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Flaming 'Blue Whirl' Could Be Used In Fuel Spill Cleanup (sciencenews.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fire-tornado dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science News: An unfortunate mix of electricity and bourbon has led to a new discovery. After lightning hit a Jim Beam warehouse in 2003, a nearby lake was set ablaze when the distilled spirit spilled into the water and ignited. Spiraling tornadoes of fire leapt from the surface. In a laboratory experiment inspired by the conflagration, a team of researchers produced a new, efficiently burning fire tornado, which they named a blue whirl. To re-create the bourbon-fire conditions, the researchers, led by Elaine Oran of the University of Maryland in College Park, ignited liquid fuel floating on a bath of water. They surrounded the blaze with a cylindrical structure that funneled air into the flame to create a vortex with a height of about 60 centimeters. Eventually, the chaotic fire whirl calmed into a blue, cone-shaped flame just a few centimeters tall, the scientists report online August 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The soot-free blur whirls could be a way of burning off oil spills on water without adding much pollution to the air, the researchers say, if they can find a way to control them in the wild. You can view the clean-burning 'blue whirl' here.

4 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. BBQ prior art by BlackSabbath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "They surrounded the blaze with a cylindrical structure that funneled air into the flame to create a vortex with a height of about 60 centimeters."

    My earliest memoir of my dad barbecuing includes him using an empty olive-oil can to create precisely the conditions described though with different fuel and resulting in a red whirl.

  2. Soot free? by bickerdyke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't burning alcohol always soot-free without any other tech-gadget?

    I#m impressed when they do it with Diesel. Or crude oil, which was involved in most spilling accidents.

    --
    bickerdyke
    1. Re:Soot free? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Isn't burning alcohol always soot-free without any other tech-gadget?

      I#m impressed when they do it with Diesel. Or crude oil, which was involved in most spilling accidents.

      The ethanol fire was what inspired it, but the experiments in the paper used n-heptane. There's a note that they also got the cone to form with "heavier hydrocarbons, such as crude oil" but there's no actual data for that. Presumably they're keeping that stuff for a follow up paper.

  3. WW II story by tomhath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    An old timer told me of a time he saw a ship carrying bundles of lumber torpedoed during World War II. The spilled fuel caused firenados where the floating bundles of lumber wicked it up. When they went back the next morning to search for survivors there was very little oil left floating on the water. Maybe it happened, maybe it's just an old war story.