15 ms·
300 Kilotons of oil per supertanker 42 Terajoules per kiloton of oil * 300 = 12.6 Petajoules 12.6 Petajoules = 3 Megatons of TNT
by baybal2 5y ago
300 Kilotons of oil per supertanker
42 Terajoules per kiloton of oil * 300 = 12.6 Petajoules
12.6 Petajoules = 3 Megatons of TNT
- f1refly 5y agoExcept it doesnt work like that at all. Oil does not explode like that. The oil vapours which float on top of the oil and mix with oxygen can explode, but thats just a teeny tiny portion of the ships volume. It could crack open however, which is arguably much worse.
- Aeolun 5y agoHmm, so the explosion is not larger than a small hydrogen bomb even if it can combust all the fuel with 100% efficiency, which will never happen. Seems unlikely that an explosion is the largest worry.
- simiones 5y agoYes, but one of the awesome properties of oil, that have made it such a great fuel, is that you can't normally get all that energy out of it in one huge burst. One of the reasons is that the majority of that energy is not stored in the oil itself in some sense, it is stored in Oxygen in the air. There was recently a chemistry paper on this subject that contained exact numbers, but I haven't been able to find it again. Basically oil alone is not a great source of energy, oil+oxygen is; and it's very hard to get a mix of oxygen and thick crude oil.