Comment by dan_sbl

20 hours ago

I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.

I was thinking maybe have those chemicals sitting in a glass or temperature sensitive container inside the tank. So when there's too much pressure or heat, the container containing the neutralizing chemical is broken like a fuse and the chemical is automatically released.

  • Having the chemical in one location doesn't make it active all over, you need to disperse it. Like you need to shake glow-in-the-dark bracelets.

    • Well then... make a matrix of such fuse-containers? (say every 20cm or whatever) I guess manufacturing such a matrix would be pretty expensive though, you'd need to carefully automate its production I think. It would also definitely interfere with flow of fluid in the tank.

      1 reply →

That is active.

Something passive could be submerging the tank in a pool of water (also good for proving spill containment won't leak).

  • Typically you don't have enough surface area for that. The walls are thick enough that thermal conductivity into an ambient-temperature liquid alone is not going to be sufficient.