Posted on 03/17/2008 8:44:13 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Ethanol fires harder to control than gasoline, require special foam Francine Sawyer February 28, 2008 - 8:52PM
The nation’s drive toward alternative fuels carries a danger many communities have been slow to recognize: Ethanol fires are harder to put out than gasoline fires and require a special type of firefighting foam.
Many fire departments don’t have the foam, don’t have enough of it, or are not well-trained in how to apply it. The foam is also more expensive than conventional foam.
Bobby Aster, New Bern Fire and Rescue chief, said fighting ethanol fires is new to the fire service.
“As it stands now, not a great deal of ethanol is coming in our area,” he said.
Aster said the city’s fire department has 700 gallons of the costly foam to fight ethanol fires.
Aster said that if a tanker happened to be hauling ethanol on a rural bypass and caught fire, firefighters would probably let the fire burn. He said allowing the fire to burn also cuts down on environmental pollution.
He said that for every 90 gallons of ethanol burning, it takes six gallons of foam to subdue the fire.
Aster said five gallons of the foam costs $115. It has a shelf life of 10 years, and then it must be disposed of.
“We will call on neighboring departments if the worst-case scenario would occur, including Cherry Point,” he said. Aster said fighting ethanol fires is a hot topic with the Eastern North Carolina fire administrators.
Stanley Kite, Craven County Emergency Services director, said some of the county volunteer firefighting departments have quantities of the foam and are better equipped than others to battle an ethanol fire. He could not supply an amount.
Kite said ethanol has more alcohol than other fuel. He said the foams that have been used since the 1960s form a blanket on top of the burning gasoline and put out the fire. He said ethanol with its alcohol, often distilled from corn, eats through the traditional foam and continues to burn.
“Firefighters make some decisions to allow the fuel to burn. We mostly have spills instead of fuel fires to deal with. I can’t recall where any fuel labeled ethanol is sold in the area. Most of it is a blend and would not be volatile and is not a big problem,” he said.
“If we were in the Midwest it would be a different story with the refinery of ethanol and storage tanks of ethanol in that area,” Kite said.
Wrecks involving ordinary cars and trucks are not the major concern. They carry modest amounts of fuel, and it is typically a low-concentration, a blend of 10 percent ethanol and gasoline. A large amount of conventional foam can usually extinguish those fires.
However, fires requiring a special alcohol-resistant foam that relies on material to smother the flames cost around $90 to $115 for a five-gallon container.
Derailed railroad cars burn in Painesville, Ohio, in this Oct. 10, 2007 file photo. Several cars from the freight train hauling ethanol and other hazardous chemicals derailed, setting off a large, smoky fire and prompting the evacuation of a half-mile area. America's push to replace gasoline with alternative fuels has left firefighters across the nation ill-equipped to deal with ethanol-fueled fires. (AP Photo/Jamie-Andrea Yanak, File)
I thought you could use water to fight an alcohol fire. If the fuel was E10 or E15, then its basically a gasoline fire. I don’t know about an E85 fire.
Ideally you want to smother the alcohol fire and not use a liquid. Dliute alcohols will still burn. Water will spread it much like a grease fire. Carbon dioxide SHOULD be able to do it and I don’t know why they don’t use CO2 foam...oh wait...nevermind...I’ll crawl back into my hole and continue to burn gasoline and diesel.
Now this is really a bullcrap article. I’ve been a
fireman and fighting fires with gasoline that has
ethanol blended isn’t any different than gasoline
with other stuff blended. First the nuts say
it doesn’t have enough energy, the they say
they can’t put it out. Folks the ethanol bashing
is nuts. It will only promote shortages, percieved
or real. And any flammable chemical in an accident
that is a burning conflagration is hard to put out.
Should we do away with all flammable chemicals..Ed
Gasoline floats on water, while alcohol dissolves. There's been gasoline/oil fires on bodies of water (i.e. ship blows up on the ocean) but I never heard of or can imagine an alcohol spill doing the same thing.
Spray a gasoline fire with water, the gasoline just rises to the top staying on fire. Spray an alcohol fire with water and it will dissolve and should at least eventually go out.
Hydrogen fires are nasty, too. Having worked in manned-space flight for the first 10 years of my career, I can tell you that you really don’t want to have to deal with the stuff. Burns with almost no flame showing - when you see photos of the Hindeberg, what flames you see are the skin of the airship.
FireFightingNews.com
Ethanol Fuels Firefighting Dilemma
March 17, 2008
Nevada - Every day, railway tankers carrying ethanol from the Midwest roll through the Las Vegas Valley, bringing their eco-friendly cargo to the Las Vegas area and beyond. But while the corn-based fuel might be better for the environment, if there were an accident and one of those tankers caught fire as it was traveling through the city, the Las Vegas Fire Department would not be able to handle it alone.
That is because the Fire Department does not use the alcohol- resistant foam that is effective against an ethanol fire.
“There has not been a need for it in the past,” Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said. “But we’re going to change over.”
Some ethanol is dumped at the Calnev pipeline terminal near Nellis Air Force Base as it comes from the Midwest.
However, ethanol traveling through Las Vegas on its way to California - like the 270 such rail shipments of ethanol in 2006 - goes through the heart of the city and could present a risk if there were a fire.
With the increase in the amount of ethanol being transported countrywide, fire departments everywhere have had to address the potential risk of ethanol fires.
“The fire service as a whole is looking at it right now,” Szymanski said. “It’s something new. And on something like this, you get the opinion of everyone.”
The special foam comes in 5-gallon containers costing between $90 and $115, which is more expensive than the foam now being used by the city Fire Department.
Szymanski said fire officials are unsure how much the transition to the new foam will cost the department, because they are still deciding which brand to buy and whether they will need to equip all of their trucks with the new foam.
Additional costs could include new training for the firefighters.
Fire Department officials will make a decision on what changes to make as soon as they have considered their options fully, Szymanski said.
Until then, firefighters might not be able to put out an alcohol- based fire as quickly.
“Without the right foam, the Fire Department will not effectively be able to put that fire out,” said Rich Duffy, assistant to the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. “It puts the community at risk and the firefighters at risk. If you can’t quench that fire right away, people die.”
The best the Fire Department could do is try to contain the fire and wait for it to burn itself out, Duffy said.
Fire Department officials are confident firefighters would be able to handle an ethanol fire, Szymanski said.
The department has access to additional firefighting resources from Nellis Air Force Base and McCarran International Airport.
Also, the city can get help from the Clark County Fire Department, which has been using alcohol-resistant foam for years, said Richard Brenner, the department’s hazardous materials coordinator.
“There are lots of flammable liquids out there that are alcohols and water soluble, so we put it in the budget and got it taken care of.”
When conventional foam is used to put out chemical fires, a special combination of foam, water and air is used. But an alcohol fire, such as one involving ethanol, sucks the water out of the foam solution, making the foam ineffective, Brenner said.
Traditional gasoline is not an alcohol and does not present a problem when using firefighting foams.
Even a gasoline fire with a low concentration of ethanol, such as the 10 percent to 15 percent ethanol gasoline provided at many fuel stations, does not require alcohol-resistant foam. But the large rail tankers carry much more concentrated ethanol, 85 percent to 95 percent.
On average, 1.2 million gallons of ethanol, about two or three tankers a day, are brought into Las Vegas every month, primarily via railroad.
The ethanol is mixed at terminals with gasoline piped in from California before it is transferred to individual gasoline stations to help the fuel burn cleaner.
The only major local railway incident in recent years happened Aug. 27, 2007. A runaway tanker carrying toxic chlorine gas eventually was stopped without derailing or causing damage.
While there have not been any recent tanker fires locally, at the end of 2007 there were three major fires in other parts of the country involving tankers carrying high concentrations of ethanol.
In Missouri, a tanker truck carrying ethanol crashed, killing the driver. The fire forced two elementary schools to evacuate and damaged a bridge.
In Ohio, a train derailed and the flames forced 1,000 people from their homes. And in Pennsylvania, nine tankers carrying ethanol derailed, causing serious delays.
All the fire departments called to those fires had the alcohol- resistant foam and were able to put out the fires.
(c) 2008 Las Vegas Review - Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Written by Scott Spjut
http://www.firefightingnews.com/article-US.cfm?articleID=46718
I think everyone is missing the main point here.
Have you hugged your oilman today?
First, I have to ask why you think that gasoline with blended ethanol is even an issue. That’s not the point of the article or the safety objections folks like me have against ethanol. The worry here is ethanol production and storage facilities, and the millions of tanker trailers, tanker cars and tanker barges that will be transporting pure ethanol every day if ethanol becomes a major factor in American energy.
Second, you ask if we should do away with all flammable chemicals. No, the proper question is should we adopt a chemical (flammable or otherwise) as a major portion of our energy use when it drives food prices up, is difficult to transport, is less efficient than gasoline and releases more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere during production than gasoline. I’d say the answer to that is a big, fat “NO” and I say that as the editor of a national ag trade magazine. Ethanol is a boondoggle, and the government should get out and stay out.
If ethanol becomes subject to market forces it will crash like a helicopter without rotors.
Another stupid liberal laws proven to be a disaster! And the libs want to increase the amount of ethanol in gasoline! Idiocy!
“First, I have to ask why you think that gasoline with blended ethanol is even an issue. “
Exactly, hubel458, has not read the article. Blended fuel is NOT the concern! It is the rail tank car and truck -tanker ethanol loads that is the concern.
http://www.firefightingnews.com/article-US.cfm?articleID=46718
I’m well aware. Take a look at the space shuttle main engine exhaust...although from your description I imagine that you HAVE for a long time...
Courtesy ping to post 12.
This is propaganda to sell foam, crap foam at best.
Nitrogen & co2 foam would be best, but the foam marketers are still cavemen with regards to tech.
Ethanol also causes your tax money to be burned furiously.
Racecar fuel is alcohol (don’t recall if it’s ethanol or methanol). How do CART, NASCAR, IRL handle fires?
They use diHydrogen monOxide.
Not DHMO!!!!!!
That stuff is DEADLY!!!!!!!!!!!
;'}
I know what the gist article is and it is bull.
They are giving the impression that we have railcars
and trucks burning all over the landscape.
And putting ethanol in gas isn’t causing a raise in
food prices. My Dairy Farm neibors get less for the
milk than 5 years ago. The raise in farm commodity prices,
like oil, is from speculators playing around with money
that isn’t in real estate, etc. Up to three years ago we were sued by other countries for cheap surplus cotton and
corm being dumped by us, hurting their farmers. And there
most corn acreage increase has come from cotton acres
ands their still is worldwide a cotton surplus. If wheat goes from 4 bucks to 8 bucks the amount of money in a loaf of bread, of wheat goes from 6cents to 12. And middlemen
add 10 times the raise, and have you blame farms and
ethanol. There is no corn farm subsidy. Farm bill is
mosly food stamps and conservation programs. CRP pays
to not farm 31 million acres. That amount added to the
92 million acres of corn could put 10% ethanol in
all gas, which makes it burn cleaner and get an extra
mile per gallon in our older engines.And cut down
on importing oil. and indirectly also increases
refinery capacity. Ed
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