Last updated Dragon's breath (sustained vertical breath without a torch in front of the flame)
Fire art is a piece of art that uses active flames as an essential part of the piece. The piece may either use flame effects as part of a sculpture, or be a choreographed performance of fire effects as the piece burns; the latter being almost a type of performance art.
Fire can be a compelling medium for artists and viewers. It has a direct effect on its surroundings, consuming materials and giving heat and light. It is constantly moving and can appear to be alive. There is also the inherent perceived danger of fire.
Fire artists use various fuels and colorants to achieve desired effects. The choice of fuel is largely dependent on the effects desired. In large stationary pieces, propane gas is a popular fuel. Gas escaping from its container can be set alight. Different plumbing, pressures, nozzles alter the nature of the flames. Controlling how the propane mixes with the oxygen in the air is important.
Liquid fuels like alcohol, methanol, kerosene, mixes of kerosene and diesel, and others, can produce spectacular results. Extra precautions must be taken with liquids because they fall and splash, while gasses usually dissipate.
Most colorants are solids ground into a powder. As the powder is heated, it begins to oxidize and burns a color particular to the chemical used. Some colorants can be dissolved in alcohol or water or other liquids to facilitate their dispersion in the fire. Some colorants are toxic and should not be used in proximity to people.
Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion does not always result in fire, but when it does, a flame is a characteristic indicator of the reaction. While the activation energy must be overcome to initiate combustion, the heat from a flame may provide enough energy to make the reaction self-sustaining. Combustion is often a complicated sequence of elementary radical reactions. Solid fuels, such as wood and coal, first undergo endothermic pyrolysis to produce gaseous fuels whose combustion then supplies the heat required to produce more of them. Combustion is often hot enough that incandescent light in the form of either glowing or a flame is produced. A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen into water vapor, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines. This reaction releases 242kJ/mol of heat and reduces the enthalpy accordingly :
Kerosene, also known as paraffin, lamp oil, and coal oil, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from Greek: κηρός (keros) meaning "wax", and was registered as a trademark by Canadian geologist and inventor Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a genericized trademark. It is sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage. The term kerosene is common in much of Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, and the United States, while the term paraffin is used in Chile, eastern Africa, South Africa, Norway, and in the United Kingdom. The term lamp oil, or the equivalent in the local languages, is common in the majority of Asia. Liquid paraffin is a more viscous and highly refined product which is used as a laxative. Paraffin wax is a waxy solid extracted from petroleum.
A portable stove is a cooking stove specially designed to be portable and lightweight, used in camping, picnicking, backpacking, or other use in remote locations where an easily transportable means of cooking or heating is needed. Portable stoves can be used in diverse situations, such as for outdoor food service and catering and in field hospitals.
A propellant or propellent is a chemical substance used in the production of energy or pressurized gas that is subsequently used to create movement of a fluid or to generate propulsion of a vehicle, projectile, or other object. Common propellants are energetic materials and consist of a fuel like gasoline, jet fuel, rocket fuel, and an oxidizer. Propellants are burned or otherwise decomposed to produce the propellant gas. Other propellants are simply liquids that can readily be vaporized.
Liquefied petroleum gas or liquid petroleum gas, is a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases used as fuel in heating appliances, cooking equipment, and vehicles.
RP-1 (alternatively, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene outwardly similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel. RP-1 has a lower specific impulse than liquid hydrogen (LH2), but is cheaper, stable at room temperature, far less of an explosion hazard, and far denser. RP-1 is significantly more powerful than LH2 by volume. RP-1 also has a fraction of the toxicity and carcinogenic hazards of hydrazine, another room-temperature liquid fuel.
Fire performance is a group of performance arts or skills that involve the manipulation of fire. Fire performance typically involves equipment or other objects made with one or more wicks which are designed to sustain a large enough flame to create a visual effect.
Liquid fuels are combustible or energy-generating molecules that can be harnessed to create mechanical energy, usually producing kinetic energy; they also must take the shape of their container. It is the fumes of liquid fuels that are flammable instead of the fluid. Most liquid fuels in widespread use are derived from fossil fuels; however, there are several types, such as hydrogen fuel, ethanol, and biodiesel, which are also categorized as a liquid fuel. Many liquid fuels play a primary role in transportation and the economy.
The fire triangle or combustion triangle is a simple model for understanding the necessary ingredients for most fires.
A fireplace or hearth is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the design.
A beverage-can stove, or pop-can stove, is a do it yourself, ultralight, alcohol-burning portable stove. The simple design is made entirely from aluminium cans, lending itself to countless variations.
Colored fire is a common pyrotechnic effect used in stage productions, fireworks and by fire performers the world over. Generally, the color of a flame may be red, orange, blue, yellow, or white, and is dominated by blackbody radiation from soot and steam. When additional chemicals are added to the fuel burning, their atomic emission spectra can affect the frequencies of visible light radiation emitted - in other words, the flame appears in a different color dependent upon the chemical additives. Flame coloring is also a good way to demonstrate how fire changes when subjected to heat and how they also change the matter around them.
A kerosene heater, also known as a paraffin heater, is typically a portable, unvented, kerosene-fueled, space heating device. In Japan and other countries, they are a primary source of home heat. In the United States and Australia, they are a supplemental heat or a source of emergency heat during a power outage. Most kerosene heaters produce between 3.3 and 6.8 kilowatts.
A pyrotechnic composition is a substance or mixture of substances designed to produce an effect by heat, light, sound, gas/smoke or a combination of these, as a result of non-detonative self-sustaining exothermic chemical reactions. Pyrotechnic substances do not rely on oxygen from external sources to sustain the reaction.
Oxy-fuel welding and oxy-fuel cutting are processes that use fuel gases and oxygen to weld or cut metals. French engineers Edmond Fouché and Charles Picard became the first to develop oxygen-acetylene welding in 1903. Pure oxygen, instead of air, is used to increase the flame temperature to allow localized melting of the workpiece material in a room environment. A common propane/air flame burns at about 2,250 K, a propane/oxygen flame burns at about 2,526 K, an oxyhydrogen flame burns at 3,073 K and an acetylene/oxygen flame burns at about 3,773 K.
A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as heat energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but has since also been applied to other sources of heat energy such as nuclear energy.
A blowtorch, is a fuel-burning tool used for applying flame and heat to various applications, usually metalworking.
Fire glass is simply pieces of tempered glass with no special manufacturing process. It may be specially shaped and coloured, and it is not coated with flammable coatings, but otherwise, fire glass is no different than standard tempered glass windows.
A pool fire is a type of diffusion flame where a layer of volatile liquid fuel is evaporating and burning. The fuel layer can be either on a horizontal solid substrate or floating on a higher-density liquid, usually water. Pool fires are an important scenario in fire safety science, as large amounts of liquid fuels are stored and transported by different industries.
A fuel container is a container such as a steel can, bottle, drum, etc for transporting, storing, and dispensing various fuels.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
