– How exactly does water put out a fire? Is it a smothering thing, or a chemical reaction?

Question

– How exactly does water put out a fire? Is it a smothering thing, or a chemical reaction?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

The smothering helps, but mostly it’s just cooling down the burning material. Heating up the water cools the fuel down a lot, but when water evaporates it pulls a lot more heat out of the fuel.

Edit: Reworded some things. Glad to know my chemical engineering degree’s still useful to people even after moving out of the field.