Interesting myth about fire metal

You will not do much if you want to extinguish a fire of magnesium. Flushing or spraying fire extinguishers? The result may even be an explosion.

If you've ever heard or witnessed a big industrial metal fire, you would be surprised to see how the firefighters put it out: nothing. Some metals, including lithium, sodium and magnesium, can ignite easily, and gradually a large amount of fire catches in factories.

But even if the pile of metal caught fire, you don't need to be afraid. They do not blow up, whereas they tend to produce ash and this ash will prevent oxygen from penetrating deep, so the fire will gradually fade.

Magnesium burns slowly in the air, but flares up when it is smashed with CO2.(Photo: Popsci)

But if you still want to try to extinguish a metal fire, you might just make the situation worse. For example, magnesium will burn more when there is CO ₂ , compared to air. So, if you use a fire extinguisher to spray CO ₂ into a small magnesium fire, it will suddenly flare up stronger and faster.

Water even made the situation worse. If the metal had melted, the result would be a steam explosion, knocking it everywhere. In addition, some metals, when heated, split water into oxygen and hydrogen, creating a situation like a big hydrogen explosion.

Even dry sand or salt - standard materials to extinguish metal fires - can also turn into destruction. In 1993, a Massachusetts industrial plant occurred a sodium fire, and the local fire brigade tried to quench the salt stored for that purpose. Unfortunately, salt was damp, causing many firefighters to burn badly from the hydrogen explosion.

And the next time, when you encounter a sodium fire, firefighters will only do one simple task: stand far away. Metal fire is too hot to be controlled.