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ProfessorGAC

(76,913 posts)
16. You're Mixture Was Off
Wed Oct 30, 2024, 08:45 PM
Oct 2024

Per unit mass, hydrogen has 3x the energy of combustion of gasoline.
Also, the laminar flame front velocity of hydrogen ranges (depending on deviation from ideal stoichiometry) from a bit under 300-2,800cm/s. Gasoline maxes out at around 54cm/s.
So, the pressure wave is the square root of 6 to square root of 50 greater.
Your experiment with hydrogen was far riskier than any similar experiment with gasoline.
Of course, the risk inherent is that to get the same mass of gasoline vapor you might have liquid gasoline in the balloon which would, in fact, pose a greater fire risk.
But, if you're balloon was filled only with gasoline vapor it would be less dangerous than what you did.
As to my title, if you were anything close to the correct hydrogen/oxygen mixture it would have definitely been a high velocity conflagration, or in layman's terms, an explosion.

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