High Pressure Air vs Co2

Feb 2, 2012

When ever i hear people talking about Paintball and how the markers are powered i hear the word “C02″, This is the case when reading post on forums from some new people joining the world beyond punter days.  After being told most people and sites now use High Pressure Air (HPA) instead of C02 this raises the question of “Whats the difference between HPA and Co2?” and “Why do people use HPA?”.

I have seen this being explained multiple times on various forums, So I’m going to try and explain it all here in one place. Hopefully this will become the one stop place for this repeated subject.

 

CO2 is fading out and being replaced by high pressured air bottles. Fields used CO2 bottles as part of rental equipment, and very few in the UK still do. Paintball package deals offering an all-in-one setup usually contained a CO2 tank, and can still be found on some websites. I believe this is why people automatically presume its CO2 that is still used. Upgrading from CO2 to Compressed Air can have a huge impact on the performance of any paintball gun. Most paintball markers are now designed for Compressed Air, Although some markers  can still take CO2 with maybe a few spare parts needed.

The CO2 that is filled in the tank is actually in the form of liquid. That’s why CO2 tanks are labeled as 12 ‘ounce’, 16oz or 20oz. Tanks are only supposed to be filled to 80% of capacity. This allows for some gas conversion and pressure changes. In order to power your paintball gun, CO2 must convert into a gas. This involves thermal energy or heat. That is the reason your gun gets cold under fire. The CO2 is grabbing all the heat it can find to convert into a gas. That means under a sustained high rate of fire, little heat is available for conversion and liquid CO2 can enter your internals, freezing the gun and possibly causing damage. Also CO2 is affected greatly by outside temperatures for reason described above. Extremely cold days make it very hard to achieve consistent pressure resulting in velocity swings and shot drop-off. That’s technical terms for poor accuracy and lousy consistency one shot to the next.

 

 

Compressed air bottles start at about £35 and can run upwards of £200. Tanks vary in size, pressure rating, material and output pressure. There two genral types of pressure rated tanks on the market: 3000 psi and 4500 psi. This is the rated pressure at which the tank can safely hold. Tanks rated at 4500 can hold 1.5x more air than 3000psi tanks. The cubic inch size refers to the overall capacity of the tank. Tank sizes include 48ci, 68ci, 70ci and 88ci. Obviously the more ci, the more air holding capacity. When calculating the shot volume you times the ci by 10 for 3000psi tanks and 15 for 4500 psi tanks. For example, an 88ci 4500psi tank will give you an estimated 1320 shots on a full fill. That’s 88 x 15 = 1320.

A great advantage to HPA bottles are not only can they hold more air but amazingly these bottles can be lighter, alot are fibre wrapped which is lighter and stronger.  Another great advantage to compressed air bottles is they have a pressure gauge on the bottles reg, this allows you to see how much air is in your bottle. You will never go out onto the field and run out of air after 10 shots unlike with CO2.

Compressed Air requires no conversion therefore is void of the problems experienced with CO2. Pressures are more consistent resulting in better accuracy and less swings on velocity. Since no liquid CO2 enters your gun and covers parts such as orings, Compressed Air is easier on internal parts as well. Normally, those that experience Compressed Air  never go back to CO2 unless Compressed Air filling is hard to find, which is practically impossible now the majority of fields and events use compressed air.

Remember when buy a bottle, make sure both bottle and Reg are Pi Marked to comply with EU legislation for use at events and sites  in the UK.

What do you use? CO2? 3000 psi? 45000 psi?