[Captions by Mike R. at YTranslator.com] Hey, guys. I'm Nate.
Welcome back to the studio.
Today, we've got another fun experiment suggested to us by user, Maverick Miller.
He asks, "Can you freeze diesel fuel with liquid nitrogen?"
Well, Maverick Miller, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one.
But we're gonna try it out anyway, and then see if we can come up with a twist on it,
to see what results we get.
To start off I've got this little bottle which I've filled with diesel fuel.
I do think this diesel has some additives added into it.
That's what gives us this nice yellow color.
I just poured this out of a diesel can that Grant had in his shed.
Diesel fuel can start to gel and turn thick, at about 30º Fahrenheit.
So, I'm pretty sure that at -320º Fahrenheit, it's going to freeze solid.
But let's see what happens if we do and see if it can still burn once it's frozen.
You may recall that we've tried this with gasoline –
[SOUNDS OF FAST-BURNING FLAME AND HELPER YELLING]
– and had some fun results.
To start off, let's pour some of the diesel into a metal bowl,
and see what happens if we try and light it without freezing it.
Also, I should note,
this is not an approved container for long-term diesel storage.
I poured it in here for this experiment,
and I'm going to be throwing it away once I'm done.
I don't know for sure what the diesel would do
to this specific bottle eventually,
but I know it's not good for long-term storage.
We'll pour some diesel out into the bowl and see if this will light.
[CLICKS LIGHTER]
Hmm.
Not getting much of an effect here.
Time to upgrade our fire.
That little barbecue lighter was a little wimpy,
so we've upgraded to a propane torch.
[SOUND OF TORCH BEING LIT]
[SOUND OF BURNING BLOW TORCH]
And we got it to light. There we go.
So, a barbecue lighter – not so much.
A propane torch definitely will get diesel to light.
[METAL PINGS]
Ooh, that's exciting.
[LAUGHS]
As the hot air cooled down, I think it suctioned these two bowls together.
[LAUGHS] [STRAINING] [METAL CLANKING]
They're really stuck. That's amazing.
Whoo. And one of them is still very hot.
[LAUGHS] I can't get them apart.
[METAL CLANKS ON SEPARATION] Oh, there it goes.
Wow!
[LAUGHS]
Wow, yeah!
I did not think that these bowls had clean enough edges.
Like, it didn't even occur to me that that might happen.
But now, of course, I have to see if I can make it do it again.
[BLOW TORCH BURNING]
All right.
Let that go for just a second. Get nice and toasty.
Let's see if we can fit this one nicely over it.
[METAL PINGS] I think that's the sound we want.
[NATE MIMICS THE SOUND] That's this metal bottom of the bowl,
I think, getting pulled down.
That is now – [CHUCKLES] That is sealed –
[RESONATING METAL SOUND] – and sounds cool.
Ooh! [METALLIC CLANKING SOUNDS]
Something warmed back up.
Man, first time, I couldn't pry them apart. Second time, they just fall apart.
Oh, that's funny.
All right. Well, now we know what happens with normal diesel.
We can light it on fire using our propane torch.
Let's freeze some of it and see how it does.
All right. Now let's take our liquid nitrogen, pour some off into our Styrofoam cup,
and then we'll pour our diesel directly into that cup.
[STEAMING LIQUID POURING]
There we go. One Styrofoam cup full of liquid nitrogen.
I'm gonna start by just adding, like, a little drop.
Let's see what happens.
All right. There's one little bead of diesel floating around the surface of our nitrogen.
It sort of freezes and then falls down to the bottom.
I wonder if it doesn't stay as one clump – kind of breaks itself up.
I'm not really finding much. So let's just pour in a bigger amount.
[LIQUID FIZZING]
There we go. That's bubbling up.
How weird!
It freezes on the outside layer very quickly,
but then the inside layer sort of expands and pushes its way out.
And it was giving us sort of like a hollow sheath made of diesel, I think.
That, I think, is frozen diesel.
And then, of course, it's just gonna warm right back up in our bowl.
Let's pour this all back in and we'll pour in another little healthy dose of diesel fuel.
I'm also going to splash just a tiny bit of liquid nitrogen down into our bowl
just to cool the bowl down, so it stays frozen when I pour it in there.
I hope all of this liquid nitrogen will evaporate,
but leave us with a very cold bowl.
Yeah, we're getting a good chunk of frozen diesel here.
And I think with our cooled bowl, we'll be able to take that chunk,
put it in, take it outside, and light it on fire.
[LIGHTS TORCH]
Hmm.
[RELIGHTS TORCH]
It doesn't give us that energetic flash that we get when we burn gasoline.
It starts burning, but it's just slower to burn.
[WIND BLOWING]
Oh, and then the wind put it out. That's convenient.
Well, let's try more of it.
[LIQUID NITROGEN BOILING OFF]
That was hot diesel in the liquid nitrogen.
[GASPS] That smells terrible. Look at this.
The soot that formed on it has discolored the diesel.
So, now we have this dark, brownish, ugly color. Mmm. Gross.
This time, I'm not gonna go halfway.
I'm just gonna pour like half – I guess I am gonna go halfway.
I'm gonna pour, like, half of this bottle into our liquid nitrogen and see how it goes.
[LIQUID FIZZING]
It's certainly exciting.
[STIRRING SOUNDS]
It's a lot of diesel with just a little bit of nitrogen still at the bottom.
It's crystallized into this powder almost. So, it looks like it's just frozen diesel.
And then when you scoop down to the bottom,
you can see there's still a little bit of liquid in there.
But mostly it's gone.
Well, let's take our snow, pour it into our bowl, and see if this lights.
Let's just take it outside in the styrofoam cup.
At this point, I think most of the nitrogen is gone.
Here is the last of the nitrogen dissipating.
That seems good and frozen, though. [LIGHTS BLOWTORCH]
Let's see if it'll light.
[USING BLOWTORCH]
[TURNS OFF BLOWTORCH]
[RELIGHTS BLOWTORCH]
[CHUCKLES] Part of it lights and then it goes out.
I wonder if there's still just extra nitrogen in the bowl
that's putting out the flames.
[USING BLOWTORCH]
Puddles of diesel do not seem to stay lit very well.
It's really the fumes of diesel that are burning, ideally.
And I think a puddle of it might have a hard time getting hot enough
to really put off enough fumes.
Once it gets going – like this – and you see all that black smoke,
I think that means it's working pretty well.
[METAL PINGS]
There we go. It burns up all the air inside
[SNAPS FINGERS] and suctions the two halves together.
[METAL SEPARATES AND CLANGS]
Whoo. That's tough to get apart.
Well, it looks like frozen diesel is nowhere near as exciting
as frozen gasoline, when it comes to lighting it off.
[Grant]: Craziness!
[Nate]: You can get it to burn,
but it takes kind of a lot of concentrated, directed heat,
and a little bit of time – unlike the gasoline,
which kind of just goes up immediately.
One more thing I do want to try. This is an anti-gelling agent.
It's designed to help keep your diesel from freezing in low temperatures.
If you have a truck that runs on diesel and it gets really cold,
the fuel can actually start to gel up inside your car's fuel lines and tank.
This is supposed to help keep that from happening.
So, let's add a little bit of this to our diesel, and see
if that does anything to prevent it from freezing in liquid nitrogen.
Normally, the ratio is such that this one bottle could treat up to 40 gallons.
The instructions recommend that if you're going to be using it
in temperatures below 0º Fahrenheit, you use this much in 20 gallons.
Here, I have a little bit less than one cup of diesel,
which, by my math, means we should be using
about 1/4 teaspoon of our anti-gelling agent.
Liquid nitrogen is a lot colder than 0º Fahrenheit.
So, I'm gonna go as far as to add one whole teaspoon of our anti-gelling agent
and see if it does anything.
All right. That's our anti-gelling agent in what should be total overkill.
All right. Liquid nitrogen in our Styrofoam cup.
We've got our diesel fuel with our anti-gelling agent in it.
Let's see if it does anything.
[LIQUID FIZZING]
There's our diesel. Hmm.
It looks like it's doing about the same thing as before – freezing.
Well, that's frozen.
It does seem like maybe it broke up into smaller pieces this time.
So, maybe it does do something.
It doesn't stop it from freezing.
But I think it might make it so it freezes into smaller particles.
It's not gonna help much if it's in your engine.
The anti-gelling agent did not seem
to slow down the freezing process of our liquid nitrogen.
Now, just as an experiment,
let's see if we can freeze our anti-freezing agent.
[LIQUID FIZZING]
Looks like we've got an interesting structure here.
[LAUGHS]
As I lowered the spoon full of our anti-freezing agent
into the liquid nitrogen, it started freezing around on the sides
and then more toward the middle.
And that made it so that all of the unfrozen liquid underneath
had only one place to go to escape,
and that was pushing up from the center.
So, now, we've got a sort of stalagmite of our anti-freezing agent.
I guess this is maybe sort of like when we tested if you can freeze antifreeze.
And the answer is, "Yes, you can."
And similarly, you can freeze the anti-gelling agent for diesel.
Liquid nitrogen is just too darned cold.
So, to recap, we tried freezing diesel fuel in liquid nitrogen and it froze.
It froze very much the same way that gasoline did.
The frozen diesel fuel did not light on fire very easily.
It had a really hard time getting started,
and we really had to hit it with the blowtorch until it was hot enough
to start letting off fumes, at which point it was mostly melted.
So, when you freeze gasoline, it will light on fire even while it's still frozen.
The diesel doesn't seem to have that same effect.
We also tested whether or not you can use an anti-gelling agent
to keep the diesel from freezing in the liquid nitrogen.
That didn't seem to do really anything for how fast it froze,
although it might have changed the texture of the frozen diesel a little bit.
It seemed a little bit more crumbly to me.
As a final experiment, we also tested if you can just freeze
the anti-gelling agent itself.
And it turns out you can.
Liquid nitrogen is so cold, it freezes just about everything.
Well, there you have it.
Maverick Miller, we can freeze diesel using liquid nitrogen.
Thank you for the idea.
Check your Youtube inbox. We're sending you 25 bucks.
Remember, if you have an idea you want to see us try out,
let us know down in the comments.
If we use your idea, we'll send you $25.
Thanks for joining us for this video.
And remember to come gear yourself up with products and merch
at THEKINGOFRANDOM.COM.
See you there.
[PUNCHING SOUNDS]
Well, our anti-gelling agent says on the container that it's flammable, too.
So –
[USING BLOWTORCH]
Hmm. There it is – burning.
[PUNCHING SOUND] Mmm. Smells like a truck stop now.
It's delightful. Diesel-lightful. [LAUGHS]
I know. It wasn't funny.
You don't have to tell me in the comments. I get it.
[PUNCHING SOUND]
♪ ♪