I'm not sure about that, but I know in the Middle-East there were hundreds of oil wells burning. They called in this group from Texas who used dynomite to put out the flames. It was really cool.
They'd place the dynomite right at the point where the well was spewing oil, and detonate it. The shock wave would put out the flame (similar to using a loud sound to put out a small candle).
Then they would (after a few hours of waiting for the well to cool down so they would work with it) put on a new valve. They did this to some 800 wells in under a year, I think (but I could be wrong). | [reply] |
There's even a John Wayne movie on the subject - Hellfighters, I think. Not sure, but I remember my mom watching it over and over. They used the same technique in the movie.
- email Ozymandias
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Yep. That's the movie.
Plus MacGyver did the same trick in one episode.
/\/\averick
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Not quite ... explosives do not need external oxygen
to work. An oxygen supplier and the stuff to be burned
are packed together in an inert way (e.g. gunpowder:
the nitrate supplies the oxygen, the coal and the
sulfur get burned).
As for the extinguish-fire-with-explosives trick:
every fire needs three conditions: burnable material
(here: oil), oxygen (here: surrounding air) and
heat (here: the flame). If you take one of these
three, the fire will cease. The explosives simply
blow away the flame and any heated material
around it.
Sorry if this sounds like a lecture, but fire's
been a special field of interest of mine. ;-)
Andreas
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