Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Speaking of disasters . . .
I hung out this evening with my friends and we got to talking about lahars. That’s when Stan told me about bleves (pronounced “blevvies”), which I’d never heard of before. Bleve is actually an acronym, BLEVE, which stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion:
A BLEVE can occur in a vessel that stores a substance that is usually a gas at atmospheric pressure but is a liquid when pressurized (for example, liquefied petroleum gas). The substance is stored partly in liquid form, with a gaseous vapour above the liquid filling the remainder of the container.
If the vessel is ruptured — for example, due to corrosion, or failure under pressure — the vapour portion may rapidly leak, lowering the pressure inside the container and releasing a wave of overpressure from the point of rupture. This sudden drop in pressure inside the container causes violent boiling of the liquid, which rapidly liberates large amounts of vapour in the process. The pressure of this vapour can be extremely high, causing a second, much more significant wave of overpressure (an explosion) which may completely destroy the storage vessel and project fragments over the surrounding area.
This one is spectacular:
I’m not sure what’s more impressive — the sight of the fuel car rocketing 3600+ feet, or the fireball which follows.
D.
Goosebumps!! That was scarycool.
That’s AWEsome!
Big explosions rawk!
Heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh. Fire. Fire. Fire’s cool. Heh, heh. /beavis
Yeah, short of going nukular, bleves may be about the biggest boom you’ll ever see.
OOOOOOOOOOO FIREEEEEE! i lurrrrve fire. that is pretty darn cool! i mean, hot. yeah.
i once got to watch a house burn down (on purpose, for practice for the fire dept) and it was one of the most awesome things i’ve ever seen. no bleves tho.:-P