If you pulled out the smoke from a fire, would it burn hotter?
In: Physics
Basic background: more air = hotter fire. Oxygen is a necessary ingredient for a conventional fire to burn.
Answers: Exactly as you asked, yes. To “pull out smoke”, you’ll suck out the air in which the smoke is suspended. Doing this causes more fresh air whooshing in to replace the resulting vacuum. And more air = hotter fire.
If you mean “if you theoretically magically deleted the smoke and only the smoke in an enclosed space without removing any air or bringing in more air, would it burn hotter,” the answer is no. There’s no additional oxygen introduced so the fire would burn exactly as it was before deleting the smoke. And removing the smoke particles means your air is diluted, which imperceptibly makes the fire burn less hot.
Further, more smoke would be produced to replace it, so deleting the smoke was a momentary change that doesn’t last.
Smoke is basically what’s burns in a fire. Solids don’t burn, well they do but what really happens is they thermally decompose from heat, which releases gasses. This is how things can ignite from getting too hot, for example a house is on fire and the detahced building next to it is not. Despite the flames not psychically reaching the building that’s not on fire the heat is, the wood on the unburnt house will absorb the heat until it can’t get anymore then it starts decomposing and releases gasses. If these gasses get hot enough they’ll ignite even if no flames touch em.
It’s the gasses that burn. Smoke is these gasses as well as unburnt fire gasses, things and ash etc. too much smoke and the oxygen to fuel ratio gets too dense and the fire will get smothered. Not enough oxygen and the fire dwindles out.
You’ll notice a well developed campfire that’s hot has little to no smoke cos it’s hot enough to burn away all the gasses being released. At the beginning it’ll be smokey cos there’s not enough heat to ignite the gasses and they escape and disperse into the atmosphere before managing to ignite.
This is a firefighters perspective mind, so a scientist might be able to clarify all this in science terms I just know as much as my job needs me too
What are you replacing the volume that was smoke with? Was the fire starving for oxygen before? Is fresh air just going to appear there or rush in from the open air around it?
Fire wants air. Smoke is from incomplete combustion, usually from consuming oxygen and still wanting more. That’s why you see fires in a wood stove with a damper underneath the fire to allow air to get into the fire quickly and easily, the air moving in can feed the fire very effectively and it will grow in intensity very quickly.
So your question is kinda silly, smoke is a byproduct of the fire but depending on what’s burning and how it’s setup and whether it’s oxygen starved all significantly change the situation.
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