On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:25:13 -0500, Jon Elson wrote:


Ivan Vegvary wrote:
A few days back somebody posted a link to an outfit that sells mole
eradicating equipment (extremely spendy). Basically you fill their tunnels
with a combination of gas and oxygen and then light the stuff. They have a
video that shows their tunnels exploding and dirt flying about 2 feet into
the air. I would like to make my own setup.

Question:
What combination of fuel/air gives you an explosion. Can I assume that the
same combination that gives me a neutral flame with my Oxy/Acet setup will
provide an explosion.
Roughly Stoichiometric mixtures of oxygen+acetylene will produce a HUGE
explosion. The risk of something going wrong seems too high. Even
stoichiometric propane+air is a powerful bang. Remember, those mole
tunnels go WAY underground, and hold many liters of gas.

Some gases have very wide explosive mixture ranges, some are much narrower.

Some idiot friends of mine filled a dry cleaning bag with
oxygen+acetylene and DROVE it to behind the local high school, while
some of them were SMOKING!!!! Amazingly, they didn't turn themselves
into the next edition of the Darwin awards, and set the thing up with a
model rocket igniter. When it went off, they couldn't hear anything for
a couple hours, and blew out windows for blocks. This was all over 40
years ago. I'm not sure it was a very big bag, either!

Sounds like a great way for a terrorist to blow up a building. Rent an
apartment in a high rise, rent O/A bottles, turn off all electricity,
fill the apartment with O/A, and strike a match. A scary thought.

i