Posted on 02/12/2014 7:29:53 AM PST by Doogle
Great Icebreaker video for a HAZMAT Class demonstrating the dangers of insecure high pressure cylinders in a highway accident. This was an accident that occurred in Russia. Russians have dashcams in order to provide additional evidence in court due to guard against police corruption and insurance fraud. This version contains no music.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
I think it was the engineering department of Purdue which had competitions to quickly light a grill full of charcoal at their annual picnic. The competition was cancelled after they used charcoal, a lit cigarette for ignition and a container of liquid oxygen: the grill disappeared in the resulting fire.
Those videos were great! Surely they’ve made it to YouTube by now.
Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBLr_XrooLs
Too bad this was pre-ubiquitous HD cameras.
Those are low pressure cylinders filled with a flammable gas. Definitely not oxygen cylinders.
Several years ago, a bottle plant in the DFW area caught fire and the bottles were taking off like bottle rockets. I forgot how far the farthest one flew, but the video of that was scary.
No, not really. Look at the video again. You’ll see sevaral times some tanks with pressurized flames shooting out of their tops. Those are tanks where the valves at the top have failed due to pressure build up and heat.
The big balls of flame occur from explosions of suddenly released gas from tanks that have failed.
Truly - no harm no foul - go read about BLEVE.
Most likely there were some ‘oxygen’ tanks on that truck - as oxyacetylene sets.
But as someone who has attacked some pretty interesting and intense Class A/ B/ D fires in vehicle wrecks, I can assure you, oxygen tanks weren’t my big concern.
Those explosions you saw were typical to a gas release into a normal atmosphere.
I can’t read Russian, and the video was too blurry to read the labels and colors on the tanks as the truck passed the car, but ... that was by far primarily first a burning fuel fire (class B) followed by a BLEVE (special Class B fire)with maybe a little Class D and surely Class A thrown in for fun.
As I watched the video, what I saw was NOT any “detonations” of the taller, industrial gas cylinders (that RARELY happens) and the debris flying was from what looked like bit and pieces of truck - plus some cylinders flying in the air. THAT is all normal.
Ya gotta let it go. The title is misleading to anyone who has ever put on turnout gear.
If ya don’t know what turnout gear is, and why you never wear polyester T-shirts, then you probably should go with me here ;-)
I remember it...
yeah I know...
Arlis —
The shuttle had two types of rocket motors, with two types of fuels, and two types of oxidants to produce either a programmed or controllable burn.
The solid rocket boosters on the side combined fuel and oxidizer in the ‘solid’ fuel molded into the tube of the booster. Absent that chemistry, there ain’t enough O2 in the upper atmosphere to burn the fuel at a rate sufficient to generate thrust. Once lit, that booster is gonna burn until the compound ‘fuel’ is exhausted.
The main motors on the shuttle could be throttled as they used both liquid fuel (I forget the name) and liquid oxygen. They could power up and power down those motors. No way to do that on the boosters.
So much for the technology discussion.
Let me go back to this — the explosions you saw in that video were typical of a gas released into a normal atmosphere. Sure there could have been some O2 released from leaking cylinders, but O2 NEVER goes boom.
NET: the title was misleading or wrong.
Thank you Clay for correctly pointing out the AL was the fuel — a Class D fire.
O2 NEVER burns unless we are talking nuclear fires, and we ain’t.
The Oxygen cylinders are pressure-propelled when the top valve is broken off or otherwise fails.
LOL
IIRC, Hydrogen and other flammable gases are in yellow and orange, but sometimes only the caps mattered. It’s been 20 years ...
Green was always O2 for medical applications.
Over there, there’s no telling. ;-)
My **GUESS* is that this guy supplied industrial gases from a local distributor, so he was hauling oxy-acetylene, rare gases and maybe some propane for forklifts. The small propane tanks I (in the past) I saw light up looked a lot like the ‘explosions’ in that video.
Sorely disappointed in this factoidal disclosure.
Liquid Hydrogen was the fuel.
http://www.space.com/11970-nasa-final-shuttle-mission-atlantis-sts135-tanking-test.html
interesting. I knew it was hydrazine in the thrusters. Couldn’t recall the main motors’ fuel.
ZERO ‘pollution’ using H2. Ya just make water vapor. Oh wait, THE *MOST* powerful greenhouse gas is water vapor ;-)
Except the H2 is made by steam reforming Natural Gas.
Nobody has found an H2 tree for harvesting zero pollution fuel.
It is like claiming an Electric Car is zero pollution by ignoring most of the Electricity is made from Coal and Natural Gas.
Oh I agree. I failed to add the sarcasm tag.
Ok, assuming that it is agreed that adding oxygen to a fuel fire will greatly accelerate the combustion - far more than adding an equivalent amount of fuel, how about this?
The oxygen tanks upon being overheated, burst simply because the pressure limits of the tank were exceeded. Then, immediately, a humongous amount of oxygen is added to whatever fuel is already burning.
I cannot imagine that the addition of this much oxygen so suddenly to an existing fueled fire - along with the “explosion” of the bursting tank - would not simulate an explosion.
This is why liquid oxygen is used to control the rockets in the shuttle - if it were not controlled, one would have an explosion - from the oxygen accelerating the combustion of the fuel. The rocket is in essence a controlled explosion. Most of the time. Let’s do some research on what happens when liquid oxygen tanks have burst open on a failed rocket launch. I’ll bet what happened was an explosion.
Never heard of this scenario being reproduced. Maybe Mythbusters could do it.
WHY do you even think oxygen tanks were on the truck?
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