# selling liquid nitrogen under the age of 16



## varietyler

I am planning to make and sell liquid nitrogen but I am under the age of 16 I am wondering if that is ok


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## dvsDave

varietyler said:


> I am planning to make and sell liquid nitrogen but I am under the age of 16 I am wondering if that is ok



Before we get into the how... Why do you want to do this?


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## Van

dvsDave said:


> Before we get into the how... Why do you want to do this?


Because, it's a gas...


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## dvsDave

Van said:


> Because, it's a gas...



Groooooaaannn


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## TimMc

Van said:


> Because, it's a gas...


So is Jumping Jack Flash....


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## varietyler

I want to do it as a business plan for life
and it's not a gas idiot


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## dvsDave

varietyler said:


> I want to do it as a business plan for life
> and it's not a gas idiot



The gas line was a pun. As far as a business plan goes, help us out here. What made you think of doing this? Have you figured out how much it's gonna cost to set it up, and if there's even a good return on investment? (i.e. you are gonna make more money than you spend?) 

And lastly, why are you asking a theatrical forum for this sort of advice? We use LN for special effects, but as far as I know, no-one makes it in-house. I'm not trying to beat up on you, I'm just curious. It's not an everyday sorta conversation topic!


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## varietyler

well a week ago we went to an ice cream shop were they used liquid nitrogen to make ice cream so I thot I would do the same but they containers of liquid nitrogen are like 1000x the price of liquid nitrogen its about 12cent liter so I thot of making it my self to rig one up is a little under $2000 then I had the idea to make and sell the liquid nitrogen and planned to refill containers of dewar cuz they're just so expensive to mase make


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## Amiers

While this is a nice idea, the reason it’s so expensive is the safety factors, the purity and equipment used to convert it. 

Honestly this isn’t something you can do out of your garage and stay in business long because of explosions or a neighbor thinking you are cooking meth. 

While your idea is an awesome one I don’t think it’s a viable one. As far as selling it to a 14yr old the only way around the age is getting an LLC and having it sold to a company. If I were a Gas salesman I definitely wouldn’t sell to you on a moral/ethical stand point.


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## dvsDave

varietyler said:


> well a week ago we went to an ice cream shop were they used liquid nitrogen to make ice cream so I thot I would do the same but they containers of liquid nitrogen are like 1000x the price of liquid nitrogen its about 12cent liter so I thot of making it my self to rig one up is a little under $2000 then I had the idea to make and sell the liquid nitrogen and planned to refill containers of dewar cuz they're just so expensive to mase make



But why did you ask here, on ControlBooth? We deal with LN solely in relation to special F/X, not food grade LN. Also, how do you plan on moving LN from your site to a customer? There are regulations on how LN can be transported safely and even more rules when you start transporting commercially)


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## RonHebbard

dvsDave said:


> The gas line was a pun. As far as a business plan goes, help us out here. What made you think of doing this? Have you figured out how much it's gonna cost to set it up, and if there's even a good return on investment? (i.e. you are gonna make more money than you spend?)
> 
> And lastly, why are you asking a theatrical forum for this sort of advice? We use LN for special effects, but as far as I know, no-one makes it in-house. I'm not trying to beat up on you, I'm just curious. It's not an everyday sorta conversation topic!


 *@dvsDave @Van @TimMc *and* @varietyler* At the Stratford Shakespearean Festival we used a fair amount of liquid nitrogen (supplied and stored in Dewar flasks) for low lying fog effects. We got our best pricing by purchasing our own Dewar flasks and having them filled by a national supplier whose main customers in our area were hog farmers who used liquid nitrogen for storing hog semen for breeding purposes. There were several hog farmers in the Stratford area and we had our main theatre added as a regular stop on their delivery route if any of our theatre's were running performances using liquid nitrogen during a given season. The supplier only had to stop at our main theatre, we shuffled Dewar flasks between our then three venues via our own trucks. Occasionally a local farmer would run low between scheduled deliveries and would ring us up to see if we could loan them a flask. Several times we were rewarded with copious amounts of freshly butchered pork for our kindnesses in times of need. Everyone's sinuses were relieved when a bypass route for trucks was built around Stratford. Hog transports rolling through town were less then attractive for tourists waiting to get into diners and pubs; especially if they were stopped for a stop light right in front of your favorite eatery at lunch time. 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## varietyler

so you can efficiently refile containers of dewar good


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## varietyler

i am still going to try this i just need to build up to this and perform more researcher and i have some plans including buying some land for the company i will build


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## Amiers

I look forward to hearing about it on the news in the future.


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## RonHebbard

Amiers said:


> While this is a nice idea, the reason it’s so expensive is the safety factors, the purity and equipment used to convert it.
> 
> Honestly this isn’t something you can do out of your garage and stay in business long because of explosions or a neighbor thinking you are cooking meth.
> 
> While your idea is an awesome one I don’t think it’s a viable one. As far as selling it to a 14yr old the only way around the age is getting an LLC and having it sold to a company. If I were a Gas salesman I definitely wouldn’t sell to you on a moral/ethical stand point.


 *@Amier*s Our OP's not interested in selling his proposed product to fourteen year olds, he himself is a fourteen year old interested in manufacturing and selling liquid nitrogen for fun and profit to customers, hopefully customers in his area as shipping Dewar flasks is going to get pricey. 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## varietyler

finding customers in a relative small town will be hard


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## Amiers

RonHebbard said:


> *@Amier*s Our OP's not interested in selling his proposed product to fourteen year olds, he himself is a fourteen year old interested in manufacturing and selling liquid nitrogen for fun and profit to customers, hopefully customers in his area as shipping Dewar flasks is going to get pricey.
> Toodleoo!
> Ron Hebbard



I got that. I’m saying if I was the salesman selling him gear to make this stuff I would say no.


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## varietyler

i just rlized it made up were i live i live in Utah not Maryland bull


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## GreyWyvern

While it's not always easy to see, there's a big difference between a good business idea and a plain dumb idea. This sounds like it falls solidly in the latter. Stay in school, you'll have a better chance of succeeding there.


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## varietyler

lol my plan is to stick ice cream on cones tell i can get liquid nitrogen to make ice cream tell i have the money to get to making liquid nitrogen


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## GreyWyvern

varietyler said:


> i just rlized it made up were i live i live in Utah not Maryland bull


No. You have to physically type that in. Why did you type Maryland if you live in Utah?!


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## varietyler

i did not i just put in my adress dume idea tho


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## GreyWyvern

varietyler said:


> lol my plan is to stick ice cream on cones tell i can get liquid nitrogen to make ice cream tell i have the money to get to making liquid nitrogen


I have no idea what that says. Try some capital letters and punctuation. Maybe school isn't your thing after all. Is that why you are trying to come up with a way to make money?


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## varietyler

i am home Schooled so i have plentey of time to do both


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## sk8rsdad

We teach the cubs to make ice cream in a baggie with ice and salt as the coolant.


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## Amiers

sk8rsdad said:


> We teach the cubs to make ice cream in a baggie with ice and salt as the coolant.



Living in Utah he might have better luck doing mass batches of rock salt ice cream versus LN ice cream. Just go hit up the lake lol.


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## varietyler

John D Rockefeller had a lot of responsibility at a young age it was one of the reasons he was rich


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## varietyler

lol i manly live on the opset side of the state 4hours away


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## RonHebbard

varietyler said:


> i am still going to try this i just need to build up to this and perform more researcher and i have some plans including buying some land for the company i will build


 *@varietyler* Idle curiosity: Do you foresee manufacturing and selling in small thermos bottle-sized quantities or are you imagining a fleet of liquid nitro transports rolling around Maryland*?* If Maryland is hog farming country there may be a market for your product, especially if you can deliver to their doors on a weekly basis.
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## varietyler

small containers sound like a good idea and i do not now about pigs


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## varietyler

i just looked there is one or 2 farms that have pigs


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## RonHebbard

Amiers said:


> I got that. I’m saying if I was the salesman selling him gear to make this stuff I would say no.


 *@Amiers* Possibly our OP's planning on manufacturing his own gear; perhaps he has a bicycle pump, a thermos and the arms of Popeye. Who knows*?* 
(Someday I'll regal you with the tale of how I set my Mom's kitchen on fire. I was about 9 in grade four. Two teachers lined up two classes and walked us five or six blocks to our local library where we were supposed to choose up to three books from the ground floor childrens' section. We did this perhaps every couple of months. One visit I found a whole new world of more interesting books up on the library's second floor; I found a book on rocketry, rejoined my classmates and cheerfully checked out a book on Von Braun containing basic diagrammatic illustrations of his theories for constructing a simple rocket. A vacuum booster tank ex of my grandmother's 1936 Essex looked to me a lot like a pressure tank for combining oxygen and liquid fuel. Two balloons, one for naptha from my Dad's Coleman camping stove, the other inflated with air, looked a lot like pressurized liquid rocket fuel and pressurized oxygen to me. I got home from school one day, my Mom was in the kitchen with her back towards me at her sink making dinner for my Dad who was expected home shortly. I was sitting on the linoleum floor behind my Mom playing with my home made rocket. I was using one of my train transformers to power an old wooden cased vibrator equipped ignition coil ex of a model A or T, arcing the transformer's secondary in front of the Esex's vacuum tank's output port attempting to ignite my rocket. Imagine my Mom's startled reaction when my rocket shot a stream of naptha across the kitchen, between her legs, and splattered on the front of a cupboard door leaving a trail of flaming naptha across the linoleum behind her. Naptha burns very clean leaving a line of charred linoleum with only the palest of blue flames visible. My Mom volun-told my Dad to lock his naptha on a much higher shelf and my fourth grade teacher was instructed to keep a closer eye on me during future field trips to the library.) *@GreyWyvern * how'd you like that one?*?*
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## ruinexplorer

FYI, I educated my three children at home. My son got on the Dean's List following his first semester in university. Home education offers a certain amount of freedom in learning opportunities. That being said, there are a lot of challenges as well.

Taking initiative to opening your own business is admiral. Before investing in this or any other business venture, it would be best if you study up on what it takes to run a business. Contact your small business administration. They likely offer workshops.


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## RonHebbard

varietyler said:


> i just rlized it made up were i live i live in Utah not Maryland bull


 * @varietyler* *Utah *; that explains a lot. *@GreyWyvern* Have you a better understanding now*?* *@Amiers* , you*??*
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## MNicolai

Dewars turn into bombs if you don't use them correctly. A leak in a low-lying or enclosed environment will displace the oxygen and suffocate you or your family. I know chemical engineers with master's degrees in engineering who have made mistakes in the lab that were nearly fatal, including accidentally making cyanide gas which was a byproduct of an otherwise benign mixture they were preparing.

Aside from warning you about the pipe bomb risk, there really is almost no market potential in this. The ice cream guy won't buy from you, and neither will your local hospital. They don't want the legal liability and unreliability of dealing with an individual when it's cheaper, safer, and on a routine weekly delivery schedule to call up their local chemical supplier. Someone fails to make a delivery or something goes wrong? There's money on the other side of the contract they sic their lawyers after if need be. Also worth mentioning is that most of the businesses that need LN also need other chemicals and medical gasses and are going to buy from a one-stop shop.

I don't want to discourage you as a matter of form, but everything you've said indicates you have no idea what you're getting into and you don't understand the problem you would be trying to solve with your own business.

In case you want a better glimpse into just the safety precautions required, including why you shouldn't ever transport LN in your own car or keep a stockpile in your basement, because a small leak will suffocate you:

· On vaporization LN2 expands by a factor of 700; one liter of liquid nitrogen becomes 24.6 cubic feet of nitrogen gas. This can cause an explosion of a sealed container. The release of nitrogen can also displace oxygen in a room and cause asphyxiation. Nitrogen does not have good warning properties. You may feel light headed or simply pass out without any warning.


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## TimMc

varietyler said:


> lol my plan is to stick ice cream on cones tell i can get liquid nitrogen to make ice cream tell i have the money to get to making liquid nitrogen



Then here's my suggestion, no puns will be harmed....

There is a program that was/may still be called SCORE - Service Corps of Retired Executives. Its purpose is to help people with no/little/insufficient business experience with researching markets, production, writing business plans, financing, etc. You might be a bit younger than most of their clients but SCORE or another entrepreneurship program can be a vast help in focusing on what it will take to make your idea into a plan, and hopefully into a reality.

And yeah, not sure why you picked this forum as a place to express your interest in such products and services, but here you are.... My final comment - some things are expensive because of market factors - location, demand, supply - and others are expensive more because the product is difficult to make or involves rare or pricey ingredients/precursors, extensive manufacturing plant required, cost of compliance with health & safety regulations, etc. All of these factors need to be explored no matter what product or service you might decide to pursue.

Good luck.

Tim Mc


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## TimMc

varietyler said:


> i did not i just put in my adress dume idea tho



May I also suggest a couple more things-

Insulting people on a public forum isn't nice and presents an immediate negative impression of you and your proposals. If you are home schooled I think you need to discuss remedial spelling courses and work on writing complete sentences using full words (i.e. concentrate on sentence structure and grammar) with your teaching parent. While this may not seem important to you, these skills are crucial in business.


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## varietyler

ok I am working on spelling and note I was insulting my self saying it was a bad idea to put in my address


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## RonHebbard

varietyler said:


> ok I am working on spelling and note I was insulting my self saying it was a bad idea to put in my address


 *@varietyler* How's your liquid nitro' business proceeding*?* 
*EDIT*: *@TNasty* Are you playing along at home?*?*
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## venuetech

At some point you may need to get various permits for storage and vessel inspection. Not to mention proper insurance for sail and storage of this liquified gas. So work that into the bp.


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## NateTheRiddler

My 5¢ worth:

SAFETY FIRST. If you’re going to do ANYTHING in life, you should assess, mitigate, and reduce risks at every opportunity. Your current idea proposes more risk than can be mitigated in your current state.
Finish your academics before starting a business unless you could pitch to a shark tank RIGHT NOW and obtain investment capital (this thread tells me that your pitch might need work).
Focus on getting mentors, and don’t surround yourself with yes-men/women. Find people who will hold you accountable, correct and criticize you, and help you develop.
Home schooling (as I did myself) is a huge opportunity to put your added available time to additional studies, learning, and growth. Take advantage of it... seriously.
Learn professional writing, and use it often, even on a forum such as this. Your image will improve that way.
Don’t use the words “stupid/dumb/idiot/retard/etc/etc” until you’ve earned the privilege to do so. Starting a business conversation casually makes you seem like a bit of a chad, so to speak. I still get lectured for my slang because I’m too casual sometimes.
And, for my coup de gras, the final piece of advice that I learned in the hardest way I could imagine:
You don’t know everything. Listen to your mentors, professors, guides, peers. You do not know better, and if you think you do, you certainly do not. Take advantage of others’ wisdom, and never take it for granted. It’s a boon.

Just a few thoughts.


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## RonHebbard

varietyler said:


> I am planning to make and sell liquid nitrogen but I am under the age of 16 I am wondering if that is ok


 *@varietyler* How has this worked out for you?? 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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