Black Smoke=Incomplete Combustion?

ergo said:
Wrong.
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“Large volumes of smoke indicates large volumes of fire.”
I will admit that the above statement is not always correct, but more often than not, it is. But your answer to that statement, “Wrong”, leads me to ask you a question. What is your expertise in the field of firefighting?
 
Twinstead, you're missing the point. The flames you would see in your example are the jet fuel burning.

No one tries to have a campfire with green wood because it mostly smokes and doesn't get hot enough to do anything like roast weiners or make cocoa.
 
The amount of combustion occurring, not how "complete" the combustion is, determines the amount of heat and destructive effects produced by a fire. A lot of incomplete combustion (which is typical in any fuel-rich fire) is a lot more dangerous than a little bit of complete combustion. This is as simple as noting that five half-full buckets of sand will make a bigger pile than one full bucket.

I wouldn't bother but misconceptions about fire can be lethal in emergency situations. Let's suppose you're in a building on fire and you have two possible exit routes. One route is through a room containing several areas of bright clearly visible flame. The other is through a room with no visible flame but completely filled with opaque black smoke (indicating "incomplete combustion"). Assume you can hold your breath.

Choose based on ergo's principles (which would hold that the smoke room must be cooler) and you will die.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
ergo said:
No, I would agree that the fires that are visible in that shot look very robust.

But with the exception of the one on the corner (in sheeples' image) which is exuding a thick black smoke cloud, you can see the rest of the visible fire has much less smoke issuing from it. It's the floors where we don't see flames that are issuing the most smoke.



When skeptics talk about the towers being mostly smoking rather than flaming they are referring to how the towers appeared generally over the course of time that they burned:

[qimg]http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/twin-towers-hit.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://dalje.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2011/m09/ox281275742680822416.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00372/twin-towers-burning_372982a.jpg[/qimg]

The burning was never seen to engulf an entire floor at once. And comparing this to other building fires, these were not infernos.
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Well, the top picture you show you can still see the fires raging. The lower one looks, weird. I haven't seen that one before. The middle picture still shows fire, and no one knows what's going on deeper inside the tower. With all the fuel that went inside, along with office equipment, paper, etc.
 
ergo said:
Twinstead, you're missing the point. The flames you would see in your example are the jet fuel burning.

No one tries to have a campfire with green wood because it mostly smokes and doesn't get hot enough to do anything like roast weiners or make cocoa.
Click to expand...

Every year I'm obliged to have fair-sized bonfires of totally green, freshly cut, olive prunings. They take but a splash of accelerant to turn into a roaring fire, the embers of which are sometimes capable of igniting new prunings the next day if there's a breeze. While that (what? 40 or 50kg? I dunno) of wood is burning you can't get remotely close to it.

Were you saying something? Hmmm?
 
Myriad said:
The amount of combustion occurring, not how "complete" the combustion is, determines the amount of heat and destructive effects produced by a fire. A lot of incomplete combustion (which is typical in any fuel-rich fire) is a lot more dangerous than a little bit of complete combustion. This is as simple as noting that five half-full buckets of sand will make a bigger pile than one full bucket.

I wouldn't bother but misconceptions about fire can be lethal in emergency situations. Let's suppose you're in a building on fire and you have two possible exit routes. One route is through a room containing several areas of bright clearly visible flame. The other is through a room with no visible flame but completely filled with opaque black smoke (indicating "incomplete combustion"). Assume you can hold your breath.

Choose based on ergo's principles (which would hold that the smoke room must be cooler) and you will die.

Respectfully,
Myriad
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Is your chance of survival actually better in the other room? Why?
(Let me guess: Complete combustion means that, different from the smoky room, not all the available oxygene is consumed by fire, which means that less fuel is being oxidized, which means less heat is produced. The flames may be hotter in terms of temperature, but they are smaller)
 
ergo said:
Twinstead, you're missing the point. The flames you would see in your example are the jet fuel burning.
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Horse feathers. It is mostly plastics and various petroleum products and synthetic fabric burning after about the first 5 minutes.

No one tries to have a campfire with green wood because it mostly smokes and doesn't get hot enough to do anything like roast weiners or make cocoa.
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Stop and think before you post this garbage again in support of your mistaken belief that the fires were close to going out or not all that hot.

The smoke that you get from green or wet wood is NOT black, it is NOT the result of incomplete combustion and it contains very little carbon,, whether elemental or compounded with other elements. It's STEAM. Don't waste our time and bandwidth bringing that up again in support of your baseless superstitions.
 
ergo said:
"Dozens", eh? ;)

And I seem to recall a thread here in which I actually had to explain -- nay, argue -- why smoke is incomplete combustion. Apparently even you didn't know that, Mr. Fire Professor.
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How many times do we have to tell you that it doesn't matter? It can still be freaking HOT.

I can pour 151 rum on the palm of my hand and light it and count three seconds before I put it out without injuring myself. It will not smoke the least bit.

If I do the same thing with lighter fluid, but there will be smoke and at least a first-degree burn on my palm.

Only an idiot will do it with diesel, but I assure you that it would be painful and smoky.

A fire as big as those on most floors of the WTC does not have to be 100% efficient to do massives damage.
 
ergo said:
No, I would agree that the fires that are visible in that shot look very robust.

But with the exception of the one on the corner (in sheeples' image) which is exuding a thick black smoke cloud, you can see the rest of the visible fire has much less smoke issuing from it. It's the floors where we don't see flames that are issuing the most smoke.



When skeptics talk about the towers being mostly smoking rather than flaming they are referring to how the towers appeared generally over the course of time that they burned:

[qimg]http://willyloman.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/twin-towers-hit.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://dalje.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2011/m09/ox281275742680822416.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00372/twin-towers-burning_372982a.jpg[/qimg]

The burning was never seen to engulf an entire floor at once. And comparing this to other building fires, these were not infernos.
Click to expand...

I read the text, and looked at the pictures, and all I have to say is, Wow! Yet another example of a truther doing a masterful job of self-debunking.
 
Oystein said:
Is your chance of survival actually better in the other room? Why?
(Let me guess: Complete combustion means that, different from the smoky room, not all the available oxygene is consumed by fire, which means that less fuel is being oxidized, which means less heat is produced. The flames may be hotter in terms of temperature, but they are smaller)
Click to expand...


Basically, you guessed it. The room where you can clearly see areas of flame must be either ventilated, or has not been burning long enough to change the atmosphere much. Either way, the air is not (yet) superheated, so you can survive passing through the room. What will burn you is radiation from the flames, and clothing will protect you from that to some extent. (Note that this is how interior fire is usually depicted in TV and movie scenes where a hero must escape a burning room or rescue someone from it: patches of bright fire with clear air and clear paths between them. It's not very realistic to encounter such conditions for very long.)

The room filled with black opaque smoke is more typical of a fully involved enclosed interior space. Combustion has slowed because the air is depleted of oxygen but in the process a high temperature has been reached. There may also be flames, but you can't see them through the smoke. The same lack of ventilation that slows the combustion (and causes "incomplete combustion") also traps the heat. Just being in contact with that superheated air will burn you. Inhale it, and your lungs are destroyed. Even opening a door to enter such a room could kill you, as the air admitted by the door causes the superheated smoke to deflagrate (the "backdraft explosion").

In either room, your chances are better if you crawl.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
ergo said:
Twinstead, you're missing the point. The flames you would see in your example are the jet fuel burning.

No one tries to have a campfire with green wood because it mostly smokes and doesn't get hot enough to do anything like roast weiners or make cocoa.
Click to expand...

Congratulations. You just proved wildfires don't exist.

Smokey The Bear was a scam!
 
GlennB said:
Every year I'm obliged to have fair-sized bonfires of totally green, freshly cut, olive prunings. They take but a splash of accelerant to turn into a roaring fire, the embers of which are sometimes capable of igniting new prunings the next day if there's a breeze. While that (what? 40 or 50kg? I dunno) of wood is burning you can't get remotely close to it.
Click to expand...

Because the smoke is ghastly? :rolleyes:

Given that a 9/11 "debunker" will find any way he/she can to assert that black is white and up is down, it doesn't surprise me at all that GlennB has found some way to "debunk" the "green wood smokes more than it burns" argument.

And God only knows what point Myriad thinks s/he's making. Was I saying that smoke is harmless to human health?? No, I wasn't, but that doesn't stop the intrepid 9/11 "debunker" from "debunking" it anyway!
 
Myriad said:
The room filled with black opaque smoke is more typical of a fully involved enclosed interior space. Combustion has slowed because the air is depleted of oxygen but in the process a high temperature has been reached.
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And this is just utter b.s.

Myriad, you don't actually know what you're talking about, do you? :D
 
ergo said:
Because the smoke is ghastly? :rolleyes:

Given that a 9/11 "debunker" will find any way he/she can to assert that black is white and up is down, it doesn't surprise me at all that GlennB has found some way to "debunk" the "green wood smokes more than it burns" argument.

And God only knows what point Myriad thinks s/he's making. Was I saying that smoke is harmless to human health?? No, I wasn't, but that doesn't stop the intrepid 9/11 "debunker" from "debunking" it anyway!
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Yeah, it's the "debunker" side that has everything messed up. If only everyone was in "the know" like troofers are we could quote mine, lie, make up stats, not back up any of our claims, twist words and phrases to mean what we wanted to, and have no interest in what happened to the fallen of that day as well.

I hope I "wake up" soon, this reality thing is getting boring.
 
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