A non-conspiracy theory about 9/11 that deserves discussion:

[hedgehog]

In the aluminum industry, the biggest fear is mixing liquid aluminum and water. First, you get a steam explosion, spraying droplets of molten aluminum everywhere. Then, the aluminum droplets burn. It takes a lot of energy to separate aluminum from raw minerals; when aluminum burns all that energy is released.

Here's what happened at one aluminum plant in China:

http://shanghaiscrap.com/2007/08/shandong-to-dead-workers-dont-blame-us/

So, here is a speculation floating around the aluminum industry:

1. The fires at the World Trade Center may not have been hot enough to melt steel, but they were certainly hot enough to melt aluminum.

2. The planes that hit the towers were made from tons of aluminum and titanium.

3. So, liquid aluminum and titanium flowed down inside the buildings until it met water from fire sprinklers, then the mix exploded.

Simensen believes that it is overwhelmingly likely that the two aircraft were trapped inside an insulating layer of building debris within the skyscrapers. This leads him to believe that it was the aircraft hulls rather than the buildings themselves that absorbed most of the heat from the burning aircraft fuel.
The SINTEF scientist believes that the heat melted the aluminium of the aircraft hulls, and the core of his theory is that molten aluminium then found its way downwards within the buildings through staircases and gaps in the floor -- and that the flowing aluminium underwent a chemical reaction with water from the sprinklers in the floors below.
"Both scientific experiments and 250 reported disasters suffered by the aluminium industry have shown that the combination of molten aluminium and water releases enormous explosions," says Simensen.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921074747.htm

[MineralMan]

1. You found it!

Great. I was about to unlock your GD post and add a link. This is the place for all the 9/11 stuff.

[hedgehog]

5. Thanks - I didn't know what the group was called!

[wildbilln864]

2. well?

"3. So, liquid aluminum and titanium flowed down inside the buildings until it met water from fire sprinklers, then the mix exploded. "

How far could the molten Al flow before cooling and solidifying? Office fires migrate and the metals all metals act as a heat sink tho some more conductive than others....

[hedgehog]

6. The article posits that the debris more or less formed

melt furnaces around the remains of the planes.

As for the explosive power of aluminum, here's one experiment:

Alcoa Aluminium carried out an experiment under controlled conditions, in which 20 kilos of aluminium smelt were allowed to react with 20 kilos of water, to which some rust was added. The explosion destroyed the entire laboratory and left a crater 30 metres in diameter."

As for practical applications of this, my husband works in aluminum remelt. Sows are blocks of aluminum roughly
3ft x3ft x18". As they are cast, they may develop pinhole cavities or a center crack. We're not talking huge gaps; sometimes these flaws are invisible to the naked eye. When the sows are stored outside, rainwater can get into these cracks. Sometimes we're talking dew collection! My husband designs procedures and equipment to preheat the sows to above 212 degrees F and hold them there to drive off water as steam before the sow goes into the melt furnace. That's how serious the problem of water plus molten aluminum is.

We aren't talking about melting every last ounce of aluminum. If some of the aluminum melted and then hit water, it would have made an explosion. That explains why people saw explosions below the fire. A small explosion might have taken out some weakened structural steel. Once one floor collapsed on another, it was a chain reaction.

[wildbilln864]

11. Who?

"That explains why people saw explosions below the fire."
Who claimed to see explosions below the fire? Or is that just more sophistry?

[hedgehog]

13. I'm sorry - I don't follow this story very closely and I

was under the impression that people had claimed to spot signs of explosions in the the floors below where the palnes hit. Please excuse me if I am wrong.

[wildbilln864]

15. well...

I know of people that say they heard explosions and some said they saw light flashes but I would think that molten Al contacting H2O wouldn't cause flashes of light?

[Ace Acme]

19. Flashes of light on lower floors

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: “I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw.”

http://www.911truth.org/explosive-testimony-revelations-twin-towers-in-911-oral-histories/

[wildbilln864]

3. titanium melts at over 3000 degrees!

Last edited Sun Jan 1, 2012, 04:25 PM - Edit history (1)

so it wasn't flowing down the building from kerosene fuel fire and office fires!

[hedgehog]

4. OK, maybe not the titanium, but certainly the aluminum!

[greyl]

7. Yes, explanations about that have been floating around since at least 2006

And another Greening article suggests that perhaps a thermite reaction really did play a part in the collapse of the WTC... Though not for the reasons commonly assumed.
http://www.911myths.com/WTCTHERM.pdf
(PDF file, updated February 20th to address Professor Steven E. Jones “Experiments testing Greening's hypothesis regarding Molten Aluminum”).

http://www.911myths.com/html/other_contributions.html

edit: and a DU thread from 2006 with no response from the controlled demo CTers about the paper: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=72279&mesg_id=72656

[hedgehog]

8. I haven't followed the discussions at all, and just came

across this when it went around the aluminum industry. FWIW, people who work with molten aluminum think the explanation makes a lot of sense. When they hear the theory, they think about it a minute, then nod their heads.

[greyl]

9. Right, it's interesting how it doesn't exist to the controlled demo CTists

who have supposedly been following the discussions for 10+ years.

[Ace Acme]

22. It's not practical. It requires that somehow a crucible be created

... that keeps the aluminum together while it's melting, that somehow this crucible be opened so the molten aluminum flows en masse, and that a substantial reservoir of water be available to set off the reaction.

I don't see wet floors from fire sprinklers as a substantial reservoir.

[gyroscope]

10. Explosive aluminum from the planes

caused the towers to collapse? is this a joke?

how would that explain building 7 which wasn't hit by any planes?

[hedgehog]

12. Read the article at the link. Solid block aluminum

isn't explosive. Powdered aluminum and aluminum dust is an extreme explosive hazard - powdered aluminum was used in the incendiaries dropped on Dresden. If water and molten aluminum meet, there tends to be a steam explosion that spatters the aluminum producing secondary explosions as the aluminum burns.

As a matter of fact - the article does suggest that aluminum scattered from the towers collapsing did play a part in igniting building 7.

[wildbilln864]

14. thermit?

"..powdered aluminum was used in the incendiaries dropped on Dresden"

[gyroscope]

16. So? Jet fuel is highly explosive

doesn't mean jet fuel has the ability to cause steel buildings to implode and collapse cleanly nearly into their own footprint. only a planned demolition with strategically placed demolition devices can do that.

doesn't matter what the source is, random explosions of any kind do not cause steel buildings to collapse. if they did NIST would have gladly jumped on this aluminum theory from the start. anything that could provide a good sound non-CD explanation for the collapses, and that could silence the loud criticism coming from a large segment of the scientific community, I'm sure NIST would have been sure to jump on quickly. but they never did. afaik they never promoted any such theory.

[wildbilln864]

20. jet fuel is mostly...

kerosene....not very explosive...

[Ace Acme]

21. Jet fuel is highly explosive only when it's in the center tank of Flight 800

or so say my anonymous internet aviation experts.

A fireball is not an explosion. It's only burning at the surface. If you watch the WTC fireballs rising outside the WTC, you'll see that they are not breaking the windows.

But your point that NIST would have seized on any explanation--such as exploding jet fuel--if they could is a good one.

[Bolo Boffin]

17. It's very well documented that the tower collapses didn't start from an explosion

Last edited Sun Jan 1, 2012, 10:32 PM - Edit history (1)

but from sagging floors pulling in on the perimeter columns until they failed. So I doubt this explanation can contribute to our understanding of how the towers fell.

It is at least plausible, though! Thanks for posting it.

[wildbilln864]

18. yes it's "cocumented"...

but sometimes cocumentation is errant!