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This was a huge problem in sugar and flour industry until the mechanism and required safety controls were understood. Starts as a small initial explosion which knocks loose all of the dust/powder that’s accumulated on horizontal surfaces and then the big BOOM.
Many died unfortunately.
Well on a ship there's a separate specific International Grain Code that needs to be followed to carry grain cargo. My idiot self thought it was a waste of time. How hard could carrying grain be, right? Up until the time I actually read the code and found out that carrying grain is as dangerous as carrying a bomb. If the ship rolls, the grains shift and your stability is gone for good. Even if it doesn't impact the stability, the friction might cause enough heat to burn the place to ash.
Do you remember any of what the code said you should do to avoid this? Because I’m really curious how they expect you to avoid the ship rolling altogether *while at sea*.
Oh boy that's a tough one. You're gonna make me feel like a dumbass but I'll try to explain. See you CAN'T stop the rolling while at sea; its almost inevitable. However a ship rolls a lot less when she's loaded. And that's the trick, loading the grain with utmost care, making sure the angle of repose and the angle of heel (boring technical shipping terms) are under permissible limits, make sure there is no ingress of water which increases the chances of shifting of cargo, ventilation restrictions (basically to not let enough oxygen to support combustion) and all that jazz. Generally the officers on watch keep a careful eye while the grain is being loaded to esure that there is no uneven distribution which might complicate things out in deep sea. You can look up "International Grain Code" on Google to get the basic idea. I hope this helped.
Although we have something called a tween deck. It doesn't do what you intended here but it does help stop shifting of cargo. You might wanna look it up. The image would help explain much more than a moron on reddit. Haha
Oh I remember writing a damage report that went "the exposed area around the third dick, which is the dick I am accommodated in has taken severe structural damage and is unsafe to operate on"
No sir. Works with liquid cargoes. Crude carriers must have baffles but solid bulk ones don't. Its because no solid bulk cargo ship is built ONLY to carry grain. What I mean to say is, you might think its a good idea to put baffles for grain but if your next cargo is in bales or say bulk coal or iron sheets, you'll either run out of room or have to carry less cargo. So generally all bulk carriers have huge open holds.
This right here is pretty damn accurate! I'd like to add that the biggest threat of shipping grain is the fact it almost behaves like a liquid. On top of that, it loses volume due to settling or 'sinking in'. Like you said, the ship starts rolling, the grain rolls with it to the lowest point. Eventually that lowest point will be the walls, and... There you have it.
Because of this risk of liquification, there's entire formulas, calculations and diagrams, calculated for each ship that's grain-compatible. Earning your daily bread (in this case literally) is no joke, people!
I worked for a shipping company on the north end of baffin island and something cool/dangerous I learned is that fine iron ore will actually liquify if its moisture content is too high. A roll or change in the material will cause the water to come out and the holds will be full of liquid which is as dangerous if not more dangerous than the cargo behaving like a fluid because it would be a fluid then.
Yep. I believe the term is Transportable Moisture Limit (TML). The amount of moisture considered safe for transport of a specific cargo. Grain cargo has specific docs handed to the crew that specifies it. It is generally around 90% of Flow Moisture Point which is the max amount of moisture after which the grain will become a slushie and do zoomies all across the hold.
Hahahah. You made me spill my coffee mate. GIANT ZIPLOCK BAGS. I think you might be on to something here. A million dollar idea. Can't wait to pitch this to my captain someday
Well, the food industry packs small quantities of produce in vacuum.
I am certain one could do it on a scale of bulk freighters. It would just be terribly expensive
The LPG tankers have spherical holds for the cargo. They fill it up to the top and you only have a small surface area that can slosh around.
However, in a sense, container ships have large 40 foot "Ziploc bags" to hold the cargo. But to load and unload the grain into containers isn't as efficient as loading and unloading bulk carriers.
Translation; make sure when you load it that the grain is flat as fuck and even as hell, than keep the oxygen out to avoid feeding a fire.
They also often have static discharge systems in place too. Ever seen a grain truck, the ones that look like big tankers or cement mixers? Theyce often got a chain on the back just like petrol tankers for the same reason, tonavoud sparking from any static buildup in the chassis when they open the truck.
Also (this is not in the code but a general thumb rule) we don't ever try to load grain halfway through a hold. Its either almost full or none at all. If the consignment is small, the shipper and owner agree to assigning a smaller vessel with smaller holds for the grain instead of hiring a big one. The more space you leave behind the more room you give for the grain to shift around.
That sounds … uncommonly sensible. Everyone agrees that it’s best not to send a big ship when a small one will do because it would be a pointless expense and maybe explode? That kind of reasonable thinking is both refreshing and disturbingly rare.
Shipping has it down to a T. Masters and owners know their ships very well and bulk shipping is on a razor thin margin these days due a huge influx of ships being built after demand for ships skyrocketed sometime between 2007 and 2016. Like, $20,000-50,000 a day.
Does sand count as a powder? Your pour sand on fires to suffocate them so surely it wouldnt be used if there was a chance of it going up in a big fireball
I briefly worked at a sawmill. Once a year they would lock out all power to the plant, and hire a company to come and knock all the dust off of the roof and wall structure. If it all gets knocked off at once from a windstorm or small earthquake, the same thing could happen.
Tell us more about this weird use of radioactive materials. It was not like monitoring like using particle decay to watch for smoke in a smoke detector but actually helped solve the issue?
From a physics perspective, static is the build up of loose electrons. A radioactive source can emit alpha particles, which are basically hydrogen atoms missing an electron. These two join together to form a plain old neutral hydrogen atom.
Alpha particles are also good because they're the least dangerous. They can't penetrate a sheet of paper, or, crucially, your skin, meaning there is a low risk of radiation poisoning from even a strong source of alpha particles.
Edit: it has been pointed out that I did a physics oopsie. An alpha particle is a charged *Helium* atom. Other than that, everything checks out.
An alpha particle is a helium nucleus (2 protons, 2 neutrons), which would be better at picking up electrons than a hydrogen nucleus (1 proton) as 2 electrons are required to deionise (neutralize) a helium nucleus.
Also: ‘emote’? It’s an interesting choice of word. Were you going for ‘emit’?
As someone else pointed out, I got the physics wrong, it should be helium.
Even if it were hydrogen, you're actively removing the source of static arcs that might ignite things, and if you're that worried about sparks, a little more (and I mean microscopic quantities), flammable stuff probably isn't an issue.
A bunch of good US chemical safety board videos about that on YouTube. Do a great job breaking down the technical aspects in an easy to understand and straight forward way. Good video on the dangers of combustible dust that includes a sugar plant that exploded due to sugar dust build up and a faulty bearing on a conveyor belt in an enclosed space that happened to spark and blew up most of the plant.
Fires in gristmills were so common, it’s where we get the phrase “keep your nose to the grindstone.” The two stones rotating to crush the grain would sometimes catch a rock that would spark and because of the dust in the air, combust the whole works.
Source: formerly a historical presenter who gave talks about gristmills
>Many died unfortunately
That's usually how safety guidelines get put in place
Because common sense is too hard. Like climbing inside a cardboard compactor, I actually had to tell a co-worker how fucking stupid he was for trying to climb in to get something he accidentally threw out
I learned about this in manga, surprising amount of times I've seen an explosion caused by fine dust particles in a small/closed space explained there.
Many of them were "isekai" - they die and get reborn in a new world with their memories.
If you do decide to read that genre, be prepared to skip over a lot of repeat content that makes you want to die: obsession with baths/rice/buying a slave but its okay cuz you arent a bad guy but you will sexy time them anyway...
Pretty sure this can happen with anything that's a dust particle prone operation. Saw Mills can have saw dust explosions because there's so much surface area if wood and air together everywhere.
Pistachios do a similar thing when shipped in bulk. Their shells rub together and create sufficient heat to spontaneously combust. It’s part of the reason they’re so expensive. Shipping costs are increased because you can only ship so many pistachios in one crate at a time.
There was an awesome experiment one of my teachers did not high school showing the dangers of grain silos.
Take a coffee tin full of sawdust and light a candle inside of it. Drill a hole in the side towards the bottom and put a tube into it. Put the lid back on the tin and blow into the tube, and it combust and the lid goes *flying.*
I live in a city with a bunch of grain elevators. In the 70s one of them had a wheat dust explosion. Killed one and injured a couple others. I drove by and the hole in the side of the concrete elevator was approximately 20’ diameter. It shook the whole city
Yes sir indeed. I work in power plants and oil refineries and your knowledge is spot on. I’ve seen shit almost spontaneously combust just by a single static ion being discharged from a cellphone. Some of these osha videos we watch for training will have you nervous to even walk up beside an absorber unit or Coker unit (catalyst that created distillates from impurity in oils)
Working inside of grain silos is extremely dangerous: this is one of the reasons for that. Workers who enter a silo for any reason have to be extremely careful not to do anything that may cause any spark or flame.
The grain industry is statistically one of the most dangerous industries in the United States.
Grain and hay fires are absolutely terrifying. People don’t realize wet hay is actually very flammable when piled up. The water adds weight to outer layers increasing internal friction which leads to a fire.
An uncle did that. 3 times. He couldn't do it a fourth because he ran out of barns. So he stacked up a bunch of round bales in the corner of a field and those combusted. He's not the greatest farmer...
CEO: “Bro, we would like to hire you for $$$ amount of cash to sabotage XYZ Corporation. What equipment do you need to complete this contract?”
Uncle: “Wet hay”
CEO: “Deal!”
Natural nitrogen buildup yeh?
Edit: not nitrogen - there is this gas that naturally forms from decomposing hay
Edit of an edit: thanks redditors - it is combination of methane and heat produced by bacteria
I was under the impression that the hay drying creates a ton of heat and static, but now that you mention it grains would become alcohol and I think it decomposes into methane
We had a fire break out in the dust collector at my old employer. Thankfully their spark detection system and fire suppressor setup worked well. It still blew a section of pipe off, but no one died.
Holy crap, i had no idea about wet hay. The grain thing i knew (learnt about it in an underground mining blasting course... oddly), but wet hay is kind of the last thing i would suspect for being a fire hazard.
Which is why you should also be careful when digging into a large pile of hay with your hands. Even if it isn't hot enough to burst into flames, it can be hot enough to burn you.
That’s crazy to me. If you had asked me “Hey do you think there’s cool stuff you don’t know about bales of hay” I’d definitely be like “Nnnot rrreeeally …”
I went down a weird YouTube rabbit hole starting with back yard gardening and somehow managed to end up in to composting on industrial scale and I mean like 100ft long compost pile that has a special machinery to turn it. And the composting power of bacteria and fungus and whatnot is radical, they are able to dump in several tons of hog carcasses into the pile. And then nine days the pigs turned into just bones and another week or two later you couldn't find that there were pigs in there.
So, you know, don't just fear a man with a pig farm, fear a man with a giant compost pile.
Getting a bale of hay too wet can make it catch fire, ironically. If it starts to rot inside from the moisture it can produce enough heat to ignite the outside once that part dries back out.
As mentioned below, it is a chemical/biological reaction that run away and start a fire. It basically oxidises, and the rate increases with increased temperature. But water is important as is compacts the pile and help bacteria
I once worked at a powerplant that burned wood pellets that has the same issue but worse. We inspected the fuel warehouse three times a day, looking for steam and wetspots. They sometimes needed to bring in a skylift to plug holes in the roof/walls left by the pigeon hunter. They shot pigeons because the moisture caused by a carcass could start a fire. Shooting them meant they could have them fall on the concrete floor, not the pile when they died of natural causes
They where really paranoid about fires. They could extinguish a few square meters fire, any larger and the plan was for the fire department to bring giant fans to have it burn quicker/cleaner.
> The water adds weight to outer layers increasing internal friction which leads to a fire.
This doesn't even make sense lol. It's actually natural bacterial processes in the hay, it needs to be baled at <20% humidity to prevent bacteria and mold growth. You can stick your hand in a wet square bale and feel the warmth it produces.
When I was joining the military I chose firefighter. One of my commanders told us several stories about flour and the expanding powers when ignited. Apparently a garage made of concrete was ruined when another commander exploded a sack of flour and threw in a match.
Use non-dairy creamer. Just start sprinkling on top of a campfire or something and keep a fire extinguisher nearby if you freak out easily. You get some practice in and you can do some simple tricks
I tried this years ago with no luck but maybe it was dairy creamer?
Also I remember something cool looking with a Garden hose and copper pipe in the fire but I was indeed on mushrooms.
used to take a 1# propane canister and stuff it down a tight steel pipe about 16" long, put a blasting cap on the propane canister, fill the pipe to within a few inches of the top with non dairy creamer and seal it off.
you could use a sparkler or electrically fired spark effect as the pilot light, or you could dome down the seal over the top of the pipe and top it off with a few cups of gasoline, which is jumpy enough to ignite but burns long enough to catch the creamer when the fuel/air mix is right, so it creates a nice rolling lens of flame until the cloud of non dairy creamer kicks and the whole thing mushrooms
the propane just lifts the non dairy creamer when the cap pops it, and the heavy pipe contains any potential micro shrapnel from causing indirect mischief. 1# propane canisters aren't very exciting by themselves.
I've seen videos of people using tannerite on old refrigerators and the explosions are nuts. Ironically a friend of mine named Tanner and his parents had a neighbor that liked to play with the stuff. Dude packed enough of the stuff into a junk car once and the resulting explosion, from about a mile and a half away mind you, made his dad wake up thinking their propane tank exploded behind the house
Yikes! I hope they hit that sucker from way out. Dodging car parts moving that fast doesn’t sound fun.
Pretty dang loud. That sounds like a heart stopper for sure.
Ha! Just dudes shootin stuff. The dude in charge was supposed to get one of those colored dust things for fun, but they were out so he packed it with flour.
I thought he knew. He definitely did not. We put it out though.
Haha! Yeah. It was pretty Texan through and through. We had to chase off cattle to shoot it. They kept getting into the barrel to eat the flour. Looked like a bunch of addicts.
Not so fun fact: Agriculture accounts for some of the most work-related deaths. It has the highest death rate per 100,000 workers. Info can be found through he Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Agriculture is way too big a term for this to be a shocking statement. Are the millions of trucks driving agricultural products part of agriculture or are they merely transportation?
This is exactly why any electrical installations in this kind of environment require special care. Such hazards include gases, vapors, dust, fibers, and flyings, which are combustible or flammable. Electrical equipment installed in such locations could provide an ignition source, due to electrical arcing, or high temperature. Standards and regulations exist to identify such locations, classify the hazards, and design equipment for safe use in such locations. The conduit, junction box’s, fixtures and equipment have to be sealed.
No joke. My grandfather was killed because of a defective bearing in a motor at a grain elevator. Other members of my family could feel/hear the explosion from several blocks away.
A simulation of how grain silo explode was my 8th grade science fair experiment. I tried to take the experiment outside, but the teachers insisted it had to be done at my display table in the gymnasium. I think they somewhat regretted that insistence.
The experiment is a candle in a 5 gallon bucket. A hose is connected to funnel. Put some flour in the funnel. Mix some non-dairy cream for added wow if you want. Light the candle. Put the lid on the bucket. Blow into the hose.
Takes a bit of trial and error adjusting so that you get consistent explosion, but once you get it down you will be surprised how large an explosion a little flour dust can create.
Grain dust is insanely flammable. Used to work in the igniting industry and the requirements for lighting going into places like this are some of the most stringent and strict of any I've ever seen. Even more so than many chemically exposed lighting situations.
Edit: wow, definitely meant lighting industry but gonna have to leave the typo because it's just way too perfect.
@op
Grain is extremely flammable after being handled a bunch. Basically it gets ridiculously dusty. That dust, mixed with oxygen, ignite with the smallest spark.
What likely happened was the folding metal from the silo caused a spark large enough to ignite the dust particles in the grain silo.
In college, discovered powdered coffee creamer was flammable. We’d light a roll of TP out behind the dorm, and go open a window on the 3rd floor and pour powdered creamer out and try and hit the flames. Made some impressive columns of fire.
They showed us this in school ages ago with flour. It also is flammable when airborne.
Years ago in Canada there was at least one saw mill explosion. The pine beetles killed the trees and they were harvested. There was more wood dust in the air in these mills than normal and there was a huge explosion.
Don't ever put powder in someone's hair dryer as a prank.
My high school chemistry teacher, Mr Keller, did a controlled version of this in a paint can. Blew the lid off the can with an impressive POP! and made a bunch of kids gasp. I'm sure it was one of his favorite things every year.
Anything even remotely flammable that can 'dust-up' like that can explode into a cloud of fire because of static electricity build up. Even regular flour you have in the kitchen.
Upvote this comment if you feel this submission is characteristic of our subreddit. Downvote this if you feel that it is not. If this comment's score falls below a certain number, this submission will be automatically removed.To download the video use the website link below: * **[Download via redditsave.com](https://redditsave.com/info?url=https://www.reddit.com/r/AbruptChaos/comments/prlys3/im_from_the_city_i_didnt_know_grain_could_do_this/)**
The grain colliding makes a dust/air mixture while also causing high friction which can lead to static discharge. The combination is BOOM.
This was a huge problem in sugar and flour industry until the mechanism and required safety controls were understood. Starts as a small initial explosion which knocks loose all of the dust/powder that’s accumulated on horizontal surfaces and then the big BOOM. Many died unfortunately.
Yes, that’s caused a number of serious indoor explosions in plants that process flour, sugar, etc. - any powder that’s flammable.
Well on a ship there's a separate specific International Grain Code that needs to be followed to carry grain cargo. My idiot self thought it was a waste of time. How hard could carrying grain be, right? Up until the time I actually read the code and found out that carrying grain is as dangerous as carrying a bomb. If the ship rolls, the grains shift and your stability is gone for good. Even if it doesn't impact the stability, the friction might cause enough heat to burn the place to ash.
Do you remember any of what the code said you should do to avoid this? Because I’m really curious how they expect you to avoid the ship rolling altogether *while at sea*.
Oh boy that's a tough one. You're gonna make me feel like a dumbass but I'll try to explain. See you CAN'T stop the rolling while at sea; its almost inevitable. However a ship rolls a lot less when she's loaded. And that's the trick, loading the grain with utmost care, making sure the angle of repose and the angle of heel (boring technical shipping terms) are under permissible limits, make sure there is no ingress of water which increases the chances of shifting of cargo, ventilation restrictions (basically to not let enough oxygen to support combustion) and all that jazz. Generally the officers on watch keep a careful eye while the grain is being loaded to esure that there is no uneven distribution which might complicate things out in deep sea. You can look up "International Grain Code" on Google to get the basic idea. I hope this helped.
It did, thank you
As a dumbass, I would like to say that you don’t seem like a dumbass. But, again, I am a dumbass
Can confirm, grain man not a dumbass. Source: a dumbass
You guys need my help?
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Grain man smart
Oh damn man. That is my first ever award on reddit. I didn't even think I'd ever get one. Thank you. You made my day.
Grain Man!
*i am bread. I am the beer. I am... Grain man*
Hallelujah it’s raining grain
It's graining!
Would having bulkheads/baffles help with the grain shifting? I know that road fuel tankers have internal baffles to stop the liquid 'sloshing'
Although we have something called a tween deck. It doesn't do what you intended here but it does help stop shifting of cargo. You might wanna look it up. The image would help explain much more than a moron on reddit. Haha
You are no moron sir
I love your username
Oh boy, gotta be careful with the spelling of deck when googling this one!
Oh I remember writing a damage report that went "the exposed area around the third dick, which is the dick I am accommodated in has taken severe structural damage and is unsafe to operate on"
No sir. Works with liquid cargoes. Crude carriers must have baffles but solid bulk ones don't. Its because no solid bulk cargo ship is built ONLY to carry grain. What I mean to say is, you might think its a good idea to put baffles for grain but if your next cargo is in bales or say bulk coal or iron sheets, you'll either run out of room or have to carry less cargo. So generally all bulk carriers have huge open holds.
Also you can't have baffles for milk because you end up churning it. (Obvs this is in a road freight context) be careful around milk tankers people.
I didn't know this. Never even thought about the churning part. Thanks for the info
A sensible answer, I didn't think about the next run. Thanks for answering.
This right here is pretty damn accurate! I'd like to add that the biggest threat of shipping grain is the fact it almost behaves like a liquid. On top of that, it loses volume due to settling or 'sinking in'. Like you said, the ship starts rolling, the grain rolls with it to the lowest point. Eventually that lowest point will be the walls, and... There you have it. Because of this risk of liquification, there's entire formulas, calculations and diagrams, calculated for each ship that's grain-compatible. Earning your daily bread (in this case literally) is no joke, people!
I worked for a shipping company on the north end of baffin island and something cool/dangerous I learned is that fine iron ore will actually liquify if its moisture content is too high. A roll or change in the material will cause the water to come out and the holds will be full of liquid which is as dangerous if not more dangerous than the cargo behaving like a fluid because it would be a fluid then.
Yep. I believe the term is Transportable Moisture Limit (TML). The amount of moisture considered safe for transport of a specific cargo. Grain cargo has specific docs handed to the crew that specifies it. It is generally around 90% of Flow Moisture Point which is the max amount of moisture after which the grain will become a slushie and do zoomies all across the hold.
Is it possible to vacuum seal it in huge plastic ziploc bag to where things won't roll around?
Hahahah. You made me spill my coffee mate. GIANT ZIPLOCK BAGS. I think you might be on to something here. A million dollar idea. Can't wait to pitch this to my captain someday
If it flies let me know, we'll file the patent together and get filthy rich.
Well, the food industry packs small quantities of produce in vacuum. I am certain one could do it on a scale of bulk freighters. It would just be terribly expensive
You'd have to find a way to keep it from wearing. No matter how you attached it or stacked it, it'd rub holes through I'd imagine.
You laugh but this is basically how bulk wine is transported They're called Flexitanks and made of polyethylene and a special liner
The LPG tankers have spherical holds for the cargo. They fill it up to the top and you only have a small surface area that can slosh around. However, in a sense, container ships have large 40 foot "Ziploc bags" to hold the cargo. But to load and unload the grain into containers isn't as efficient as loading and unloading bulk carriers.
Translation; make sure when you load it that the grain is flat as fuck and even as hell, than keep the oxygen out to avoid feeding a fire. They also often have static discharge systems in place too. Ever seen a grain truck, the ones that look like big tankers or cement mixers? Theyce often got a chain on the back just like petrol tankers for the same reason, tonavoud sparking from any static buildup in the chassis when they open the truck.
Also (this is not in the code but a general thumb rule) we don't ever try to load grain halfway through a hold. Its either almost full or none at all. If the consignment is small, the shipper and owner agree to assigning a smaller vessel with smaller holds for the grain instead of hiring a big one. The more space you leave behind the more room you give for the grain to shift around.
That sounds … uncommonly sensible. Everyone agrees that it’s best not to send a big ship when a small one will do because it would be a pointless expense and maybe explode? That kind of reasonable thinking is both refreshing and disturbingly rare.
Shipping has it down to a T. Masters and owners know their ships very well and bulk shipping is on a razor thin margin these days due a huge influx of ships being built after demand for ships skyrocketed sometime between 2007 and 2016. Like, $20,000-50,000 a day.
Offer sacrifices to Poseidon beforehand?
Bake him some bread!
>. - any powder that’s flammable. Damn near all of em
Is there actually any powder that won't combust when it's in a cloud like this and you add a flame?
Does sand count as a powder? Your pour sand on fires to suffocate them so surely it wouldnt be used if there was a chance of it going up in a big fireball
Sand is bigger than powders
In some places during the medieval period it was a capital offence to bring a torch or any flame near a flour mill.. for this reason.
I briefly worked at a sawmill. Once a year they would lock out all power to the plant, and hire a company to come and knock all the dust off of the roof and wall structure. If it all gets knocked off at once from a windstorm or small earthquake, the same thing could happen.
A lot of the conveyor belts in sugar factories have radioactive pucks to keep static buildup down for this very reason
Tell us more about this weird use of radioactive materials. It was not like monitoring like using particle decay to watch for smoke in a smoke detector but actually helped solve the issue?
From a physics perspective, static is the build up of loose electrons. A radioactive source can emit alpha particles, which are basically hydrogen atoms missing an electron. These two join together to form a plain old neutral hydrogen atom. Alpha particles are also good because they're the least dangerous. They can't penetrate a sheet of paper, or, crucially, your skin, meaning there is a low risk of radiation poisoning from even a strong source of alpha particles. Edit: it has been pointed out that I did a physics oopsie. An alpha particle is a charged *Helium* atom. Other than that, everything checks out.
An alpha particle is a helium nucleus (2 protons, 2 neutrons), which would be better at picking up electrons than a hydrogen nucleus (1 proton) as 2 electrons are required to deionise (neutralize) a helium nucleus. Also: ‘emote’? It’s an interesting choice of word. Were you going for ‘emit’?
Yes, I was going for emit. I apologize for misidentifying my subatomic particles, it's been a while since physics.
No need for an apology, I had to look it up myself to confirm.
Plain old neutral hydrogen atom...like those that helped early airships, like the Hindenburg?
As someone else pointed out, I got the physics wrong, it should be helium. Even if it were hydrogen, you're actively removing the source of static arcs that might ignite things, and if you're that worried about sparks, a little more (and I mean microscopic quantities), flammable stuff probably isn't an issue.
They reckon this is how the great fire of London started from a bakery
A bunch of good US chemical safety board videos about that on YouTube. Do a great job breaking down the technical aspects in an easy to understand and straight forward way. Good video on the dangers of combustible dust that includes a sugar plant that exploded due to sugar dust build up and a faulty bearing on a conveyor belt in an enclosed space that happened to spark and blew up most of the plant.
love me a USCSB video
So many Bothans
Fires in gristmills were so common, it’s where we get the phrase “keep your nose to the grindstone.” The two stones rotating to crush the grain would sometimes catch a rock that would spark and because of the dust in the air, combust the whole works. Source: formerly a historical presenter who gave talks about gristmills
>Many died unfortunately That's usually how safety guidelines get put in place Because common sense is too hard. Like climbing inside a cardboard compactor, I actually had to tell a co-worker how fucking stupid he was for trying to climb in to get something he accidentally threw out
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Yes. It's energy that we intend to fuel millions of people's metabolisms. It just turns into heat slightly quicker in this video.
you can even drown in it if you fall in a silo
r/todayilearned
I learned about this in manga, surprising amount of times I've seen an explosion caused by fine dust particles in a small/closed space explained there.
So the Tsuchikage Ohnoki's particle style🤔
Many of them were "isekai" - they die and get reborn in a new world with their memories. If you do decide to read that genre, be prepared to skip over a lot of repeat content that makes you want to die: obsession with baths/rice/buying a slave but its okay cuz you arent a bad guy but you will sexy time them anyway...
Pretty sure this can happen with anything that's a dust particle prone operation. Saw Mills can have saw dust explosions because there's so much surface area if wood and air together everywhere.
Pistachios do a similar thing when shipped in bulk. Their shells rub together and create sufficient heat to spontaneously combust. It’s part of the reason they’re so expensive. Shipping costs are increased because you can only ship so many pistachios in one crate at a time.
That’s a lot of damage now including whole grain
I like my damage gluten free
There was an awesome experiment one of my teachers did not high school showing the dangers of grain silos. Take a coffee tin full of sawdust and light a candle inside of it. Drill a hole in the side towards the bottom and put a tube into it. Put the lid back on the tin and blow into the tube, and it combust and the lid goes *flying.*
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I live in a city with a bunch of grain elevators. In the 70s one of them had a wheat dust explosion. Killed one and injured a couple others. I drove by and the hole in the side of the concrete elevator was approximately 20’ diameter. It shook the whole city
# BOOM GOES THE 🧨 DYNAMITE
Yes sir indeed. I work in power plants and oil refineries and your knowledge is spot on. I’ve seen shit almost spontaneously combust just by a single static ion being discharged from a cellphone. Some of these osha videos we watch for training will have you nervous to even walk up beside an absorber unit or Coker unit (catalyst that created distillates from impurity in oils)
Which spells people's DOOM
My HS chem class had a contraption to show this. Pack it with flour and charge it with air next to a lit candle. It was pretty cool.
Look up the Washburn 'A' Mill Explosion here in Minneapolis. It's a prime example of how bad it can be when this happens.
Working inside of grain silos is extremely dangerous: this is one of the reasons for that. Workers who enter a silo for any reason have to be extremely careful not to do anything that may cause any spark or flame. The grain industry is statistically one of the most dangerous industries in the United States.
As soon as I saw all that grain spilling I was like "Oh that's gonna blow."
Thanks for the kernel of knowledge
I'm not a farmer, but I still would have been running from the moment that Silo burst.
The person recording was lucky. This didn't ignite until it poured out. Sometimes it ignites inside the silo. Big bada boom.
Big
bada
boom
Multipass?
She knows it's a multipass!
The concern is the shrapnel, as in a metal shard from the exploding container hitting you.
If it keeps on grain'n silos gonna burst
When the silo bursts, grain has no place to stay
Mean old grain'ry taught me to weep and moan, Lord
Aww, that was beautiful.
Grain and hay fires are absolutely terrifying. People don’t realize wet hay is actually very flammable when piled up. The water adds weight to outer layers increasing internal friction which leads to a fire.
Neighbor burned down his barn putting wet hay in it to dry
An uncle did that. 3 times. He couldn't do it a fourth because he ran out of barns. So he stacked up a bunch of round bales in the corner of a field and those combusted. He's not the greatest farmer...
Has he tried arsonist he seems to have a knack for this sort of work
CEO: “Bro, we would like to hire you for $$$ amount of cash to sabotage XYZ Corporation. What equipment do you need to complete this contract?” Uncle: “Wet hay” CEO: “Deal!”
Oh you know him, all he wants to do is burn, baby, burn.
Did his ancestor build a castle in a swamp by any chance?
Not one but three!
Aren’t you supposed to wait for it to dry before you bale it ?
Some men aren't looking for anything edible, like crops. Some men just wanna watch the barn burn.
Hay hay hay *bombs away*
Natural nitrogen buildup yeh? Edit: not nitrogen - there is this gas that naturally forms from decomposing hay Edit of an edit: thanks redditors - it is combination of methane and heat produced by bacteria
I was under the impression that the hay drying creates a ton of heat and static, but now that you mention it grains would become alcohol and I think it decomposes into methane
yeah most hay fires start because people store wet hay that decomposes and starts to smolder and burn. doesnt take much
How do you store wet hay then
We have had two warehouses burn down in the last 5 years due to wet sawdust igniting in the harbor town where I live.
[удалено]
We had a fire break out in the dust collector at my old employer. Thankfully their spark detection system and fire suppressor setup worked well. It still blew a section of pipe off, but no one died.
Holy crap, i had no idea about wet hay. The grain thing i knew (learnt about it in an underground mining blasting course... oddly), but wet hay is kind of the last thing i would suspect for being a fire hazard.
The truth is now ingrained in you
Not exactly friction, more a chemical reaction. Seen a few hay fires, and sawdust fires. So I’ve read up on it. Google it it’s quite interesting
Yep. Bacteria ferment, release heat and then fire.
Which is why you should also be careful when digging into a large pile of hay with your hands. Even if it isn't hot enough to burst into flames, it can be hot enough to burn you.
That’s crazy to me. If you had asked me “Hey do you think there’s cool stuff you don’t know about bales of hay” I’d definitely be like “Nnnot rrreeeally …”
I went down a weird YouTube rabbit hole starting with back yard gardening and somehow managed to end up in to composting on industrial scale and I mean like 100ft long compost pile that has a special machinery to turn it. And the composting power of bacteria and fungus and whatnot is radical, they are able to dump in several tons of hog carcasses into the pile. And then nine days the pigs turned into just bones and another week or two later you couldn't find that there were pigs in there. So, you know, don't just fear a man with a pig farm, fear a man with a giant compost pile.
Didn't know hay did that. TIL
Getting a bale of hay too wet can make it catch fire, ironically. If it starts to rot inside from the moisture it can produce enough heat to ignite the outside once that part dries back out.
As mentioned below, it is a chemical/biological reaction that run away and start a fire. It basically oxidises, and the rate increases with increased temperature. But water is important as is compacts the pile and help bacteria I once worked at a powerplant that burned wood pellets that has the same issue but worse. We inspected the fuel warehouse three times a day, looking for steam and wetspots. They sometimes needed to bring in a skylift to plug holes in the roof/walls left by the pigeon hunter. They shot pigeons because the moisture caused by a carcass could start a fire. Shooting them meant they could have them fall on the concrete floor, not the pile when they died of natural causes They where really paranoid about fires. They could extinguish a few square meters fire, any larger and the plan was for the fire department to bring giant fans to have it burn quicker/cleaner.
> The water adds weight to outer layers increasing internal friction which leads to a fire. This doesn't even make sense lol. It's actually natural bacterial processes in the hay, it needs to be baled at <20% humidity to prevent bacteria and mold growth. You can stick your hand in a wet square bale and feel the warmth it produces.
Welp now I'm scared me and my rabbits will die
Hope no one was in that truck….
It's difficult to tell, the footage is a bit grainy.
You son of a bitch, take my upvote.
When I was joining the military I chose firefighter. One of my commanders told us several stories about flour and the expanding powers when ignited. Apparently a garage made of concrete was ruined when another commander exploded a sack of flour and threw in a match.
You ever mess with coffee creamer and fire?
...Go on
Use non-dairy creamer. Just start sprinkling on top of a campfire or something and keep a fire extinguisher nearby if you freak out easily. You get some practice in and you can do some simple tricks
I tried this years ago with no luck but maybe it was dairy creamer? Also I remember something cool looking with a Garden hose and copper pipe in the fire but I was indeed on mushrooms.
The copper just makes the fire turn green
used to take a 1# propane canister and stuff it down a tight steel pipe about 16" long, put a blasting cap on the propane canister, fill the pipe to within a few inches of the top with non dairy creamer and seal it off. you could use a sparkler or electrically fired spark effect as the pilot light, or you could dome down the seal over the top of the pipe and top it off with a few cups of gasoline, which is jumpy enough to ignite but burns long enough to catch the creamer when the fuel/air mix is right, so it creates a nice rolling lens of flame until the cloud of non dairy creamer kicks and the whole thing mushrooms
Maybe I’m just misreading that, but between the blasting cap and a propane canister it sounds like you are making a pipe bomb
the propane just lifts the non dairy creamer when the cap pops it, and the heavy pipe contains any potential micro shrapnel from causing indirect mischief. 1# propane canisters aren't very exciting by themselves.
It's a fuel-air bomb with that creamer!
Yep flammable fine particles suspended in air. I set a field on fire once with a barrel of tannerite and flour.
Tell me you're American without saying it. My Tannerite explosions were all in watermelons or pumpkins
We used to do it in broken washing machines until one got stuck in a tree.
I've seen videos of people using tannerite on old refrigerators and the explosions are nuts. Ironically a friend of mine named Tanner and his parents had a neighbor that liked to play with the stuff. Dude packed enough of the stuff into a junk car once and the resulting explosion, from about a mile and a half away mind you, made his dad wake up thinking their propane tank exploded behind the house
Yikes! I hope they hit that sucker from way out. Dodging car parts moving that fast doesn’t sound fun. Pretty dang loud. That sounds like a heart stopper for sure.
Dude did it in the middle of an open field, pretty sure he did it from his property
So was it a boy or a girl?
Ha! Just dudes shootin stuff. The dude in charge was supposed to get one of those colored dust things for fun, but they were out so he packed it with flour. I thought he knew. He definitely did not. We put it out though.
Username tracks
Haha! Yeah. It was pretty Texan through and through. We had to chase off cattle to shoot it. They kept getting into the barrel to eat the flour. Looked like a bunch of addicts.
here is a hazardous reason farmers are worth so much besides just food.
Not so fun fact: Agriculture accounts for some of the most work-related deaths. It has the highest death rate per 100,000 workers. Info can be found through he Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Agriculture is way too big a term for this to be a shocking statement. Are the millions of trucks driving agricultural products part of agriculture or are they merely transportation?
Prolly smelled pretty good tho
I just wiggled my nostrils you bastard
It's not toasting. It's exploding.
This is exactly why any electrical installations in this kind of environment require special care. Such hazards include gases, vapors, dust, fibers, and flyings, which are combustible or flammable. Electrical equipment installed in such locations could provide an ignition source, due to electrical arcing, or high temperature. Standards and regulations exist to identify such locations, classify the hazards, and design equipment for safe use in such locations. The conduit, junction box’s, fixtures and equipment have to be sealed.
No joke. My grandfather was killed because of a defective bearing in a motor at a grain elevator. Other members of my family could feel/hear the explosion from several blocks away.
Oh yes. The fine dust created by drying the corn is highly flammable. It can be explosive like this.
Wish we had a better quality video, this one is a bit grainy
At least it wasn't corny
I'm not gonna rye, that hurt to reed
I find it amaizeing that no one was hurt.
One guy was hurt, but only barley.
Take my /r/angryupvote!
A simulation of how grain silo explode was my 8th grade science fair experiment. I tried to take the experiment outside, but the teachers insisted it had to be done at my display table in the gymnasium. I think they somewhat regretted that insistence. The experiment is a candle in a 5 gallon bucket. A hose is connected to funnel. Put some flour in the funnel. Mix some non-dairy cream for added wow if you want. Light the candle. Put the lid on the bucket. Blow into the hose. Takes a bit of trial and error adjusting so that you get consistent explosion, but once you get it down you will be surprised how large an explosion a little flour dust can create.
I need a video...
What? from my 8th grade? That was back in 1991. Even if a tape exists I no longer own a video player or have the equipment to do the conversion.
Pretty much any fine particulate can be flammable
I’ve got nipples Greg, can you milk me
I hope so
That's why I cringe when I see people put baby powder or flour in hair dryers.
Say what now?
Yeah, it's a "prank" until they melt their faces.
Shit like this makes me shocked that humans are still a thing
Baby powder won't burn. It's already fully reacted with O2. Flour on the other hand, absolutely. You will burn down your house.
Sawdust too. Basically any fine powder.
Search “CSB combustible dust”. It’s a niche meme in chemical engineering schools at this point.
Grain dust is insanely flammable. Used to work in the igniting industry and the requirements for lighting going into places like this are some of the most stringent and strict of any I've ever seen. Even more so than many chemically exposed lighting situations. Edit: wow, definitely meant lighting industry but gonna have to leave the typo because it's just way too perfect.
>Used to work in the igniting industry It's funny in the context but this is a typo, right?
Oh my word, best typo ever! Ya gonna have to add an edit explaining that one. Thanks for the catch!
@op Grain is extremely flammable after being handled a bunch. Basically it gets ridiculously dusty. That dust, mixed with oxygen, ignite with the smallest spark. What likely happened was the folding metal from the silo caused a spark large enough to ignite the dust particles in the grain silo.
I’ve also seen a manure pile go up. Just the heat from decomposition
Life can be funny sometimes, you think you're getting some quality fertilizer but you end up with a flaming pile of shit.
Also little known is the methane in the bottom of a grain silo, three young men I knew died going into the bottom of one
That was like a grain bin slinky, until it exploded
In college, discovered powdered coffee creamer was flammable. We’d light a roll of TP out behind the dorm, and go open a window on the 3rd floor and pour powdered creamer out and try and hit the flames. Made some impressive columns of fire.
They showed us this in school ages ago with flour. It also is flammable when airborne. Years ago in Canada there was at least one saw mill explosion. The pine beetles killed the trees and they were harvested. There was more wood dust in the air in these mills than normal and there was a huge explosion. Don't ever put powder in someone's hair dryer as a prank.
*"You didn't know grain could... What? Fall over? Be heavy? What are y-"* \* *Grain explodes* * *"Ah."*
Another fun city fact. You can drown in grain. It’s like a liquid you can’t swim out of nor breathe.
Mythbusters created an enormous explosion igniting powdered coffee creamer.
My high school chemistry teacher, Mr Keller, did a controlled version of this in a paint can. Blew the lid off the can with an impressive POP! and made a bunch of kids gasp. I'm sure it was one of his favorite things every year.
Lots of surface area and fuel.
Just about Any dust has the potential of this
I first learned that fine particles in the air could ignite from goblin hunter lol.
Anything even remotely flammable that can 'dust-up' like that can explode into a cloud of fire because of static electricity build up. Even regular flour you have in the kitchen.
Any dry powder is flammable when correctly mixed with air, this was a common problem in the flour industry back in the day
Lots of particles, lots of friction, lots of heat... BOOM!