Cleaning for Oxygen Service

What is CFOS and why do we care?

CFOS is an acronym for Clean (Cleaned or Cleaning) For Oxygen Service. It is critical that parts used for pure or high concentration Oxygen service be properly cleaned to assure they are free of all flamable and toxic residue or contamination. This is both to help reduce risks of fire or explosions as well as to prevent poisoning in medical gas applications.

Concerns related to liability often inhibit companies and individuals from sharing procedures and other information to the degree they might like to. Anyone involved in the cleaning or use of parts and equipment for Oxygen service needs to take all proper care, though, to be sure that the work they are doing is safe...... both for themselves, those using their products and those around the products. A lot of the Clean for Oxygen Service work done involves lower pressure and lower temperature medical gas and industrial applications. It is very possible that requirements might vary due to different applications and conditions so be sure the information you are using matches your use.

There are some really good resources for gathering information on this subject for development of procedures and testing methods.

First, is the Compressed Gas Association and this link http://www.cganet.com/customer/publication_detail.aspx?id=G-4.1 will take you to their a specific guideline publication. They can also have numerous other publications and can direct you to resources that might have specific information for your application. You might also want to check with the Cryogenics Society at www.cryogenicsociety.org. And then there is a company (Modern Chemical, Inc.) who makes a product called BlueGold Cleaner that is considered an industry standard for many applications. You can find them at http://www.bluegoldcleaner.com.

Many people have great cleaning procedures, but lack controls for cleaned parts. Full prepartion will also consider use of black and white light inspection procedures, proper drying methods and sealed bagging/tagging/storage of parts that will not be used immediately.