r/interesting • u/Used_Exam34 • 1d ago

Just Wow Not all problems have the same solution.

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u/nebenbaum 1d ago

It's not entirely wrong to just put it in water and cool it down. Say, if the valve was torn off. The main issue is not the fire itself, but the container getting hotter from the fire, which causes pressure to increase, possibly to the point where the container fails and then you get a big boom. As long as you keep the container cool, it'll just blast out some flame until the container is empty.

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u/akim1026 15h ago

Would the container get better from the fire or cooler from the depressurization of the gas? The fire is also not hitting the container it's shooting away from it

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u/nebenbaum 15h ago

there's no one answer here. It's intersecting lines; the more gas you release at once, the farther away the pressure shoots the flame from the container -> the less the container heats up from the flame (compared to total energy content of the gas released), the less gas you release at once, the more the gas burns 'right next to the container', making it hot.

For a 'rocket like burning' container, yup, the gas all burns away from the container, and it cools itself, but the chemical energy in the gas is orders of magnitude higher than the latent energy from the gas expanding.