What is flour flammable?

Answer 1

AnswerIt can smother a fire, however it is not efficient, requires large quantities of flour, and is potentially combustible thus should not be the product of choice. Using a fire extinguisher, wet towel, or baking soda would be preferred.

See the Web Links to the left for more information about explosions due to flour.

Never use anything that contains water or has been wetted with water on a cooking grease fire.

Water on a grease fire ... results in an explosive fireball which can spread out much like throwing a match on something that has been wetted with gasoline. Same principle of sorts ... it's the gases that are being carried beyond the actual application area that are burning (igniting in the case of gasoline and already burning in the case of grease fires). Water is quickly converted to a gas (steam) which then expands and carries burning gases already being produced by the heated grease.

Wet towel / Blanket solution ... results in the same sudden explosive fire ball since water that is still being converted to steam. In addition to that, it is likely the weight of the wet towel when thrown will tip the pan over and further spread the fire or that whoever is placing it may get burned in the process of trying to accurately place the towel. I could also talk about accuracy in throwing the towel in the first place and the need to likely reposition it after you failed on the first try ... but since the result is a fire ball in the first place it's sort of irrelevant to discuss how futile it is to be accurate at trying to put a towel or a larger blanket on a pan without dragging the pan off anyway. As a side note ... we have tested fire blankets on grease fires and found the same issues. Placement was impossible, repositioning resulted in almost certain burns to the one trying to reposition the blanket and a positive seal between the fire blanket and the pan almost never happened.

Dry towel solution ... simply adds an additional fuel source to the fire and likely will help tip the pan or increase your chance for getting burned in first throwing the towel and second in trying to get it off the pan after it didn't work. You are not going to smother a grease fire with a dry towel ... just ignite the towel.

Muffin pan solution ... likely won't work either as it relies on an absolute seal over the pan to cut off all oxygen to the fire ... which of course would be dependent on the shape and size of the muffin pan as well as the cooking pan. You can extinguish the fire if you happened to walk in at the moment it happened and had a tight fitting lid that could be placed on the pan. But after a few seconds of flame development, the gases being produced by the grease fire would not allow any type of normal lid seal. You also should have clips of fire which are burning around a cast iron lid that has been placed on the pan after a few seconds of burn time ... literally the gases being produced above the pan are pushing the lid up high enough to burn around it. And if you think you can hold the lid down to keep that from happening ... think again (and you will definitely get burned trying that maneuver).

Baking soda is the only household powder you can use on a fire. Baking powder and especially flour can cause the fire to flair and cause even greater damage and risk of injury. If you run a search on the subject you can find many examples of what happens when you mix flour and fire.

Never use flour to attempt to extinguish a fire.

Thank you State Farm for the information.

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Flour is not "potentially combustible." It's an explosion hazard. Forty years ago, grain silos and flour silos exploded all the time; finely divided grain dusts including flours when mixed with air and ignited by a spark are very good fuel-air explosives. In the 1980s and 1990s the grain industry together with the insurance industry made it their goal to eliminate silo explosions, and with proper ventilation, installation of explosion-proof motors, and maintenance of silo electrical systems they've come a very long way toward doing that. In the Pacific Northwest alone we used to have three to five silo explosions a year and the Midwest Grain Belt had a couple dozen. Per year. And when a silo explodes, there's nothing left of it. Today, you very rarely hear of one.

This is a fun experiment to do with plenty of supervision: get a can of compressed air, a spoon or something to hold powdered materials, a few powders like flour, sugar, chalk, portland cement and fine sand, and a bunsen burner. Pick up a tiny bit of a powder and blow it into the flame to see which powders are the most flammable.

Answer 2

Flour can not only burn, it can explode (seriously, for reals). If finely divided flour particles get mixed with air, they form an explosive mixture that's a real risk for the operators of things like grain silos.

Answer 3

No. Flour is flammable.

Answer 4

The fire goes out...simple

Answer 5

Yes