Oil spills are dirty, disgusting, damaging, disasters, but don’t worry, because scientists
are going to start cleaning them up with FIRE.
TORNADOS.
Hey hotties, Jules here for DNews!
Fire is… kind of a strange phenomenon.
It’s one of those things that human civilization has learned to both deeply love and deeply
fear.
It cooks food, it burns down cities, it creates light, it burns down property, it sanitizes,
it burns down people.
But unlike water or air or land, fire is distinct from the others in that it is an active chemical
reaction.
Which is great, because we can change one side of the reactive equation and change the
nature of the fire.
First of all, when I say that fire is a chemical reaction, I mean it in exactly the same way
that something like rust is a chemical reaction.
In fact, on a broad enough scale, rust is just as much much slower, but almost chemically
identical version of fire.
See, because basically all fire is, is rapid oxidation.
Oxidation is when an atom or compound loses electrons in a chemical reaction, which is
pretty easy to explain using the example of rust.
When something made of iron is exposed to oxygen atoms in the presence of moisture,
the iron “steals” electrons from the oxygen.
Now the iron and oxygen have opposite charges, and like Britney and Kevin, opposites attract,
converting the iron into a flaky, reddish material called iron oxide, AKA “rust”.
The oxidation of fire occurs when those same oxygen atoms are in the presence of hydrogen,
carbon, and intense heat.
But the chemical reaction is so incredibly fast that it causes “combustion”, and
all the energy generated by this chemical process is released in the form of heat and
light.
See, what you observe as fire is actually only a small visible portion of the reaction
called a “flame”.
Flames are mostly made up of reaction byproducts, like carbon dioxide (which is carbon and oxygen),
water (hydrogen and oxygen), oxygen (oxygen and oxygen).
Any smoke floating from the top of a yellow flame is unburned fuel, also called “soot”.
The more smoke, and the more yellow a flame, the more impure it is, and that’s kind of
a big problem with fire.
Combustion that produces a ton of byproducts is dirty, uses a ton of fuel, and leaves a
mess when it’s done.
That’s why cars run on gasoline, and not twigs lit on fire and shoved into the twig-tank.
Gasoline burns much cleaner, is more energy-efficient, and leaves much less residue than a forest
fire.
The cleaner and more efficient we can make fire, the easier it is to work with, and the
better it is for practical applications.
One of the least practical versions of fire is a FIRE TORNADO, which is a raging whirlwind
of unstoppable destructive energy, not unlike Kanye West.
But recently, engineers at the University of Maryland found a way of turning a raging
fire tornado, into a small, pure blue, almost perfect fire whirl.
To do this, they filled a pan with water, poured liquid fuel on top, lit it, and pulled
cold air through the mixture.
After some time, the two-foot-tall bright yellow tornado condensed into a three-inch-tall
blue flame, producing almost no byproducts at all, and using the fuel source with very
high efficiency.
The engineers were looking for a new way to deal with oil spills, but the applications
for such a useful flame are almost endless.
Think of everything we use that relies on combustion, starting with planes, trains,
and automobiles, not to mention gigantic rocket ships, tiny cigarette lighters, and industrial
factories.
Being able to use less fuel and leave no byproducts can save an endless amount of money, cut back
dramatically on pollution, and make fire more controllable and above all: safer.
That said, researchers have effectively no real idea as to why they got this blue whirl
to occur or how long they can theoretically sustain it.
But when science finally harnesses the power of the fire tornado, we’re going to see
a lot of changes in the way we burn.
Obviously it would be great if we could clean up oil spills with fire, but what about the
pollution that comes out of your car?
Watch Julia and Julian’s video about how car companies can cheat emissions tests here.
Any other questions about fire?
Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to like this video, and be sure to subscribe
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