Lighting metal fires (and putting them out??) 

Ask any machinist: "What's the best way to start a titanium fire?" and they will tell you all you need to do is mill or turn it dry.

Congratulations on getting slightly closer to completing the thesis since last time !!

I served 6 years in the US Navy and when I got to the USS Stennis, we had an entire safety course on class D fires. The answer was always push the aircraft overboard.

I love how the best we have for Class D fires is literally just really dry popcorn salt.

WE MAKING IT OUT OF THE FUME HOOD WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥

"You legally cant correct me on it" Ask War Thunder players how much they care about that.

11:34 Notice that Tom is wearing what appears to be darkened goggles. This is because magnesium fires put out so much UV light that they can singe unprotected eyeballs and cause a condition known as "arc eye", and after long-term exposure, cataracts.

This is some advanced level procrastination. I’m impressed.

This brings back memories. When I was a kid I obtained a stack of dead chainsaws. Many chainsaws use magnesium alloy castings. I also had a big ass kerosene burner. I can confirm magnesium alloy burns quite well, especially when water is added. The mysterious white light that lit up the neighbourhood late one night was of course nothing to do with me.

When I was a teenager we bought some bootleg unmarked fireworks that must have been filled with Magnesium powder or something. We lit it, ran away, and then were all instantly blinded by this horrific white light because it was nighttime, and I distinctly remember seeing shadows on our neighbors house across the field that was like 300 feet away. When it burned out it had left a divot in the 1/4" steel plate we'd set it on, truly terrifying

Some kids in a club at my high school were trying to ignite aluminum foil on fire with batteries in the hallway, so the teacher (who was a chemistry teacher) thought it was a good idea to give them a few matches and some strips of magnesium metal to ignite outside as an alternative instead. It did not go well.

i particularly enjoy the budget floodfilling on the periodic table at 1:12

Oxy acetylene torch is my go to for burning Metal. A stick welder might do it.

Well, all Titanium fires I have heard of, involve a lathe or a mill in some way. I think this has to do with the fresh, not oxidised surfaces of freshly cut titanium and the thin cross section of the chips.

I work in fire protection and do work for some of the biggest chemical production facilities in the world and honestly all of those elements (besides the silly made up group) are a real hazard for everyone on these sites from a day to day. One facility i go to has around 9 fires a month due to the nature of production. Kinda crazy to be around all that shit all the time. Also the silica in fire extinguishers is under investigation for a ban because of the potential "long term effects on your health similar to asbestos"

I've been a fire warden (on and off) for around 30 of the last 45 years of my working life and like you, have never seen a metal fire or what it is that you use to put one out. Well done on demonstrating and explaining this. BTW, I have worked on a chemical site where we had enormous tanks of Ethylene Oxide and one trick the site's fire brigade used to do on the course they ran was to have an oil tray (a tray around 3m deep but the size of a door laying down) and put some EO in it then set fire to it. Then, they would get one of us lab-rats to put it out using a foam extinguisher and it would appear to go our. After talking to us about it for a minute or two, he would get a long metal rod and push the foam to one side and flames would appear - was not pyrophoric, it just carried on burning in its own atmosphere. The foam had done nothing more than shelter it from the wind. Good luck with completing your thesis - making videos is a substitute activity that benefits the rest of mankind.

Best way to ignite bulk titanium: find a friend with an acetylene or oxyhydrogen torch and go nuts on it!

This is the best chemistry channel on RU-vid, not for consistent uploads, not the generally good chemistry but just for comedic value. It's always a fun time watching these.

A cadmium fire sounds like a full on nightmare

My favorite thing about your videos, other than the goober host of them, is the music. Also I love the really bizarre, tatterdemalion, and derelict furniture. And like, normally, it would languish and rust away in the shed. But you give it new life. You give that furniture, that fan, that chalk board it's 5 minutes of fame, to where hundreds of thousands of people all over the world can appreciate it. Furthermore. I think grandma would be honored that you have done the same with the cutlery that her husband probably had to smuggle across some border inside of a taxidermied ferret or something for their future family to enjoy and be able to eat food with it and inherit some day. I'd say you gave it new life, but... I mean you gave it a viking funeral of sorts. That's gotta be similar. RIP Gramma's spoons. Thank you. 🥄🔥🧯

Speaking of beryllium bricks, I worked at Culham labs for a while and the big fusion doughnut actually has beryllium bricks, I got a beryllium release leaflet when I started work there. IIRC tiny particles of beryllium just kinda float off while the aggressively hot fusion plasma exists which produces a particularly mobile and nasty beryllium exposure hazard especially if something were to go pop, from what I gather from someone who worked in waste handling there the beryllium handling and working waste sits around in barrels on-site for a very long time before they can find a permanent home for it. Berylliosis is a much cooler disease than lame garden variety silicosis anyway

Your episode with coldones was so unexpected but perfectly fit.

I have been having a dark few days mental health wise and this topic and your video lighted my morning up! Thank you!

As a volunteer firefighter one of my favorite things on car fires is seeing the Magnesium glowing as you're walking up to it and then hitting it with water and having it do it's best impression of a professional fireworks show only a few feet away from you're face

In my aircraft fabricator job we used to collect titanium chips from all the precision rivets that we messed up and had to drill out, then light them on fire outside of the building during lunch break. Great deal of fun, surprised that the building never caught on fire

Very cool to hear and see how class d extinguishers work! And that outro, "if you've been made to watch this video as part of your job training, consider asking for more hazard pay" lmao😂

Because of this video I told my boss about metal fires (she's a pharmacist) and now I have to become a fire protection assistant and have to do eight more hours of this on a saturday. But I'm also kind of looking forward to it so thanks Tom

Hey Tom, your failure to ignite the Titanium and the Magnesium with Thermite and Thermate probably had something to do with the plates dissipating the heat enough to not reach their autoignition temperature. Three solutions I would suggest are, 1. Use more Thermite/Thermate 2. Use a more aggressive fuel/oxidizer mix (My two cents is swapping out Iron Oxide for Ammonia Perchlorate and swapping out the powdered aluminum for powdered magnesium) 3. Reduce the mass of the bulk material you're trying to ignite

What will come first ? The robot apocalypse or you finishing your PhD ?

You need to increase your surface area for the fire to reach the Titanium. Metal dust, like any good flammable dust, is great at setting fires.

The slo-mo of spraying water on it was awesome! The drops of water appear to instantly turn into drops of fire! Would've liked to see a fine mist of water, also.

Awesome video. Love the slow mo shots at the end. It's also very educative to see what not to do in case of a class D fire... Good luck with your Thesis!

That always reminds me; we had a guy in the lab destroying some old reagents and he ended up with a bag of sodium aluminium hydride powder. Which he wanted to work up by dropping it in water. It reacted so violently a droplet of water jumped up and landed in the bag of reagent setting the whole bag on fire. Managed to manoeuvre the container into the sink; which it proceeded to melt through before finally going out. Metal hydrides are slightly terrifying.

I’ve just recently found this channel, I’ve already watched all the videos and I need more!

Metal fires are a subject I really wanted to know more about. Very urgently. Thanks for the video!

Because someone will probably ask, I suspect the reason Francium cant start a Class D fire is because its not really possible to assemble a large enough sample of Francium to start a fire with. Its so radioactive that a macroscopic sample of it would just immediately vapourise itself fron the heat of radioactive decay, and it'd be impossible to get enough Francium atoms in one place at the same time for even that to happen.

I don’t often get uncomfortable watching these chemistry videos of yours, but seeing the zinc fumes really got my heart rate going.

Please never stop making these videos. (Not unless I get rich suddenly and hire you to help me with my mad scientist ideas.) I learn so much and laugh while doing it. You remind me of ElectroBOOM in a way. I love their stuff as well.

You need a lot of surface area, and you have to do something about any oxide layer that forms, since that can affect reactivity. (Fresh shavings or "wool" made from titanium material?) Also there is more that one type of thermite combination, so maybe those are worth looking into as well.

Something you probably can't do in upsidedown land is put a pile of magnesium turnings on a snow bank and light it. It's really neat. It burns, starts to melt the snow underneath, burning magnesium falls into the snow, the small addition of water causes the magnesium to flare up, and it sort of runs away. It will melt down very rapidly into the snow and lights up the whole pile quite beautifully.

"I love talking about military things cause you legally can't correct me even when I'm wrong" An absolute banger quote for the ages

I'd really like to see a follow up where you try to put a metal fire out using different kinds of off the shelf table salt, to see if it's even feasible to put one out without such an expensive fire extinguisher.

Titanium gets covered with a thin oxide layer very quickly, the oxide layer prevents it from igniting. So you can try to heat it up and grind the oxide layer off the glowing titanium, I'm pretty sure that will start the reaction. If that doesnt work, qou can just ignite some freshly milled titanium shavings, the fine shavings can be heated quick enough to ignite them before the oxide layer gets too thick.

6:43 Warthunder Community: Challenge accepted xD

Blacksmith here. You could always set up some sort of open hearth forge. Buy some coked coal, build a forge out of mud or brick, use a shop vac as a blower. You could use that to get it up to a higher temp like 2500C, then use a thermite/thermate reaction on the already evenly heated Titanium I think the reason why the molten puddle of steel didn't help is because the heat was easily sucked into the Titanium and dispersed. It definitely made it hot, but once the iron touched the Titanium plate, it instantly cooled down. If it was already hot, the intense, focused heat from a thermite reaction might be enough to push it over the edge.

How did I miss this video? Love your content.

You are one of the very best channels on YT. Always have been.

You're teaching chemistry to 350,000 people. That should merit a Ph.D by itself. Great video! I work with magnesium in my garage sometimes and I've wondered if I can get myself in trouble with it.

I’ve been a fireman for 10 years. When it comes to the transmission block and the magnesium they use in some of the cars it’s so much fun to me to have that bright white flash popping off like crazy. Because there’s so much dark smoke from the rest of the car burning the flashes aren’t as blinding but I’m also a nut and find it so cool

THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH FOR COMING BACK!!!!! FROM THE .... From the UK! FUCK YEAH!!!

I love this channel

As others have pointed out, containing the metal in a ceramic pot will increase the overall heat transfer. If you want to achieve high temperatures, an oxy-acetylene torch or a plasma cutter from Harbor Freight will reach very high temperatures.

As a solid plate, the only way I could really suggest to set titanium alight is with electricity. Either running high current through it or arcing to it with graphite electrodes. Otherwise you'd probably have to mill it into chips or swarf to reduce the mass of metal you're heating up.

1:46 - The whole roof turning into lead over time is hilarious. Not sure if the joke was intentional, but made me laugh.

@ExplosionsAndFire - bro, that was beautiful at the end. The lit magnesium and the water spattering it about was just mesmerizing. I really have come to appreciate your particular spicy Australian taste in video editing/producing and most of all... The exceptional sound tracks! 😂 Idkw, but I do love that classic elevator music type shit lol.

magnesium automotive wheels used to be a major problem for firefighters. as you stated they are hard to put out and since they are surrounded by a highly flammable rubber compound that burns hot enough to turn asphalt back into a gooey mess it has more than enough potential to ignite the mag wheels. this is one of many reasons why it's rarely used in automotive applications now

love your work. you're definitely the salt of the earth. i still can't believe how fortunate you are to be sponsored by VB.

Watched a guy's motorcycle burn a few weeks ago it was the brightest fire I have ever seen. It was not so much the gasoline-burning but the metal on the bike.

Dude I miss you guys so much I remember your other channel… don’t stop uploading ! You are unique… it’s like a troll meets an actual chemist it’s amazing

That slow motion shot of the water hitting the fire is SO EPIC!

12:13 the burger king employee when I ask for no salt on my fries

Great video

All I wanted to say is that one of your videos helped me pass today's "burning of fuel" exam, you can be proud of yourself and thank you o7

the shot of the water droplets hitting the fire was gorgeous! great work

Good to see fire getting more time on the channel. I was starting to think the channel is named explosions and fire just because explosions usually come with fire.

One of my grandfathers worked for a major aerospace manufacturer, during and after WW-II. They had their own fire department, between military secure operations, and special fire classes. At some point they bought a rather expensive and high tech, low weight in order to carry more tank capacity within truck highway weight limits, magnesium fire truck. When it caught fire, their sample of a Class D fire dwarfed anything I've ever seen academics pretend was a large metal fire. Thermite variants could use more attention, eg welding to destroy tanks, versus CadWeld brews optimized for attaching copper heavy wire or strap to copper flashed steel ground rods, or tower bases, or to bond railroad tracks. That would also allow discussion of CadWeld fixtures to contain and shape molten metal, and their use to bond to structural metals without undue damage to their integrity.

i was reading (well listening) to Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey and in that book he mentions that plutonium in addition to its toxic and radioactive properties is pyrophoric (as well as its oxides), and that plutonium fires were (are??) common in nuclear processing. (other fun properties involve 6 different allotropes under normal atmospheric pressure, with different crystal structures and density, making machining plutonium a pain as the stuff will change as it heats up while being milled)

One month ago: *My thesis has been due for months, lets make ice cream* Now: *ALL MUST BURN* Love you Tom, looking forward to the next level of escalation

I really appreciate your mix of humor and professionalism. Great stuff man, great stuff!

Oh yes, magnesium burns. Lots of older airplanes can attest to that. Oh, and the slo-mo of the water hitting the magnesium at the end was art!

How to set Ti on fire, idea: Powderize to fine first. Fill into a container. Replace air with pure oxygen in container at high pressure. Shake container to get a good mixture of dust and air. Spark gap.

Glad you wrapped the tray in foil. Easy cleanup for the thermate drips.

Always a great day when another Ex&F video is published! You go Tom!

Yes, he's back and setting fire to things!!

This is the best channel to listen to when you work on your PhD thesis. It constantly reminds you science is fun when the thesis writing is sucking every bit of your soul out of you at the same time. Keep up the fantastic work, mate.

I work in a foundry down in Melbourne where the main thing we work with is zinc, lead, aluminium and magnesium. I cannot tell how many times I’ve set mag and zinc on fire, it’s so easy to do and it looks beautiful, but with some of the things we do we also use some titanium cadmium indium etc and the other day we were mixing some alive cadmium and titanium halfway through it we checked to see if everything had melted together, the titanium was on fire and shit man is it bright never seen something hurt my eyes that much, just as effective as staring at welding.

To light titanium you could always use a carbon arc torch (or any welder on a corner of the Ti)

Your videos keep gaining quality! Love it.

Really one of your best here, great job. But, how's your thesis coming along!?

You almost have more views than subscribers, you deserve more subs

Excited to watch a new vid! Hope thesis is going well!

This is awesome, I’ve been dying for a new Ex&F video ever since I saw Tom on Cold Ones a few days ago. Thank you for delivering!

My recommendation would be either powderies or turn the titanium into strips and try placing the thermite under the metal so it's in the flame ideally so part of the metal is in the warmest part

I just love the slightly crazed grin and the vaguely unhinged light that goes on in Tom's eyes when he uses the word 'thermite'....

Hello! As far as lighting the Titanium on fire, methinks a beefy welder might do the trick, high-current arcs tend to get hot. A Plasma torch would certainly light it up, but molten splattering Titanium right next to a live Oxygen feed might not be ideal. As a last resort, some potent oxidizer that is used on metals to clear the oxide layer could work, it should act as a flux, keeping the titanium surface free of oxides untill it heats enough to sustain the fire. PS: I have absolutely no background in chemistry so results may vary. ^^

I love when E&F uploads and my crude oil turns to cranberry juice

You can set titanium on fire with a carbon arc torch using a huge arc welder.

The "and why haven't I finished my thesis yet ?" got me laughing so hard ! Was not expecting that. I can also relate though!

Every day we get further and further from the thesis. I'm not complaining. Nice work!

At school I used to carry a one of those cheap miniature butane torches in my pencil case, I used it to set fire to pencil sharpeners that were made from magnesium alloy. Once you got them hot enough it made a nice little fire! Also carried a small jar of trichloroethane (showing my age a little there) which I'd use to melt erasers into putty.

If you want to keep it as thick hunks of metal rather than fine powder or turnings, then electricity is probably a good go-to. Dump some amps into it. It would be easier if you could get a strip, ribbon or wire of the metal, since the wider and thicker it is, the more current you will need - but there is basically no limit to how hot you can make it. Another idea, get it very hot then drop it into LN2 or LO2. (some will form nitrides with LN2 but it is the LO2 that will be the real fun)

You can try the following: - Converting it into fine chips - Using oxyacetylene (3100ºC) - Using a TIG welder without any gas, at the max power possible

For ideas around setting fire to titanium, one thing that comes to mind is Dicyanoacetylene- a chemical I read about in a rocketry book I didn't understand, but they said it burns at something absurd like 5000 degrees, so that's neat! Probably really hard to synthesize, almost definitely toxic, but I'm an idiot currently failing out of an undergrad software degree so I feel qualified to give recommendations on highly unstable chemistry.

binge watched every piece of content you had made during lockdown (I was missing my own lab) and was VERY excited to see you on Cold Ones today (which I shit-watch when on breaks from lab work) - keep up the hazardous work so I don't get tempted to do it myself!

Working at a Tantalum Capacitor Scrap recycling facility, we have a few Class D extinguishers. If you have material catch on fire, best to move it away from everything else and cover it with the salt. Then leave it be till the following day at least. You need it to cool down so it doesn't combust again if disturbed in the presence of air. Only have seen two bad metal fires. One that was because the caps were being processed with too little water. They ignited, boiled the water, heated more, split it into oxygen and hydrogen, then that caught on fire. The other bad fire was because a coworker did not mix acid and water properly while treating caps. The caps reacted strongly with the acid, heated them up, and caused them to ignite.

“That’s all the thinking involved there is no more thinking than that” took me out

I absolutley love your choice of fuses.

You might be able to use an inductive loop to generate super high temperatures in the titanium.

Uranium struts with beryllium bricks should make for a nice, self heating house. Very smart Tom!

Ah, my favourite insane bearded Aussie who likes setting random things on fire!