Why does putting water on a grease fire make it worse?
In: Chemistry
Other comments already explained that the very hot grease will simply evaporate the water instead of going out, causing a steam explosion that will spread the very-hot grease into the air as droplets. I wanted to add why exactly that is very bad. When grease burns, it means it combines the oxygen with the grease into CO2 (and others), which go back into the air. Since burning eats up the local Oxygen and replaces it with CO2, fires kinda suffocate themself a bit, limiting the amount of heat/energy produces. Also the grease is usually one big blob, where only the surface grease actually has contact with the air/oxygen.
Now when said steam explosion spreads all the grease in small droplets into the air, the grease is still hot enough to burn, but now each droplet is surrounded by lots of oxygen and they do not have to compete for it. This means all droplets immediatly burn alot more than they would have before, while being spread out everywhere. So basically the whole air in your kitchen explodes.
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