Gallery, Projects and General > Oooops!
Avoided the house burning down!
andyf:
I reckon it's the vent, drawing air in, and letting a bit of ethanol vapour out. The external vapour acts as a fuse; the burner flame ignites it, the flame flashes back to the vapour/air mix inside the tank, and POP!
Tricky stuff, ethanol (the main component of meths). A pharmacist next door to my offices was decanting surgical spirit from a carboy into little bottles for retail. The coroner's verdict was that the vapour reached the pilot light on his central heating boiler in an adjacent room, the flame flashed over to the bench where he was doing the bottling, ignited the lot and started the fire which killed him.
Andy
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