Why does water put out fire

List of Partners vendors. Cooking is the leading cause of household fires and injuries, and nearly half of all home cooking fires are caused by fat, grease, or oil.

Grease fires happen when oil, grease, or fat on a stovetop, oven, or fryer get hot enough to ignite. They burn very hot and spread if not handled properly. Grease fires are extremely dangerous because the fuel source the grease is a liquid that can easily splash and spread, particularly if you dump water on it. They can quickly spread to cabinets or other flammable areas of the kitchen. This article outlines what you should know about grease fires, including how they start, how to extinguish them, and how to prevent them from happening in the first place.

Leaving the stove unattended while cooking is a leading cause of home cooking fires. Oils and grease are highly flammable, which means they can catch fire easily.

Different oils burn at different temperatures flash points , but every oil you can buy at the grocery store is capable of catching on fire if the temperature is high enough. When you're cooking with grease, it's important to know the warning signs that oils are getting too hot. Boiling and smoking are good indicators that it's time to turn down the heat. Oils heat very quickly, and once it starts to smoke, oil can catch fire in as little as 30 seconds.

Even when taking proper precautions, accidents can happen. If you're cooking with oils and a grease fire ignites in the pan, knowing the correct steps to take can be the difference between a ruined dinner and a kitchen that's engulfed in flames.

Fires require three key elements: a heat source, fuel, and oxygen. Removing either of these components will help the fire go out. The steps below will guide you through safe ways to extinguish small, confined grease fires in your home.

Never try to extinguish a grease fire with water. Throwing water on the fire can cause burning grease to splash, which can make the fire spread and potentially harm bystanders. It is dangerous to move a pan or pot of burning oil for the same reasons.

Fires can become out of control very quickly. If the grease fire is large or you are uncertain about your ability to extinguish a small fire, call right away. Do not wait until the fire is out of control. Emergency personnel will ask you a series of questions to assess the situation and can give valuable instructions to help you put out the fire yourself. If needed, they can also dispatch firefighters to your home. Remember that the fire department can always return to the station if you are able to get the fire out before they get to you.

If you're cooking and a pot catches fire, the first step is to remove the heat source. Turn off the burner, oven, or broiler. If your grease fire is in the oven, leave the door closed. This deprives the fire of oxygen, which can help put it out. The easiest way to cut off oxygen to a grease fire is to cover it with a metal pan lid or baking sheet.

Using metal tongs to put the lid in place can keep your arms and hands out of harm's way. Do not use a fabric oven mitt because the material may catch fire and you could get hurt.

Avoid using glass or ceramic pan lids. The extreme heat of open flames can cause these materials to shatter. The warning to never use water to put out a grease fire is worth repeating, especially since your urge may be to take a burning pot to the sink and turn on the faucet.

Instead, you can reach for two pantry staples to help douse a small grease fire safely:. However, note that you need large quantities of salt or baking soda to fully extinguish a grease fire. It's sometimes easier and more effective to quickly find a lid and cover the fire instead. Though baking soda and salt are effective in putting out grease fires, other powdered ingredients can make fires worse.

Flour and baking powder are highly combustible and can explode in extreme heat. Do not use them or any boxed mixes that contain them on a grease fire. If you are unable to smother the fire with a lid, baking soda, or salt, it's time to reach for the fire extinguisher.

And can water be used to put out every fire that we encounter or are things more complicated than that? Water can put out or extinguish many types of fires and it does so by removing the heat from the fire to cool it down enough to extinguish it and water can also separate the source of oxygen from the fire, which will also extinguish it. We will take a closer look at the science of fire and why water can be such an effective extinguishing agent though not on all types of fires.

Your 1 priority is keeping your family safe. As a firefighter, I recommend everyone have a home safety kit that can ensure everyone you love gets out quickly and unharmed, in the event of a fire or other emergency. Here is the Safety Kit that I recommend. How Hot Does it Get? So, then we turn to water.

Humble dihydrogen monoxide or H 2 O. This, at first glance, seems to be the least likely chemical on earth to extinguish fires with. Well, there are a couple of things to know. Firstly, the compounds of elements often have very different properties from the elements themselves. This is why it is true that Mercury Hg is poisonous to people, but also the mercury in vaccines is not pure mercury, but rather in compound form and is not poisonous.

Secondly, in order to break a compound down, you have to break the chemical bonds in that compound and water has two sets of bonds. There is a very strong bond between the oxygen and the hydrogen atoms in the water molecule, which requires a lot of heat to break.

In essence, the Oxygen end of the molecule carries a slight negative charge, and the Hydrogen end a slight positive and these allow for the attraction of other molecules each bearing the opposite charge. And thus, they raise the temperature required to break down a water molecule.

The unique qualities of fire itself light, heat, etc is just the energy that is released by the reduction-oxidation chemical reaction going on. So, in the case of typical fire, the oxidizer is the thing carrying oxygen. In this case that is, well, oxygen, typically from the atmosphere. The thing being oxidized is the fuel.

The more easily a fuel source accepts oxygen oxidizes , the more flammable it is. Throw hydrogen on your fire, then throw oxygen. Looks like the same effect, must be the same effect. It turns out that these two things do not have the same effect on fire if you look beyond the similar flash of increased energy release. They have a similar result but through completely different mechanisms. Hydrogen affects only the fuel side. Oxygen only affects the oxygen side.

If you were to compare the gases being released by the fire before and after you added the oxygen, there would be no difference. All you did was accelerate the process that was already happening. Hydrogen, on the other had adds an extremely receptive fuel source. Hydrogen is so ready to oxidize that it has a hard time existing in its pure state here on Earth.

This actually gives us a clue as to WHY water puts out fire. It is the same reason that carbon dioxide CO 2 is also a pretty good option throwing pure carbon dust on a fire would have a similar, albeit smaller, flare as throwing hydrogen on it.