Oxygen refilling hazards

"pure Oxygen will cause greases, along with other things to spontaneous ignite on contact!"

OK, we have heard this from every "authority" going back to the fifties, but it is NOT necessarily true. If you take a small puddle of oil, grease, acetone or other petroleum lubricant and flow a gentle stream (20 psi) over it, you will not get a fireball unless there is a source of ignition.

As Charlie M. posted, it is HIGH PRESSURE O2 that provides the mechanism for disaster. The speed at which the oxygen molecules exit the container cause friction. Friction causes heat. Pure oxygen dramatically lowers the flash or ignition point of any material with which it comes in contact. Oils, greases and other petroleum products already have a lower flash point than say, wood, although both are fuels and will burn. If the friction caused by rapidly moving oxygen molecules combines with the fuel and reaches that magic ignition point, then combustion will occur. Try to be somewhere else when this happens.

This is NOT "spontaneous combustion" where the combination of chemicals in contact with each other produce a reaction that produces enough heat to reach the flash or ignition point of one chemical or another, causing the aforesaid disaster. Of course, in any combustion scenario, pure oxygen is the life of the party.

So is tequila, and we all have memories of how that works.