Is Carbon Monoxide flamable?

[Mosier]

@Una_Persson

The next person who confuses CO and CO2 in this thread will be eaten by a Stegosaurus stenops. And yes, contrary to what the Bible tells us, they really are carnivores. And they’re hungry.

It wasn’t my fault! Someone else said it first.

[koontzman]

@Malacandra

Water gas gives you methane and carbon monoxide, producer gas just CO and nitrogen (assuming you’re blasting air), so producer gas is poor fuel but the reaction is exothermic, whereas the water gas reaction is seriously endothermic (but makes better fuel). So by periodically blasting air to make producer gas, you can heat the coke enough for another water-gas run, and so on.

So, if I were building a wood gasification unit, it would be a good idea to change from air inlets, to alternating gas/water inlets…?

[stui_magpie]

@Una_Persson

The next person who confuses CO and CO2 in this thread will be eaten by a Stegosaurus stenops. And yes, contrary to what the Bible tells us, they really are carnivores. And they’re hungry.

Do they eat Zombies?

[Hari_Seldon]

@Una_Persson

The next person who confuses CO and CO2 in this thread will be eaten by a Stegosaurus stenops. And yes, contrary to what the Bible tells us, they really are carnivores. And they’re hungry.

No the ones that are still with us are the Steganosauruses.

When I was growing up our gas supply was water gas. Around 1947 or so, the Philadelphia Gas Co. changed to natural gas. They had to come to each house in the city and change the valves because natural gas has more energy. That must have been a nightmare, since they obviously couldn’t do it everywhere on the same day.

[Mangetout]

I’m tempted to conflate CO and CO2, just because I want to see a real live steggie.

[Lumpy]

It’s been proposed that carbon monoxide could serve as a (crappy) rocket fuel for settlers on Mars because it could be made from the ambient carbon dioxide in Mar’s atmosphere.

[Isilder]

@Hari_Seldon

what were the consequences of using natural gas with a stove tuned for water gas?

Could result in incomplete burning, and the production of CO, Carbon Monoxide.
I guess that to switch an entire city over from one gas to another, you’d hope that for each zone you can switch over in a day, the zone had two (at least) upstream pipes, with stop cocks to control them. So that you’d bring natural gas to one upstream (by laying new mains pipeline ?) and then switching over.
They’d have to lay a new main distributor pipeline to run to the new plant/supply, and because the new source would be larger and expected to supply for gas further.. so there’s be significant mains work to be done first, and that would have the effect of creating a new mains network in parallel to the water gas mains.
And because having redundant supply paths was good engineering practice anyway , there’s always two upstreams for a zone ?, you can just roll out the new gas east to west..or something..

The natural gas turn on may have requires some efffort to create the chunks/blocks/zones with multiple upstreams.

[Si_Amigo]

@Una_Persson

The next person who confuses CO and CO2 in this thread will be eaten by a Stegosaurus stenops. And yes, contrary to what the Bible tells us, they really are carnivores. And they’re hungry.

Please tempt them! They were my favorite dinosaur when growing up. I even let them kill my T-Rex on a regular basis, so they are bad assed in my book. Go ahead, confuse CO with CO2 you pussies!

[Malacandra]

@koontzman

So, if I were building a wood gasification unit, it would be a good idea to change from air inlets, to alternating gas/water inlets…?

You’d probably want to preheat the water and inject steam, but in principle it should work, since a water-gas/producer-gas plant would have been gasifying coal, and once you’ve distilled off the volatile fractions from wood (as you would with coal) the remaining charcoal should do just as well as coke.

(You’re not losing on the deal by boiling the water first, since cold water would be bringing the heat right down anyway…)

[Ludovic]

Wait, didn’t Brontosauruses live with a lot less Carbon Monoxide in the atmosphere than there is today?

[Quercus]

@Ludovic

Wait, didn’t Brontosauruses live with a lot less Carbon Monoxide in the atmosphere than there is today?

I thought it was more CO; that’s why the plants grew so big, which allowed giant dinosaurs. It’s also why it was so hot back then: all the Carbon Monoxide created a greenhouse effect.

(I just want to hear Una roar “Release the Stegasaur!” in a Clash of Titans voice )

[Lumpy]

No, it’s inflammable.

[Lemur866]

It’s a common misconception. It’s only the Stegosaur’s front head that was herbivorous, the rear head was carnivorous.

[bob_2]

The best fire extinguisher is Halon (Dibromotetrafluoroethane) (C2Br2F4)

[Lumpy]

@Lemur866

It’s a common misconception. It’s only the Stegosaur’s front head that was herbivorous, the rear head was carnivorous.

But then where does the Thagomizer go?

[j_sum1]

@Lumpy

No, it’s inflammable.

Nope. That’s carbon dioxide.

[gazpacho]

@Lumpy

No, it’s inflammable.

I wonder how many people that word has killed.

[ZenBeam]

@Isilder

Could result in incomplete burning, and the production of CO, Carbon Monoxide.

Could you use half natural gas, half CO2 during the transition, and get an acceptable burn using either?

(That’s for you, Si Amigo. :))

[Ranger_Jeff]

Frankly, I don’t think Una Persson has the guts to feed Mosier to a stegosaurus stenops for confusing CO and CO2. I double dawg dare her to try.

[CalMeacham]

CO[sub]2[/sub] may be non-flammable, and used in fire extinguishers, but it can actually feed oxygen to a fire under certain circumstances. As Theo Gray demonstrates, putting carbon dioxide on smoldering magnesium can give it enough oxygen to burst into flame – even when that CO[sub]2[/sub] is frozen, in the form of dry ice:

Let Burning Metals Lie

As he says, using a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher on a pile of smoldering magnesium shavings will make it burst into flame – magnesium burns better in a carbon dioxide atmospher than in ordinary air.

Magnesium will burn in all sorts of things, including water (it’s used in underwater flares) and pure nitrogen. It’s not clear to me that it won’t burn in carbon monoxide.
Carbon monoxide, by the way, can be burned, as shown in these pages, making CO by reacting formic acid with sulfuric acid:

Carbon monoxide is made industrially in the manufacture of synthesis gas from the reaction of alkanes with steam. In the laboratory an easy way to prepare CO is by the dehydration of concentrated methanoic acid using concentrated sulfuric acid1

HCOOH(l) CO(g) + H2O(l)

The CO evolved can then be ignited to show that the gas burns with a pale blue flame.

http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2009March/ExhibitionChemistry.asp

Picture of burning CO:

http://www.chemistrydemos.co.uk/webpages/Carbon%20monoxide%20burning.php