One of my shop teachers back in high school said he used to work in a recycling plant and the biggest boogie men of the industry was having an unopened can of soda hitting a smelter at max temp. He told us the resulting explosion would be enough to take out the entire recycling facility. Is this even possible?
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Others have pointed out the steam expansion issue.
The other problem is that the can will be mixed in with the rest of the material, so there will be liquid metal on top of the rapidly expanding steam.
This actually happened in the materials lab at my school. It wasn’t much but some of the aluminum they used had some trapped moisture. My TA was assisting (they didn’t feed the furnace with students in the building) and he said the aluminum hit the ceiling and splashed back down. The epoxy floor had small craters in it.
This was a small furnace and a few drops so no one got hurt, but I assume that someone needed a change of pants.
As part of the safety session before the casting labs we watched footage of actual industrial furnace explosions.
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