how long does jet and / or diesel fuel burn?

[LSK]

Does it sit there and burn for hours like an old log on a campfire or does it explode rapidly and consume all the fuel within seconds or minutes?

[Carefulplease]

1. It does not explode...

Edited for typo.

It does not explode unless vapours are allowed to mix with air in the right proportion before they are ignited. Deflagrations or conflagrations can then occur. A lot of heat is put out. Even without such explosions, significant overpressures can be created that will blow out windows. The combustion will stop when the oxygen supply is exhausted and the remaining liquid fuel will pool or soak stuff up.

If oxygen is then progressively replenished, the remaining saturated fuel vapours will burn and put out much more heat, while the remaining liquid evaporates, and it will soon be gone. Other combustible materials, if any are present will then continue to burn and the fire will proceed, preheated and jumpstarted in post-flashover phase, quite fierce and hot.

[Rainscents]

2. They don't explode...

what it do is create lot thick black smoke.

[XemaSab]

3. Interesting question

:think:

[KJF]

4. The jet fuel burned for 5-10 minutes

NIST says:
"The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes."
(p. 183/p. 233 of the .pdf)

and

"Jet fuel sprayed onto the surfaces of typical office workstations burned away within a few minutes."
(p. 184)

Link to NIST's main report:
http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1CollapseofTowers.pdf

[wildbilln864]

5. And Jet Fuel which is kerosene...

doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel nor does typical office fires!
911 WAS an inside job!

[cherokeeprogressive]

36. Maximum Burning Temperature

The maximum burning temperature for "Jet-A" is 1796 degrees fahrenheit, or 980 degrees celsius.

Link to maximum burning temperature for Jet Fuel

[LARED]

6. It depends on a few things

If you have a gallon of diesel fuel in an open cylindrical container it will burn a lot longer than a a gallon of diesel spread out on the floor. The pool on the floor will burn off pretty quickly. Of course the floor might continue to burn, if it was combustible.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. How about if the fuel was coming out of a pressurized pipe

and got lit one way or another?

Wouldn't it stay lit like a blow torch, as long as there was fuel in the line feeding it?

[LARED]

10. Unlikely diesel fuel would act like a blow torch

if it was blowing out of a pipe, but it would continue to feed a fire.

In order for diesel fuel to act like a blow torch it needs to be atomized as it leaves the pipe. Similar to an oil furnace.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. So let's say

I install a little shut off valve in the line. Couldn't I turn that valve on and light it with a match, that would give me a continuous flame, sort of like a pilot light on a stove but bigger? Couldn't I then direct that flame or place the pipe just where I needed it to do the most damage? Let's say right next to the base of a truss?

[LARED]

13. I guess under the right conditions it could work

but you need to remember diesel fuel is not like gasoline or a flammable gas. It's not all that easy to light.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. So let's say I had a set up something like this

but instead of the red tank for a fuel supply, I had a pressurized fuel line feeding it. I could 'cook' a few key trusses maybe?

[Sinti]

15. During earthquakes they tend to explode, with a low burning fires OTOH

they might just burn like a pilot light - especially depending on the amount of pressure behind the gas, and oxygen in the environment.

[DoYouEverWonder]

16. Especially if you planned for it

and set up the system to make it easy to do?

They didn't need to wire the building for explosives. They put the system in place when they built Rudy's OEM bunker.



The Port Authority permitted the installation of 7 WTC's huge diesel fuel tanks in the interior, sitting directly under transfer beams and trusses. - Fire Engineering September, 2002

[Sinti]

19. sitting directly under transfer beams and trusses - oh my

WTF were they thinking. Building code and common sense is for everyone, you know, not just the little people. Fire + gas pipe boom = one hell of a mess. When did they build that bunker?

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. I believe the remodeling of WTC 7 was complete by 1998-9

New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was created in 1996 by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to manage the city’s response to catastrophes, including terrorist attacks.


No fuel storage and/or generators were not part of the original design of the building.

[LARED]

17. I doubt it

The heat output from the burner is designed to cook food, not bring large steel columns into the plastic range.

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. The cooking stove was just a crude illustration

of what you could do. Would you like me to build the friggin thing, to prove that it could be done?

I'm sure they would have used a much larger more directed flame. More like a blow torch rather then a cooking stove.

The Port Authority permitted the installation of 7 WTC's huge diesel fuel tanks in the interior, sitting directly under transfer beams and trusses.

<snip>

It is believed these fires occurred in part because the Port Authority, against the recommendations of the fire department, had placed aboveground tanks of diesel fuel—a 42,000-gallon tank at ground level and three 275-gallon tanks on the fifth, seventh, and eight floors—inside the building, underneath transfer beams that allowed the high-rise to be constructed above an electrical substation.

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:GDqUAZuB17cJ:fe.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm%3FSection%3DARCHI%26ARTICLE_ID%3D158382%26VERSION_NUM%3D1+OEM+FDNY+warned+diesel+storage&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a

Keep in mind that the 5th Floor didn't have much in the way of combustibles. There was one small office and then the generators for OEM and other tenants. Most of the space was open with the pipe system running through it. There was also a masonry wall down the middle. What was there to burn, other then the diesel fuel?

[LARED]

23. Are you making the argument that the diesel tanks

played a role in the fires and collapse of WTC7?

I think they did.

[DoYouEverWonder]

26. They were the fuel source

but the 4 big tanks in the basement survived the collapse. Two of those tanks were found pretty much full, but those two tanks were not part of the pressurized fuel system for the 5th floor generators.

Since no one turned back up systems for the building off, most of the smaller day tanks should have been empty by the time the building collapsed.

[LARED]

38. They were the fuel source

of what?

[hack89]

8. Good paper from MIT on the science behind the WTC fires ..

discusses energy release and burn rates.

http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/PDFfiles/Chapter%20V%20Fire.pdf

[rman]

9. Mixed with enough air is burns explosivly

We've all seen that both in case of the towers and the pentagon much of the fuel did burn of in a matter of seconds in the open air (huge fire ball on impact).
FEMA figured burning diesel in WTC7 is an very unlikely cause of the collapse of that building.

[DrDebug]

12. Diesel has a hard time burning anyhow

That's why Mr. Diesel invented Diesel, because gasoline was not efficient enough. The efficiency of Diesel is derived from its reluctance to burn, so you need extremely high temperatures and therefore the energy gets conserved. For example a Diesel engine ignites at 700 C and 35 Atmosphere unlike gasoline which only needs 350 C and 20 Atmosphere. ( http://ncert.nic.in/sites/learning%20basket/energy10class/combustion%20engine1.htm )

Basically you can take a Zippo and throw it into a jerrycan of Diesel and the flames will go out LOL

Diesel will definitely go to the explosion stage quickly, so it'll only burn for a short or very short period of time until the temperature is hot enough for it to explode. The whole point is that a normal fire would never be hot enough for those Diesel tanks to even catch fire; it would require hours of intense heat. After all you would assume that they didn't put the Diesel into bath tubs, right? Not mention that there is still the question whether there were any storage tanks to begin with, because even that part has not proven as far as I know.

Edit: Kerosene is the opposite, so it'll burn quickly and for a very long time. The downside is that it doesn't get hot.

[DoYouEverWonder]

22. But what if you installed a delivery system

for this fuel that could be ignited at crucial point along the 5th floor?

[DrDebug]

24. That'll probably give a nice hot fire

You do need a system to spray the diesel onto an existing hot fire and it'll probably set everything ablaze really quickly. There is also another use for it. Let's say that you have some things on - let's say - the 23rd floor and you need to get rid off that. Diesel would be perfect for a quick hot fire which will quite effective at getting rid off documents and other things which you don't want people to discover...

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. What if you just directed

an intense hot flame at key points and let the metal heat up and melt?

There was enough fuel in the storage tank system to feed a flame for quiet awhile.

The generators and fuel system in the WTC7 were never turned off on 9-11, even though they should have been when the building was evacuated. Especially, when they decided not to even try to put out any of the fires that they had found. Instead the generators kicked in, emptying the day tanks. A few hours later the pressurized fuel system kicked in, pulling up fuel from the big storage tanks. During the period of time that the system kicked in and the building collapsed, the two tanks spent most of their fuel.

The pressurized pipe system ran around most of the 5th floor directly UNDER the transfer beams and the trusses. All you had to do was open up enough key points and ignite and leave. If the flame was hot enough eventually these spots would melt and fail.

One more item, they didn't bother to put in any sort of fire suppression system on the 5th floor for this fuel system, even though most of WTC7 was a sprinklered building.

[DrDebug]

27. So the question becomes does diesel generate enough heat to melt iron

You can probably make a sort of a blow torch with diesel instead of gas. Just mix a lot of air and fuel and let the flames melt the trusses.

[DoYouEverWonder]

28. Now you're catching on

What I'd like to know is who is the shithead who designed this system? Or more likely, whoever did any 'upgrades' later.

[DoYouEverWonder]

30. OMG, did you know

that the guy who was the chief architect of the bunker in WTC7 is the same person that 'organized a security job for ex-FBI anti-terror chief John O'Neill in the Twin Towers'? A former employee of Kroll, Jerome Hauer, in 1999 Hauer became Head of the Office of Emergency Management. Holy meatballs, Batman!!!


http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Jerome_Hauer

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Office_of_Emergency_Management

[DrDebug]

31. I know. I'm the author of the links you've just provided ;) n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

32. Let me rephrase the question

Of course, that's your work. (Slaps self in head).

Let me ask, did you know that Jerome Hauer, who was behind getting John O'Neil his new job, was the same guy that was behind installing this crazy auxiliary power system, that probably brought down the building?

[DrDebug]

33. I knew that he was Head of the Office of Emergency Management

and played a bit with the West Nile Virus and Anthrax (pure coincindence of course), but I didn't know that. He seems to have been the hands-on guy for lots of things. Maybe we should call him the COO of 9/11.

[DoYouEverWonder]

35. This Hauer fellow sure gets around

He started to work for the NIH under Tommy Thompson on September 10, 2001 as an adviser on national security. On September 11th, he told the White House to take Cipro, the antibiotic that works against the anthrax virus, without bothering to reveal his warning to the American nation.

http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/Hauer,Jerome.shtml

If he was just starting a new job at the NIH on 09/10/01, what the hell was he doing at Ground Zero of 9/11? Then Wonder Boy shows up in DC just in time to warn the WH to take Cipro.

This guy is a major bag of dots. I don't know about COO? Stage manager sounds like a good description too.

[DoYouEverWonder]

39. One more tidbit that you may or may not already know

Hauer also had dinner with John O'Neil on 09/10/01.

So let me see if I'm getting this right? The guy who knew the attack was going down, had rigged WTC 7 to collapse, created O'Neill's new job at WTC, knowing he was sending him to his death, happens to be the one that finds O'Neill's body the next day, sits down and has dinner with his victim the night before?

Excuse me, I need to go outside and let my head explode.

[DrDebug]

40. The Cantor Fitzgerald story is just as weird

First the six managers plan a little holiday for themselves and schedule it for 9/11. On that day the company loses over 600 (!) people and they have their operations up and running two later and immediately remove all their ex-employees because they didn't show up for work (sic!)

11/12/2001 - Updated 12:52 PM ET

Cantor battles back from tragedy

By Noelle Knox, USA TODAY

(...) No one present at Cantor's headquarters on Sept. 11 survived. In all, almost two of every three of the firm's employees who were based in the north tower died. Buried under the rubble are almost all of Cantor's bond traders and its Nasdaq stock traders, as well as its legal and human resource departments.

(...) After graduation, Lutnick joined Cantor, one of the world's largest bond-trading firms. Friends and co-workers became his surrogate family. Lutnick was named president at 29 and became known on Wall Street for being outspoken and not afraid to play hardball. Five years later, as founder B. Gerald Cantor lay dying in a hospital, Lutnick sought to have him declared mentally incompetent. Lutnick took control of the firm after a nasty court battle with the founder's wife, who refused to let Lutnick come to her husband's funeral.

(...) But as the families waited for details of how Lutnick would take care of them, some criticized him, especially for his decision to take the victims off the payroll on Sept. 15, while rescuers still searched the rubble.

Lutnick calls the portrayal of his actions unfair. "I said, 'We would pay everyone on the 15th, and anyone who is not alive on the 30th, we can't pay.' And I said, 'I don't think anybody is alive.' "

(...) Six of eSpeed's top technology executives, including Claus, had planned to go on an annual, 1-day fishing trip that day. The trip was canceled because of bad conditions on the Atlantic — but not until 8 a.m. All six were on their way to the office when the planes hit the towers, killing President Frederick Varacchi and 125 other eSpeed employees.

The six executives headed straight to the firm's New Jersey location and started rerouting the trading network. They worked around the clock, napping on the floor. One slept with his head propped on an upside-down coffee cup. When the bond markets reopened Sept. 13, eSpeed was up and running.

(...) Last month, he had to close unprofitable offices in Paris and Frankfurt, Germany. "The most difficult thing to do is to make sure you move very quickly and not make mistakes," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/covers/2001-11-12-bcovmon.htm

How convenient losing 2/3 of the New York staff in the same period that they had to close down Paris and Frankfurt...

P.S. This is the story which Canada "Free" Press pulled from their website within 24 hours after I posted it even though it was a very old story. I wonder how long the usatoday link lasts...

[DoYouEverWonder]

41. Cantor Fitzgerald was on the 104th Floor of WTC 1

A lot of people got trapped there. Lutnick sounds like a real piece of work. Guess he didn't mind giving up a few employees for the cause?

Funny thing about the 104th floor, specially the equities trading area on the south side. That is were one of the bigger fires started at 10:01 AM. 104 was a number of floors above the impact zone. From 99 - 103 there was no fire. I guess someone took the opportunity to destroy some more evidence?

[savemefromdumbya]

21. look at other plane crashes -

[Ezlivin]

29. Here is a site that performs experiments with jet fuel

It was started by a Navy Commander who saw some problems with the TWA 800 investigation.

http://twa800.com/pages/fuel.htm

As a pilot I find it very strange that years after we were told that an exploding center fuel tank took down TWA 800 there have been no changes made to aircraft.

[DrDebug]

34. Maybe nothing changed because:

Washington Times 8/15/2000 Full page ad

[TheWraith]

37. It depends on quantity and distribution.

In that respect it's much like gasoline or other flammable oils. If there's not much of it, or if it's spread thinly, it burns fast. If it's in larger quantity, or in thick pools, it will burn for a longer time. It can burn for many hours in the latter case, maybe for days if you have enough fuel.