re: #199 charles_martel

Yep. If you have a pan of grease or oil on fire on the stove, and then throw water on it to “put it out”. BAM! The water instantly boils, and expands in an explosive way. Suddenly, your whole kitchen is on fire. saw it on video. damn scary.

But that’s not what BLEVE is. You need more than just inertial containment to get a serious explosion rather than just a spatter.

With BLEVE explosions, you have a liquid that’s under enough pressure from its container that at that pressure it doesn’t boil, but if the pressure would be reduced to normal air pressure, it would.

One good example would be liquid nitrogen. It can be kept liquid with a mix of refrigeration and containment, but if the container fails, whoosh, the liquid quickly goes to gas phase. The expansion is so rapid as to amount to an explosion. Another example would be a pressure cooker with a stuck valve, full of water, sitting on an electric range. If, (or when, provided the range is hot enough) the container fails, the water flashes to steam, expanding very quickly. Boiler explosions are BLEVE’s.

Neither of these examples of an explosion involves a fire. But if the liquid that goes to gas is flammable, your troubles have just begun with the BLEVE.