Dangerously exploding h2o

[Aaron]

I was talking to a friend the other day that used to work at a large aluminum plant in my area and he mentioned that before they go into certain areas, they search bags to make sure nobody has any water...even 1 teaspoon in a plastic bottle, etc... If anything like that happens to drop into a hot molten bit of aluminum, etc... it will explode like a mini bomb and can blast a hole right through a huge chunk of metal.

I know hot water can instantly pop and sizzle when dropped on fire, stove burners, etc... but that sounds pretty wild.

[ashtweth]

I have a friend who had a 10LPM accident, nearly lost his hearing and eyes, point is, don't do it unless your aware of the dangers and safety.

[hhoexclusive]

in engineering you occasionally get hydrogen trapped in bubbles in the surface of the steel. when you weld over them they go off with a hell of a bang!! usually leaving a thumb nail size hole in what you were workin on. so i would say there is a grain of truth in this.

[Jetijs]

Aaron, I think that this might be because aluminum is a rather active metal, just like potassium. It reacts to water creating hydrogen, but this happens only when pure aluminum reacts with water. If you just throw a piece of aluminum un water, nothing will happen, because aluminum will cover with oxide very fast, but if you scrape that oxide off under water, you can see some tinny bubbles appear on the scraped areas, but that is not for long, because the scraped areas will cover with oxide very fast and the reaction will stop. I think that molten aluminum does not have this problem with oxide and this some hydrogen is produces when water drops on it, and since the molten aluminum is hot, the gasses produced will explode. Also when I was melting some pieces of aluminum with my hho torch, I noticed, that aluminum first gets liquid, then the liquid gets red and if you heat it some more, it will explode This may be ehat happens when some water is poured in molten aluminum

[billb0169]

Aluminum is indeed a very active metal. It's the most common ingredient in solid rocket motors (fuel) along with oxidizers.