This question is pretty much exactly what it sounds like-- what would cause a bigger explosion if you threw it in a deep-fryer, a frozen turkey or a similarly-sized block of dry ice?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Since dry ice is CO2, wouldn’t it self extinguish?
I don’t believe there’s any actual combustion. I think it’s just a violent eruption of hot oil due to the massive temperature difference between oil and water from the frozen turkey.
from here:http://gizmodo.com/5862430/why-deep-fried-frozen-turkeys-go-kablooie
"The technical term for what happens is a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE, pronounced “blevey”). "
Apparently the heavier melted water sinks below the oil and its boiling is what spatters the oil.
There’s no water in dry ice but it’s all gas, eventually. So if it floats on oil, probably not as bad, but if it sinks I think it would be worse than a turkey.
What do you mean by “self-extinguish”? We’re not talking about combustion, here.
I was thinking of a grease bomb, where you boil a can of grease in a campfire and then drop water into it.
I looks like this.
The combustion takes place when the hot oil boils over and comes in contact with the flames.
As God as my witness I thought CO2 could fry!
Good point. That does complicate things, doesn’t it.
This is speculation on my part:
The frozen turkey shouldn’t be any worse than the items normally put directly into the fryer. Frozen wings, fries, etc. are routinely dropped into the fryer, as intended. The initial sizzle is caused by water rapidly boiling off, but the amount of water available is relatively limited so the boiling is at a safe level. When you throw water into the fryer there is lots available all at once, it expands rapidly and sprays oil everywhere.
The dry ice would similarly sublimate very rapidly, expanding rapidly, and shooting oil everywhere. A quick google shows the density of dry ice at 1.6 g/cm3, vs. cooking oil at about .92g/cm3. So the dry ice would sink, expand rapidly at the bottom of the oil, and spray molten death like confetti.
ETA: Most commercial fryers I have seen use an electric heating element submerged in the fryer, so flames are not a concern. Backyard propane setups do have open flames.
Maybe for maximum bang for your buck, you could use frozen solid O2 or H2. Especially if you’re heating the oil over an open flame.
Solid H2? Where are you doing this experiment? The core of Jupiter?
When you drop the frozen turkey in, only the outermost part is going to boil. Once that happens, the process is going to slow quickly since the turkey is probably going to maintain structural integrity. Also, the meat is going to work like an insulator.
On the other hand, the frozen CO2 doesn’t have much structural integrity to start with. And once the outer layer is gone, the new outer layer is just like the old one, with no insulator left behind.
So, IMO at the start the two will be pretty similar. But if you are going to let the process continue, the CO2 will be dramatic and stay about as dramatic for a longer period of time. If the CO2 breaks up then things will be even more impressive. Unless the CO2 manages to extinquish the flaming oil (and I am leaning towards not, though probably enough to change the dynamics of the fire and flame distribution)
Excellent! 
And yet it is. Every year a few nitwits manage to get seriously injured or start a big fire by lowering a frozen bird into a pot of hot oil. Whereas French fries and chicken nuggets aren’t waterlogged when frozen, the same isn’t true for a turkey. They often have a heavy crust of ice, chunks of ice hidden in various folds, and even a large ball of ice in the main body cavity. That excess water is what boils and drives a hot-oil geyser all over the place.
whereas dry ice into oil: Dry Ice In Frying Oil - YouTube
From the video description:
I was expecting a kaboom or something exciting but no it just had the same effect as when it is put in water.
You expect an explosion in hot oil, and yet you had your wife? put it in with zero protection except the food tongs, and you were standing holding the camera right next to the oil? How stupid can you get?
Interesting. I think the rate of vapor formation for the dry ice is limited in part because of its extreme low temperature (-109F, compared to +32F for ice).
The contiguity of the dry ice block also limits heat transfer by limiting the amount of surface that’s exposed to hot oil. In contrast, as liquid water sluices down off of a submerged turkey, the turbulence generated by the boiling of that water breaks up any contiguous bodies of liquid water into very small droplets, greatly increasing the surface area for heat transfer and steam generation.
Probably due to the Leidenfrost effect.
I think someone needs to run the experiment. Ideally, somewhere far away from me. We’ll need to see video, of course. Wonder if Mythbusters would be interested?
I strongly suspect this was not the first time they ran the experiment.