would this work

[Rhino]

I have a freind who wanted me to put his idea on maple traders. He was wondering if there is a way you could direct the steam from the piggyback/steamaway/ or any steam hood and have it forced into the fire box? His thinking is.....steam is hydrogen and oxygen, if the steam would change from vapor to a gas when it hits the hot grates or fire it would then be very flamable and basically be a free heat source? My take on this is when the steam vapor is going thru the pipeing to get to the fire, it will turn into a liquid as it cools and you would be blowing water in your fire box. If a person could keep the steam hot the whole process would it work??? I always like to hear this guys ideas, comes up with some real head scratchers sometimes.

[Haynes Forest Products]

If it was feasable you would see it on steam engines on locamotives they had a way of getting every bit of power out of them...........................I THINK:rolleyes:

[Grade "A"]

It would make you think that it should work but it does not. Being a firefighter you find out that nothing will put out a fire like steam will, the only problem is that if anyone is inside a house it will steam them too like a lobster. You would need a hydrogen cell like in a car to burn steam/water.

[DrTimPerkins]

Unfortunately what is seemingly a good idea runs into the reality of physics. The only thing you'll end up with doing this is a cooler fire and hotter steam.

Tim P.
UVM PMRC

[KenWP]

We used to pour water on oil well fires to make them burn cleaner beleive it or not. The fire uses the oxgen in the water to burn better. You have to see a fire on a gas and oil well to really see why it was done. The black smoke stops is basically why it's done.
You have to remember what happens when you burn wet wood. The fire burns but produces no heat same with steam in a fire box.

[Rhino]

Thanks for the input, I will give him the answers and tell him to start thinking about something else.

[darkmachine]

When you evaporate water you are actually just exciting the H2O molecules. Think of it like the hotter they are the more they vibrate, and they break off, then you get steam. In order to get combustible gas from water you need to use a process that splits the Hydrogen and the Oxygen into there component parts, called electrolysis. Usually they do this in a chemistry lab using a platinum catalyst. It also takes a tremendous amount of energy to do this, otherwise we would just fill up our cars with a full tank of H2O.

Here is a more technical explination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis#Electrolysis_of_water

[PerryW]

While a water molecule is made from 1 atom of Oxygen and two molecules of Hydrogen; the molecule must be split apart using electrolysis before the hydrogen will burn.

And to split water into hydrogen and oxygen take a large amount of electrical energy.