It’s one part sensationalism, nine parts ignorance. For as long as I can remember TV news talking heads love to say “gallons of jet fuel” because it sounds so ominous. It’s just highly filtered kerosene. The stuff you use in a portable home heater, you could literally pour it into an airliner’s tank and it would work fine.
The regular gasoline (petrol) you buy at a gas station for your car is infinitely more dangerous than so-called “jet fuel”.
Other nitpick: That NASCAR pavement-dryer-thing is more accurately called a “gas turbine engine”, not a “jet engine” because it’s not found on jet airliners nor fighter jets (only on turboprops).
In addition to the above mentioned reasons, alcohol also contains some of it’s own oxygen which though makes mpg go down as you are carrying around some of your oxidizer along with fuel, but also makes it possible to burn more in a given volume.
Now if you don’t have a racetrack that needs clearing or drying, perhaps your driveway needs some snow and ice cleared, in no time —> Jet Dryer Snow Removal - YouTube
You are correct but we racing folks have called them “jet dryers” or “jet blowers” ever since they were introduced. They are wonderfully efficient but also incredibly loud.
I just want to give a warm “thank you” to the fire crew who did such a good job with less-than-adequate tools for the job. Those guys are not series specialists but people who work different types of racing here and there, mostly as volunteers. The level of experience can vary greatly but they worked together very well. I’ve seen many fires at racetracks handled well, but most of my racing pals agree - this is the first jet-fuel fire we know of as well as one of the biggest.
It’s amazing that there was enough track left to continue the race.
As a long time Nascar fan and aspiring red neck(I have yet to yell “get off my land” while waving a shot gun) , I’ll respectfully disagree. They are not stock cars, they are race cars in a taxi cab shape with stickers to make them somewhat appear to be stock cars. I’m just nit pickin’. I won’t even get into the antiquated crap they are running for suspensions and motors. I’ve never seen a Toyota with a pushrod V-8 with a 30 year old Ford rear end and a suspension off a 60’s Chevy pickup.
The Daytona 500 seems to be cursed lately. That was one heck of a fire, and one stupid accident. I don’t think anybody did anything wrong, one of those one in a million things, like flipping a coin and having it land on edge 5 times in a row.
Nobody was hurt, that’s good. It damn near turned into a bad race, I almost ran out of beer.
The cars were originally “stock” cars modified for racing. Although there is basically nothing stock on current NASCAR race cars, the terms “stock car” and “stock car racing” have stuck.
According to Duckster’s above post I stand corrected. That model dryer is indeed a true turbojet as used on (albeit an old) fighter aircraft.
A gas turbine engine puts out a great deal of hot exhaust which would dry things quite well. The difference between a gas turbine engine and a turbo-fan (as on airliners) or a true turbo-jet (as on fighters, bombers etc.) is that the latter two deliver all their power via thrust out the back (what you normally think of in terms of a ‘jet engine’). A gas turbine delivers some this way, but most is converted to ‘shaft horsepower’, IOW the spinning turbine inside the engine is connected to gears which turn a propeller (a turbo-prop) or a rotorblade (a helicopter) or even a vehicle’s transmission (an M1 Abrams tank)…
I’m aware of the distinction you were making, however to nitpick your nitpick, the turboprop, turbojet, and turbofan are all types of gas turbine engine.
One of the race commentators (Jeff Hammond, I think) declared that the track would be fine because most of what was burning was the vapors and not the fuel itself in contact with the track surface. I thought, “you’re nuts, the asphalt is going to be toast from all the heat regardless.” Damned if he didn’t turn out to be 100% right.
And in fact, NASCAR stands for (somewhat redundantly) National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
We are lucky he was right because he was forgetting that asphalt has oil in it and can melt and burn right quickly, not to mention how fuel can damage the surface if it sits there for more than a couple of minutes. But I do not know the different combustion temperatures of the two fuels. Again, kudos to the emergency services crews.
And remember:
NASCAR uses Tide because it gets their whole racetrack clean.
I also thought for certain the track would be damaged beyond repair. I wonder if the fact that the track was only recently completely repaved (after the pothole fiasco in the 2010 Daytona 500) saved the race.
