I’ve always found compressed oxygen much scarier than liquid oxygen, especially at high flow rates. Definitely agree with your reasoning at the end there
Ah right, that makes sense. I worked in a lab once testing gasses via GC for Linde gas. One day they had a fire in the warehouse whilst filling up a tanker with liquid oxygen. I guess the whole system was under a lot of pressure. The metal tap on the wall that supplied the oxygen set on fire. It totally freaked out one of the workers there. I didn't see the fire (kind of sad that I missed it really), but I saw the aftermath of the tap, it was just a big hunk of melted metal. It was an event filled place really. We had 2 deaths there one time. Someone went inside one of the tankers to clean out the empty container, turns out it was still full of pooled nitrogen, he collapsed, someone went in to help him, they collapsed as well. Both of them died.
Even gaseous oxygen is terrifying. Just having a tiny particle of contamination such as an iron filing in an oxygen gas system can cause an explosion if it impacts something such as a sharp corner of an elbow fitting or something similar. Using the wrong material/alloy for oxygen systems can be devastating
Sadly, I don't have either of those on hand, so I might have to just settle for making bagpipes out of a goonbag and some recorders thisarvo. That said, any chance of a IDAT "Putting things in plasma cutters that shouldn't go in plasma cutters" video? :D
He works off of statistics...I guaranty more people are injured by unguarded grinding wheels than people injured welding in cast iron pans of liquid o2. :)
A negative result is just as scientifically valuable as any positive result. Really enjoyed this - would be keen to have a whole series on "will this burn in liquid oxygen?"
It was a interesting non of the less , the idea is still viable just on smaller metal pieces with a ox torch. I’m now curious what other material or metal burns like
@The King and get my eyes burned lol , reminds me of when they see not to look at the sun but I remember staring at a red setting sun that was nice to look at
I'm so tired off "scientists" saying negative result rather than call it a failed test, if you wanna be so technical then be technical. Oh and a "positive result" is called a successful result.
I recall Adam Savage from Mythbusters talking about a myth they decided was too dangerous to test full scale. A LOX tanker truck crashed on an asphalt highway and caught fire. The LOX spills out and saturates the asphalt. The combination results in the road exploding (not burning vigorously, exploding). They apparently did some small scale testing and decided it was way too dangerous to scale up due to it being unpredictable and expensive. Might be a fun thing to try at small scale. Or maybe it's a terrible idea. You can find a video of Adam discussing this by searching for "Adam Savage Answers: What's a Myth You Won't Test?" on YT.
Now we just need some bonus video of you frying some mushrooms in the freshly polished and seasoned pan. Don't imagine there's many skillets in service that have seen LOX before!
One of the most interesting things I've seen with Liquid oxygen was a demonstration where they soaked a cigar in it and lit it on fire. Using it to burn a hole into an Aluminium plate. Really shows how things change with extra oxygen.
Yeah, once you get a cut going with an oxy/fuel torch, and get the oxygen flowing, you can 100% cut off fuel to the torch. The heat from the exothermic reaction of the oxygen burning the steel, is enough to heat the surrounding metal to liquid, which then reacts with the oxygen, continuing the the cut! it takes a steady hand and some practice, but you can cut for feet, with only a few seconds of fuel at the start to get the reaction going! What's really neat, is this is how those demolition rods (oxygen lance, thermal lance) work. They're a tube of steel, surrounded by thin metal wires/mesh, inside a larger steel tube. One end of the rod goes to a holder, to blow oxygen through the tube to the tip. They usually have a copper contact for the tube connection, that goes to a wire. You light the torch up, using a car battery connected to that wire, or a welder, or whatever. Just enough to arc/melt the corner, and the oxygen does the rest. You can also light them with a torch by heating the end. Then they're self-sustaining (well, with the flow of oxygen). The burning steel is directed forward, along with a high velocity jet of now pre-heated oxygen! So this extremely high temperature jet of o2, along with burning steel, is then used to cut through almost anything. Huge feet-thick chunks of steel, concrete, stone.. doesn't matter. It burns through EVERYTHING. And it runs on only oxygen, the tube itself is the fuel. They even work underwater! They're used in the heavy equipment/mining, demolition/junk/scrapping, and ship worlds quite often! Search youtube for 'thermal lance' or 'oxygen lance' videos, they are VIOLENT, DISGUSTING, DIRTY, AMAZING things. Sadly, I've never run one, only high current arc gouging and plasma gouging, which is comparing a match to a 100 ton ironmaking furnace!
I only know of steel mills that run their oxyfuel cutters without fuel after ingnition on some automated equipment, cutting thick bars of still glowing red steel from strand casting. The glowing steel is so hot that it doesn't need extra heat. I can imagine that it works, but I've never seen it.
@@jackmclane1826 It's a fun 'game', to practice turning fuel off. It teaches you to be accurate with your cuts, teaches you to control your tip angle, teaches you to stop side to side wiggling, and make continuous cuts, because it's quite easy to 'lose' the cut without fuel. if you wobble? move too fast? You out-ran the pre-heated steel, and you stop cutting. Move too slow? kerf becomes so wide, oxygen doesn't touch the sides, and the cut stops. Same for wavy lines, and same for torch tip angle (direction of cut). It's not easy at first, hell it's not easy with practice, but by doing that practice, it improves all the other aspects of torch cutting by hand improve. Works best if you have long cuts to do, or lots of beveling (the thin wedge you're blowing away, stays hot enough to give you a lot more wiggle room, than trying to cut into cold 1" plate
I believe @ICWeld did exactly this about four weeks ago removing a huge pin in some farm equipment. Edit: it was a telehandler with a rusted out pin that needed to be removed.
@@dogsarebest7107 I so rarely use an oxy/fuel-cutter that I'll never have sufficient skill to do that. But a friend of mine said that the fuel flow in many torches is reduced when you open the center oxygen flow as a second function of that oxygen valve.
An interesting one, on demolition ranch he shot some oxygen cylinders and all of them ended up with perfectly circular holes way bigger than the bullet because of the steel burning. It's a really cool video
The problem is the underlying physics/chemistry presented is technically incomplete. A cutting torch works off the principle of accelerated oxidation. While it might be correct to technically call it burning the metal, it is actually oxidizing it rapidly by the use of heat and saturated oxygen. The heat accelerates a natural oxidation and the added oxygen takes over. Once the cut is started, you can completely remove the fuel as long as the resulting heat from the saturated oxygenation remains. It will produce enough heat at that stage of the process to sustain the cut. (I believe its called an exothermic reaction) The liquid oxygen in this scenario presented will act as a sink and remove that required heat. So you will always need enough of a heat source to overcome that removal. They make fire extinguishers that operate on this very principle and are certified for metal fires.
@@DanKaschel yes, but it's not going to appear like a log in the fireplace burning or a lump of charcoalonnthe barbecue. Perhaps poor wording but that was the message I was trying to convey. Edit. People tend to think of a cutting torch as melting the metal then blowing it out of the way. I thought that once too. My attempt was going for a more vivid picture of what really happens.
Always feels good to confirm your suspicions! Super weirddd however-I was just told a few hours ago… by a coworker whom used to be a welding instructor that he used to amaze his students by starting a cut with o2/acetylene then just shutting off the acetylene and it would finish the cut using only o2
I think this is a trick all welding instructors do lol. But oxy/acetylene torches are doing most of the work with oxygen. Acetylene just helps get it a bit melty so the stream can react and physically blow the metal out
@@TheSpectralArtisan I have cut 5mm steel without acetylene, just angle torch in direction of the cut and move at right speed, I have worked with cutting steel all days for years so have tried numerous tricks, doubt I could do this now, been couple of years since I did the gas cutting full time.
@@theodorekorehonen the steel has too reach the kindling point then a high pressure stream of O2 quickly start a exo thermic reaction with the metal heating the metal in close vacinity to the same kindling point
as well as the lack of heat would be a big factor in my mind. with a cutting torch you heat up an area red hot and then put high pressure gas through it, which doesn't cool down surrounding area, where this pan is at cryo temperatures, just seems like it would cool far faster than any burning would generate in this set up. plus all the reason you said.
I truly enjoy your 'I wonder what will happen if...' videos. Never change, Cody. You're one of the most unique 'tubers on the platform. and its obvious you're wicked smart. Just avoid yellow chem, and you'll be fine.
The liquid oxygen cools the pan faster than the fire can warm it up. The reason that iron burns as steel wool or with a torch is: the iron is at it's burning temp and the supply of oxygen is sufficient. You need all 3 sides of the fire triangle at the right amount and you should be able to burn anything.
I think that could be a mechanism. Alternatively, the heated area directly around the arc actually heats the pan enough to start the reaction, but it also boils away the oxygen directly around the area, and keeps boiling it away until the iron is no longer hot enough to sustain exothermic oxidation. That could explain why oxygen-only cutting works in a torch but not in an open pool of LOX at atmospheric pressure.
I think that's correct. You notice how fast the LOX disappears--most of it boils off without burning anything. That much oxygen would last far longer if it was only reacting.
Love how you experiment with things that sound dangerous but actually have a smart reason to test out. Great content as always!! Very entertaining to watch
I imagine the other side of this comes down to the amount of surface area for reaction, and the ability to raise the temperature of the iron to it's melting point. With steel wool, you have tons of surface area and it is very easy to heat it to melting... even if you use the coarse steel wool, it doesn't work so well.
It's not the melting point you need to hit, but the kindling temperature. The metal isn't melting when you use oxygen cutting, but rather burning away.
I think part of it is also due to the Temperature. The pan is going to be acting as a great heat sink that has been cooled way down and when you try to ignite it it has a lot of energy ot needs to over come before it starts burning
No. Yes. Yes because it does contribute to the temperature loss, No because it's not enough to matter. The rod(s) have a protective shielding gas or slag that is used to minimize the contact of the molten metal with the air as well as the surrounding temperatures of the target. IF temperature loss was dictated by the dispersion and or the conductivity thermally around the area, welding would be quite different than it is now. Stick welding especially. Yes, temperature IS in this method how one would accomplish said melting of the iron pan. Obviously welding and cutting is temperature dependent here. Noticing it was cooled quickly because of the temperatures of the pan when the electrode is not present. That is part of the metallurgic bonding as it solidifies. IF he could keep the electrode in one spot and it was achieving the temperature required to melt the iron it would of melted said hole regardless of the temperature around it or the object, mostly. It failed because of the method not the variables. In this instance the liquid oxygen played no significant part, would not play a significant part in the process, the exact area the rod came in contact would easily overcome the temperature by the very method the weld is achieved, or hole for that matter.
How WOULD it work in these variables? An environment that would stop the area from achieving the needed temperatures for success. A constant temperature maintained defeatist if you will. That was not achievable in this test.
You could give it a better chance in a few ways I would think: 1. Grind down the entire bottom to expose the metal. The coating is not combustable. 2. Dont cool the pan before striking the arc. Maybe even pre-heat it instead. 3. Use an iron rod instead of welding electrode. 4. Pour in lots of liquid oxygen while you've already struck an arc and heated a spot. Of course it's a pretty different situation from the worker's scenario, but it would be interesting if this actually did work at all without a proper cutting torch. My guess is it still wont work in my scenario for pretty much the same reasons you said in the end.
@Aapo Lehtinen 1. You're thinking of a Teflon coating. It probably doesnt burn well, but testing that is not the point of this test. Maybe more importantly, I'm not sure if this pan was coated in teflon. He called it a 'cast iron pan' and the coating 'seasoned'. There are also glazed pans, and there the coating is definitely not combustable. 2. The idea was to just pour liquid oxygen directly into the arc, not to have it sit in the pan at all. The arc will evaporate all the oxygen near it immediately anyway, even sitting in the pan. The point of it is to have a very high oxygen concentration more than to strike the arc inside it. 3. Yes, and Cody does too. It's the whole point of these types of welding rods, to avoid oxidation. Now that I think about it, the best electrode to use would probably be a tungsten welding electrode without shielding gas. Even without liquid oxygen, that will burn at an extreme temperature as far as I know, and wont cover itself in insulating oxide.
it is clear the problem here, the temperature is too low for a sustainable reaction. perhaps is possible for steel wool to not catch fire in liquid air. well, that is my hypothesis, a passivation layer makes sense too.
Steel wool will burn, because it doesn't take much energy to heat up (locally) and liquid oxygen is poor at conduction heat away. Steel pan however conducts all the released energy quickly to the whole very cold pan and thus the reaction stops.
The iron oxide is part of it but oxy torch cutting is only used on low and medium carbon steel because the iron oxide has a melting point below the parent metal. Other metals can be melted through but they won't cleanly burn through. In alloy steels and grey iron the alloys and high carbon content form higher melting oxides and carbides that prevent a continued reaction, and cast iron is much closer to its eutectic point of about 4% carbon.
Ive usd oxy acetylene torches to cut through some pretty thick cast iron a few times., it cuts llike regular steel, you just have to heat the area a little more before using the oxy to blow through it.. slag still looks the same and all.. it just makes the surrounding areas more brittle..
And ive seen it used on many different metals.. aluminum is very common to use it on and titanium is common but not the best way to cut it because of the heat .. is used on brass as well if you wanted to, seen people blow open door locks with it.. the thickness is really what limits it..
Hey Cody, this shocked me because I've seen this happen IRL. Are you sure it didn't fail because the temperature of liquid oxygen is waaay colder than the oxygen gas coming out of the gas axe? I've always been scared s'less of pure oxygen, especially after watching non flammable surfaces burn in it 😂 *edited due to me being an r-tard.. I actually wrote inflammable instead of non flammable. 😅
I got myself an Oxygen concentrator last year for blowing glass. It is amazing how hot the torch gets with 93% oxygen and some propane. I would be interested to learn how to condense it into a liquid for storage as my machine takes a lot of juice to make the O2. Operating with a gas tank would be the ideal long term solution.
I use one as well. The equipment to compress it is way too crazy IMO in comparison. If you need more O2, get another concentrator. If you need tanks, just order them from a welding supply place.
You're gonna need a compressor and a pressure resistant vessel. Oxy concentrators have weak compressors just strong enough to operate the filter and provide some pressure, you need higher pressure to initiate a state shift, and a container capable of handling the pressure. Also get a one way valve, cause you don't want it to blow back onto the compressor.
@@mytech6779 Oh. Sorry, my experience has only been with the personal oxy concentrators for medical purposes, so I defaulted to that. But yeah it doesn't save energy at all. What it allows is storing a lot of oxy for later use in a smaller space.
60 minutes ago this video uploaded and has received 213 comments, and 309 views. That makes for over 2/3rds audience commentary, and five views per minute. 👏 Wow. Congrats Cody, great content and what a great viewer base. Keep up the great work!
Awesome video Cody! I've been watching you're videos for years now and you never cease to amaze me!! Absolutely splendid work my dude :) cheers from Canada
My hypothesis would also include that fact that the liquid oxygen, being extremely cold also removes a lot of heat, removing 1/3rd of the fire triangle (heat oxygen and fuel). Why the rag would burn and the iron not would be described away by the difference in heat energy needed to start a fire with those fuels (diesel vs iron as fuels)
@@c6q3a24 The temperature of the welding arc is impressive, but not enough to significantly heat a thick iron surface that has been super-cooled up to ignition temperatures. There were obvious flames while the current was arcing, but the heat energy dissipated into the rest of the pan as soon as the arc was removed. No heat = no chemical reaction = no fire.
Self-sustaining flames kinda rely on the fact that they're exothermic reactions where the output energy is greater than the input energy needed to get the fuel and oxidizer over some minimum energy barrier. Having the iron at LN2 temps probably raises the height of that minimum energy barrier quite a lot, if I had to guess. I think you should retry this with the pan being at room temp and just throwing the LOX in there and instantly trying to light it.
I wonder if it would work on a steel skillet instead of cast iron. Cast iron has a lot of impurities and it imagine that might restrict the reaction of the iron with the oxygen?
Cast iron can not be cut with a torch like steel, it form a oxide layer (Fe2O3), a black surface layer called scale, as it is fully oxidised it is fairly resistant to further cutting, steel does form scale, but not like cast iron.
I personally love your thing "I just wanted to be sure" :) Many of us kind of know what *should* happen, but it's a joy when we *see* it happen! Good work, as always.
All your experiments are great Cody, cos' you're recording the science. Anybody now or in the future won't have to check a lot of things by himself, just continue from a well stated base you're creating here. Even the failures are importante in this sense. Saudações do Brasil!
Intersting. You would have to install a rod with a grinder at the end while being submerged in the liquid oxygen. The grinder would rub away the oxide layer and if you attach a welder or car battery to it, it would at the same time create sparks. You could probably get it running.
Now that I've seen it, I wonder how a TIG welding setup would do if you replace the Argon with oxygen gas. Replacing the electrode with something inert would be a wise thing to do.
Might be interesting to see it actually demonstrated as oxygen is what you are trying to displace with inert gas when tig welding. My understanding is that it makes it way easier to burn holes but the electrode will burn away quickly.
Let me know when you find an electrode that both doesn't oxidize and doesn't melt at over 3000C. And then, you're basically welding without any shielding gas at all which I can tell you from experience doesn't work well. That's not to say there isn't some room for extra reactivity. Some TIG processes use some amount of Helium or Hydrogen added to the Argon gas to increase the heat of welding.
Im guessing you've never tried to flame cut cast iron. It doesnt work very well. Your results still may be valid, but it'd be nice to see this done on some standard mild steel.
I really love watching your videos, you keep giving us strange science videos we didnt think we wanted but are enjoying to watch because of how curious our mind are.
You probably already know this but once you start a cut with oxy acetylene you can turn off the propane as long as you keep the oxygen on. Surprised there wasn't more of a reaction but you are probably right.. maybe knock the flux off the rods before trying it as it will help shield the arc?
I can roughly explain multiple facets of why this experiment didnt work. 1. oil negatively affects the ability to start and keep an arc. 2. the flux on a stick electrode helps shield the metal from gases and acts as a protective layer. lastly, 3. oxygen by itself isnt technically a fuel source it only aids in combustion so without a combustible constant source (like acetylene which is used in oxyfuel cutting) that cast iron pan didnt melt or burn through. you may have had more success if the pan had the following: no oil on it, rust. as well as using an electrode like 6010 which burns hotter and has a flux coating primarily made up of cellulose. 6010 in the field is sometimes used to burn through metals (for fitment and whatnot) in structural steel because it is very good at penetrating steel. so if you maybe tried it with these in mind it might have worked better. oh and not cooling the pan. rapid oxidation requires heat
In the Safety Third podcast they mentioned that Cody had 'ascended' being a normal youtuber, which made me chuckle. You lead and define a whole genre, Cody. You're awesome :D
you truly are still the only wholesome real youtuber from the early days of youtube you have never changed you keep the old feel of youtube alive before all the aD-apocalypse stuff happened where it all became a money game, i hope you and your channel live on till the end of time Cody. please never change!
I know you don't TRY to have clickbaity style of titles, but this one kind of warrants it. Just a simple "Can Liquid Oxygen Burn A Hole In A Cast Iron Pan" would probably help the video. Thumbnail's great, and per usual the content is great. Regardless of the title, thanks for being awesome, Cody!
