Many airguns are powered by CO2 cartridges. The vast majority of CO2 powered airguns use 12 gram non-threaded cartridges or capsules (whichever term you want to use) but some use larger 88 gram cartridges. Small quantities of CO2 are released when the trigger is pulled on your airgun and the CO2, in turn, propels the BB or pellet down the barrel and onto your target.
It is likely you have never given this a thought. I had not thought about this until I started working with CO2 on a routine basis. You see, physics is governed by laws. Certain things will happen under certain conditions. You can’t change this. Much like an apple falling off of a tree at 9.8M/S2 , gases will do certain things when they are acted upon in particular ways.
Without delving too deep into the physics, when CO2 is highly compressed, it becomes a liquid and will remain a liquid until it is given the space for it to convert into a gas. Since the CO2 is under pressure in the CO2 cartridge, it remains in a liquid state. If you were to touch it, it would be very cold, dangerously cold. But since you can’t touch it, you never really notice that the CO2 is in a liquid state.
When you shoot a CO2 powered airgun in really humid conditions, the rapid expansion of the burst of CO2 leaving the muzzle of your gun will be visible. It is visible because the moisture in the air condenses as it mixes with the extremely cold burst of CO2 into a visible cloud.
With this in mind, it is incredibly important to use caution when changing out CO2 cartridges on your CO2 powered air gun. We do not recommend leaving a partially full cartridge in the airgun for storage. You will need to remove the cartridge and bleed off any excess CO2 remaining in the cartridge.
-
First- do this slowly. When you open the cartridge, let it bleed off slowly. If there is a lot of CO2 in the cartridge, you might need to bleed it off in stages as the escaping CO2 might freeze the CO2 valve seals. A frozen seal is an easy to break seal.
-
Second- After you bleed off the CO2, wait long enough for the cartridge and gun to warm up before removing the spent cartridge. The spent CO2 cartridge is cold enough to freeze your skin and cause damage to your body.
-
Third- Don’t install a new cartridge in the device until you are ready to use it again. Leaving a punctured cartridge in an airgun will cause the seals in the valve assembly to prematurely fail.