Go to the Article: Is Cinnamon Flammable?
Word.
Just what I was thinking.
- originally posted by Grant Lee Crilly
is it the same physical process that make flour explode?
Yes.
Not sure that the presence of cinnamaldehyde and/or eugenol have much to do with this; I would guess that the defining factor here is that cinnamon 'powder' is an organic material that is very finely ground (much more so than most other spices), making it very susceptible to 'dust explosions'.
- originally posted by Henk Verhaar
The basic idea is that the vapor phase is what combusts and as the organic material continues to decompose via pyrolysis it provides more combustible vapors. That's how wood and all other organic materials burn, thermal decomposition creates combustible vapors that further heat the solid material and generate more vapors until the fuel source or oxidation source is exhausted.
Having vapor will help, but as said, I don't think it is the defining parameter in a cinnamon dust explosion - it is, I think, the particle size. Burning is, indeed, primarily a reaction of vapors with oxygen, and generally, a material needs to generate vapors before burning can take place - wood, as you state, burns primarily through pyrolysis, and it is first and foremost the methanol generated that burns - but after pyrolysis is exhausted and only charcoal remains, this continues to burn/smoulder in a solid state. As far as I'm aware, oxidation reactions can also be solid-state surface reactions, and as long as there's enough surface, and the volume is low enough that a particle burns up entirely through such surface reactions, a dust explosion type combustion wouldn't even need vapor-generation to proceed.So I would still think (but I could of course be proven wrong) that in a dust explosion, vapor generation is not necessarily necessary ( ;-) ), it could proceed entirely as a surface reaction phenomenon; so in the case of cinnamon, again, the volatiles will help, but are not necessarily the defining factor. I think.
Hmmm, interesting idea. Charcoal does indeed glow by a surface reaction that involves oxygen reacting with carbon to become carbon dioxide, which then reacts to become carbon monoxide gas that does burn, which in turn heats the charcoal surface to higher temperatures that drives the catalytic reaction faster. Hence you get a larger amount of radiant glow. But is this really a surface solid state reaction since you're forming carbon monoxide that is the actually burning gas?I suppose it's possible that a vapor-less dust explosion is possible entirely through solid-state surface reactions, but I'm a bit dubious that this is actually what's occurring in this case. With cinnamon, you have a large number of volatiles that will be in some kind of equilibrium between the vapor phase and liquid phase. These vapors are certainly combustible. Once the vapors burn, i imaging that combustion will quickly char the particle surface to carbon, and once the carbon is hot enough it will catalyze the creation of carbon monoxide, but again that's a gas that burns in the vapor phase.Out of curiosity, are you a chemist?
