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Originally Posted by irish1958
Remember the PanAM Jet off New York? A a spark set off the fumes in the fuel tank. They are very explosive. The fuel in liquid state will burn if its flash point is reached.
irish1958
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Fuel FUMES are explosive. The flashpoint, you will recall, is the temperature at which the liquid emits enough fumes to cause a short explosion at its surface (Not enough to sustain a fire).
I've put out a match with diesel, as the outside temperature was below the diesel's flashpoint. Pain in the ass when you have to burn something. I'd do it with JP4 as well, but I believe it has a very, very, very, very low flashpoint. Colder than I'd want to get my hand in.
The environment in a cargo tank is such that you can throw a cigar in the tank, and it'll go out. The mixture's too rich - Remember, there's as little space as possible left in that tank, and the oxygen was mostly expelled when the cargo was pourred in. Finally, the north atlantic being the cold hearted biatch that it is, most cargoes (Except, say, avgas, JP, gasoline maybe) would be below their flashpoint.
To get an explosion, you'd have to pierce the cargo tank in such a way that the cargo would be opened to the atmosphere (IE, around the waterline) OR, and that'd be a stroke of luck, cause a list large enough that tanks would overflow on the deck. Cargo could also overflow if water starts infiltrating the tank and the vents are open (But tanker crews would, logically, close all the vents as soon as they expected to take on water)
So yeah, tanker might explode. But they also might not. I'm not saying that I'd stick around to grill marshmallows and watch it burn.