Originally posted by HowardRoark
Jet fuel is made of hydrocarbons and contains aromatic hydrocarbons. Aromatic hydrocarbons always produce sooty smoke.
And yet apparently there are not enough of such hydrocarbons, as the fire was initially much lighter, and I think you'll agree that the initial fuel
source was primarily jet fuel.
Plastics such as those found in a typical office environment also produce sooty smoke.
That doesn't affect the amount of heat released by the combustion of the fuel. That is fixed by hard and fast scientific laws.
The change in color is not ultimately the point. The point is that there were no additions to the fuel sources, and yet the smoke still turned black,
which is STILL an indication of inefficient use of fuel.
Black smoke also serves to carry heat
away from a fire in ways that lighter smoke does not.
It is an incorrect statement to say that the WTC fires were oxygen poor. With the holes in the windows from the impact and the people smashing
out the windows, the fire was well ventilated. It you absolutely must make a judgment based on the color of the smoke, then say that the fire was
fuel rich, not oxygen poor. In that case, as the superheated combustion gases such as carbon monoxide (which will burn) made their way up the
building and encountered open floors with broken windows, the gases can and will ignite releasing more heat.
I have not made the argument that the fires were oxygen poor, now have I? I've not assumed any particular causes of the inefficiency, but any fire
around the core structure would not be as well ventilated (you focused only on the perimeter columns). Also note that the fact that the perimeter
columns were so exposed to open air would inhibit their heating. Also, I'm not aware of anything being "superheated," so if you could provide any
evidence of what you suggest there (not just information on the idea - but EVIDENCE, as you seem to get the two confused) then that'd be great.
But I can tell you that the discoloration was not from being fuel-rich. If that were the case, the fires would INITIALLY be black. But instead, they
started with lighter smoke and
then went black. Make sense? Because it
doesn't make sense when you suggest all of this fuel only became
available so far into the fires. That defies the logic of the fact that the fuel was deposited with the impacts, and nothing more was ever added to
the offices.
The key issue here is not how much of the smoke was escaping out the side of the building, but that the fire was spreading up the building
through the core.
Evidence?
The stack affect of natural air movement up the core shafts would have fed the fire all the oxygen it would have needed. That is why you see
smoke coming out on the top mechanical areas of the building. Anyone who has ever felt the stack effect in a high rise building will know instantly
what I am talking about.
Smoke was being carried through the building, I'll give you that, but to say that there was sufficient internal ventilation for the fires (which in
themselves we know little about around the core) is conjecture.
Thus it is a myth that the fire was somehow cooler because of the smoke. The amount of heat released by the combustion is fixed.
What was fixed was the amount of fuel in the system. Again, with the same body of fuel, the smoke goes from indicating a combustion-efficient fire, to
a combustion-inefficient fire. An inefficient fire will not produce the same energy, and thus HEAT, that an efficient fire will.
Basic chemistry, Howard. Less hydrocarbon combustion = less energy output in the system.
And basic physics, Howard. Less energy output = less heat (in this case) in the system.
And I'll emphasize one more time, for good measure, that there were
no additions to the fuel in the system. In other words, the fires were
NOT fuel-rich, or else the fires would have STARTED black. Once again, it would not make sense for the fires to suddenly be fuel-rich after
much of the fixed amount of fuel is already gone.
The combustion products would have still consist of high temperature gases in the upper parts of the floors and traveling up the core
shafts.
And this just sounds like you're just trying to throw jargon around, because this makes 0 sense.
The combustion products consisted of gases
in the upper parts of the floors? I honestly don't even know what you originally meant with this,
whether you meant the materials being combusted or what, but saying that the products were "in the upper parts of the floors" makes absolutely no
sense unless the fires were already there, or unless you are assuming time does not exist or something funky like that.
Maybe you just had a brain fart on that one, or didn't word it quite right, but it's totally irrelevant to the smoke discoloration anyway, and I
seriously doubt the existence of any corroborating evidence for what you *meant* to say (whatever that may have been), because you know just as well
as I that no one was walking around the cores making scientific observations that day. Otherwise we would know exactly how many core columns were
knocked out.
[edit on 17-1-2006 by bsbray11]
