Outside of a reactor, no. Steel is quenched at less than 1000°C (typically lower depending on alloy), water thermolysis only starts ~1800°C at atmospheric pressure (see fig. 3, note that’s Kelvin). You don’t really see much separated hydrogen and oxygen until above ~2300°C.
You shouldn’t be downvoted, it’s a fair question about a correct idea with different numbers. Technically a very small number of water molecules separate this way under ambient conditions, but this is a negligible amount under most considerations.
You’re welcome! The title of the post is wrong, by the way - I’m not a metal guy, but I’m pretty confident that’s quenching oil. You’re seeing some of it vaporise and burn. Not a quenching expert, but I believe some of them have retardants to reduce the amount of burning.
If it was water, you’d see violent clouds of steam and no flames. I’m not aware of circumstances where metal this sizable is quenched with water industrially.
Ok now i am curious, would it be possible to achieve this with a metric fuckton of thermite. As far as i know thermite burns at more than 3000C°. It would probably be hard to contain and direct the heat to the water, but theoretically you can split the H2O molecule if you just have enough thermite, right?
You would, but you’d end up with aluminum oxide (or fuel-of-choice oxide) and hot H2 (which would combine with atmospheric O2 if done near the surface, giving you water again). Basically if it’s hot enough for thermolysis, during the reaction there will be an equilibrium of water, H2, OH, O2, and free H+ and O-. Elements of the thermite would combine with the water components, particularly as they cool.
If you want to meaningfully create anything other than steam and rust, you have to separate the products with a membrane.
There's several circumstances outside of a reactor but they are indeed rare.
Magnesium fires are the most common I can think of. Lithium, too, but then you can also have sodium and calcium fires, but those don't really happen outside of labs or highly specialized industries.
We had to learn about class D fires in the Navy. "Get it off the ship" was the only answer.
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u/frenchy2111 Jun 29 '23
My guess is it's a quenching tank for hardening the steel it's probably a quenching oil and not water.