How Hot Did The Jet Fuel Heat The World Trade Center?

THE JET FUEL; HOW HOT DID IT HEAT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report into collapse of the WTC towers, estimates that about 3,500 gallons of jet fuel burnt within each of the towers. Imagine that this entire quantity of jet fuel was injected into just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with perfect efficency, that no hot gases left this floor, that no heat escaped this floor by conduction and that the steel and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb all the heat. With these ideal assumptions we calculate the maximum temperature that this one floor could have reached.

"The Boeing 767 is capable of carrying up to 23,980 gallons of fuel and it is estimated that, at the time of impact, each aircraft had approximately 10,000 gallons of unused fuel on board (compiled from Government sources)."

Quote from the FEMA report into the collapse of WTC's One and Two (Chapter Two).

Since the aircraft were only flying from Boston to Los Angeles, they would have been nowhere near fully fueled on takeoff (the aircraft have a maximum range of 7,600 miles). They would have carried just enough fuel for the trip together with some safety factor. Remember, that carrying excess fuel means higher fuel bills and less paying passengers. The aircraft would have also burnt some fuel between Boston and New York....

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Some simple thermodynamics for you to check out.

 

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When the heat was hitting the metal framework that had been collapsed by the planes hitting the towers , that made the steel weaker. That weakness along with the heat caused the collapse of the towers. The fires themselves didn't cause the collapse but along with the steel that was all broken up it was partly to blame.

 

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who knows, maybe they used inferior steel , it would not be the first time that buildingsubcontractors get creative with regulations...

 

I guess the temperature of the fire was hot enough to weaken the beams which couldnt then support the heavy weight of the floors ABOVE them,
any info on how much weight would those floors be?

 

Can someone explain to me how and why most of the jet fuel did not (supposedly

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) burn up on impact?

 

Multi-carbon hydrocarbon, maybe?

 

The website that you linked to displayed a profound ignorance of basic chemistry and engineering issues. The biggest mistake in the article is the assumption that everything (air, concrete, etc.) had to be heated to the same temperature at the same time. If you throw a piece of concrete with a metal bar embedded in it onto a campfire, pretty soon the metal with be much hotter than the concrete that surrounds it. The reason is that metal has a much higher thermal conductivity and much lower specific heat than concrete.

I recall seeing an interview with one of the World Trade Center architects shortly after the attack. He was talking about how they had decided to stop using asbestos to insulate the girders mid-way though construction. He said something like 'we knew that the building would probably collapse if there was ever a major fire.' I think 10,000 gallons of burning aviation fuel would qualify as a 'major fire'.

Yes, I know it's shocking to everyone that a post with a humongous bright pink introduction could be wrong, but here we are.