The liquid in the tank is whatever temperature the ambient temperature is. It only chills as it expands out of the tank. It is only liquid because it is under pressure. Just like you can get water to boil at room temperature by lowering the pressure, you can get vapors to liquify by increasing the pressure.
A tank can suffer a catastrophic failure and make one hell of an explosion. However, a punctured tank that manages to ignite might just shoot a jet of flame. The flame being quite hot, would tend upward. The Myth Busters did a show on a propane tank explosion. They tried shooting the tanks. With regular bullets, nothing happened, they didn't even puncture the tank. With jacketed bullets, they punctured the tank, but nothing happened. With tracer bullets, they punctured the tank, but nothing happened. So they set up a bunch of flares around the tank, then shot it with jacketed bullets, and they got the escaping gas to ignite, but it just made a lot of fire, no explosion. I think the most dangerous situation is when you get a lot of gas escaping before it actually ignites. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [email protected] Tel: (412) 268-9081
