Anyone know anything about CO2 cylinders? (context: trying to refill sodastream canisters)

[R.O.S.S.I]

I know I can ring the place I bought it from but they are shut now and was wondering if the great folk of OCUK could help me with a bit of a CO2 related quandary this evening. I want to know if there is a way of telling if a CO2 cylinder has a drip or syphon tube inside from the outside of the cylinder?

I've basically picked up a 6.35kg of CO2 from a local gas depot so that I can give refilling our Sodastream canisters a go (it works out a lot cheaper than getting a refill from Argos/Tesco/SodaStream direct).

I've bought the appropriate valve from CO2 supermarket and we picked up a CO2 cylinder today to test it on but despite following the instructions we can't get it to fill at all.

I've read a lot about needing to make sure the donor cylinder has a drip tube or it wont fill properly but stupidly forgot to ask when we were picking it up. Ive read turning the cylinder upside down is a work around for this however it didnt seem to want to fill when inverted so i'm a bit confused what the problem could be outside of the drip/syphon tube.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

What canister did you get? I know our old welding canisters had safety systems built in to prevent them leaking when they were laid flat in the back of a van. Could that be it?

I got this - https://www.gas-on.co.uk/co2-10-ltr-(14lb) - a 6.35kg cylinder of CO2. It's been stored upright the entire time. I did try holding it upside down after several failed attempts to fill but it didnt seem to do anything differently.

My experience with various industrial gas cylinders, open the valve and gas comes out. You wont be able to recompress this gas into a liquid form in the sodastream cylinder and they are such a small volume they wont hold enough gas to be of much use so need liquid transfer through the syphon. In theory inverting the large CO2 cylinder should transfer as a liquid, be careful as its not the type of thing you want to be dropping especially not whilst inverted with something connected to the valve.

As said above, I tried to do it upside down and had no joy. I called the place this morning to ask if they had a dip/syphon tube and he said he would get back to me as he wasn't 100% sure.

Some gas went into the canister, but not a lot (maybe 50g - weighed it after my fill attempt) as it was completely flat and I was able to use it in the machine again. I've put my canister in the freezer now though as apparently this helps the most with getting the most in a canister.

Im hoping it is just a case of me not having a dip tubed cylinder. The adapter i've got works fine as i've tested all valves etc without a bottle being attached, so it's either the tube being missing OR there is a real nack to getting the part which presses the pin down on the sodastream bottle to work and to dispense CO2 back.