atmospheric pressure and actively poisonous to humans. So usually worse than N₂. There are just a few applications where its used that I know of: Dry ice, environment-friendly coolant, sparkling drinks and killing lifestock.
- BenjiWiebe 6y agoActually, I'm pretty sure exabrial was referring to argon.
- exabrial 6y agoYes I was referring to argon. Rereading my comment made more sense in my head.