Rich Grise wrote:
Ignoramus18541 wrote:
On 2010-11-28, Steve B wrote:
We go on dry lakes that are/were used for strafing and bombing practice.
We
are always finding weird pieces of whatnot. For the longest time, we
have been finding a light metal grey bar, about an inch square, and eight
inches
long. The other night, we were camping, and tossed a sliver of it on the
fire.

It was magnesium. Good thing we didn't toss the entire bar.
I have a jar of magnesium shavings and I often burn it for kids
entertainment. While, I would say, it is fun to watch, I would not
call it spectacular. I think that your 1x1x8" bar would make a fun
little fire, but nothing beyond this, unless you converted the whole
mass into shavings. Then it would be just a bigger fire.

We recently had a customer order some magnesium parts; a couple of
machinists were burning some chips, and they poured water on it and it
flared up! Evidently Mg burns hot enough to actually extract the O2 from
2H2O or whatever; unfortunately we didn't have a CO2 fire extinguisher
on hand, or I'd have checked if Mg would even eat CO2.

Anybody ever tested that?

Thanks,
Rich


There are only a couple types of extinguishing agents that will actually
put magnesium.
Class D agents like Sodium Carbonate, Graphite/Copper powder and similar.

Sand, Dirt and the like will work because they stop all oxygen from
reaching the mg.

You can use water BUT you need a LOT of it VERY fast to do any good. You
need to drop the entire amount of magnesium below ignition temperature
and keep it there long enough for the reaction to stop. Not easy to do
even with a fire hose!

OH and FYI, for folks who think they don't need to worry about it. Don't
look over your vehicles! MANY parts are made of magnesium alloys.


--
Steve W.