Re: Water? to energy, directly

Hello, Tim

Water will breakdown at a high enough temperature, but this will not happen with 
a forest fire because it will turn into steam and then rise away from the fire. The 
total dissociation temperature of water at atmospheric pressure is about 4,000 C, 
but a forest fire might get localized temperatures of only 1,000 C. 

A firefighter had this to say:

"As a firefighter, the only reason to stop spraying water onto a forest fire was that 
there is no chance that the water you have on your appliance was going to be 
effective in controlling the fire.

Here in Victoria, Australia, we have just come through a relatively busy fire season, 
and in of the fires that I attended, none of them were hot enough to disassociate 
the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Once a bush fire gets hot enough it can build 
up a kind of momentum, and start to create it's own weather patterns. When this 
happens, there is very little firefighters can do to control this, other than to wait for 
the fire to reach an area with a lower fuel load where the intensity will be reduced 
and make firefighting feasible again.

Water can be disassociated through enough heat energy, but only at very high 
temps. An example of this is the sort of temp reached when metals like magnesium 
or aluminum burn. When that happens, (as I know from first hand experience) 
water applied to the burning metal only increases the intensity of the fire, and can 
be very dangerous. The only way to put out a combustible metal fire is to smother 
it with dry sand or dirt.

In short, firefighters don't stop putting water on a forest fire because it 
disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen. They stop because the water they have 
is not enough to control the fire."

Yes, water can be heated under pressure so that it will not boil. Pressurized 
nuclear reactors do this. However, even if water were heated to 4,000 C, the 
energy would not be "never ending." More energy would be necessary to heat the 
water than could be obtained by burning the hydrogen.

I hope I answered your questions.

Kevin