Is it possible to keep heating pure water so that it causes the hydrogen and oxygen to react together?

Question

Warning this is a dangerous thing to do, don't attemp the following without understanding the dangers of superheated steam.
It is commonly known water heated a second time in a microwave will heat above boiling point without boiling or until some sort of trigger causes it to boil violently , pure water will heat further above boiling point.
But has anyone ever tried extending this heating beyond the point where water and hydrogen break down? so instead of forming steam it forms a fireball as the hydrogen and oxygen react with each other.

Answer 1

Water is already the result of a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. So, as long as it's still water, the hydrogen and oxygen won't react. Separate them by electrolysis (which doesn't require heat), mix the gases, and ignite the mix and they will recombine chemically (and explosively), releasing heat.

Answer 2

I'm only a half-fast Physics tourist, but this is what I do know. The microwave does a kind of spinning back and forth thing to molecules with magnetism, and I believe most normal water has that property. The spinning back and forth causes microscopic friction which is the heat. I wonder if the old - no boil to violent boil - of the microwave is because the spins of the water are like gears in a transmission all spinning happily together till one goes the other way, then BOOM!

Water is one of the most stable bonds of elements into a molecule, aka not much potential energy when compared to things like propane. The energy you would use to separate that bond of H2O to cause them to burn as H & O would be higher than the energy from the burn.

And you can ask the microwave manufacturer about this, but I believe it does not have the power to do that. The water vapor will leak out of the vent holes and other leaks then the "Bulb" thingie will die.

Answer 3

No, it's not possible to do that.

Why?

Because water is the RESULT of hydrogen and oxygen reacting together. If you heat up water enough, just like anything it will eventually break down into plasma; but it probably won't make anything new happen.

When it becomes a plasma, yes, it will look like a ball of fire, or something. But you can't reach those temperatures with your microwave oven, and when it cools down, the same thing that always happens when hydrogen burns in oxygen will happen: you'll get water.

Maybe it's possible to get hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), but i somehow doubt that; hydrogen peroxide is more reactive (and less stable) than water. So if you start with water, you'll probably end up with water.

Answer 4

The oxygen and hydrogen in water are already fully reacted, and no further reaction is possible. At extremely high temperatures (surface of the sun), the thermal energy gets high enough to break the oxygen-hydrogen molecular bonding, releasing the elements (in ionized form), but any cooling will permit them to recombine in conventional combustion to re-create water.

Answer 5

When Oxygen and Hydrogen react to form water molecules, they release certain amount of energy. Now If you give them that amount of energy or even more, then molecules of water will be break into Oxygen and Hydrogen again. In this case you shouldn't expect an explosion resulted from reaction of the elements. Because at that level of energy they will not react. But if you gradually decrease the input of energy they will gradually form molecules of water. This results in gradual release of energy.

However, you can't reach to that level of energy in your microwave before all the device melt down!

Answer 6

In order for that to happen, you would need pure H2 and O2. The problem with that is that oxygen is more electronegative than hydrogen, so it pulls the hydrogen to it.

If you heat water higher, past the point where you have water vapor (H2O in gas form), you get a plasma, with hydrogen and oxygen ions, but when it reforms as it cools, water is more likely to form than molecular hydrogen and oxygen because of oxygen's electronegativity.

Answer 7

All electric turbines are powered by super heated pressurized steam, nuclear power plant reactors heat water to create super heated steam to power turbines, nuclear sub propulsion, so I'm guessing this is improbable.

Adding energy to water causes the steam that wants to find a path that is of least pressure, atmospheric, while doing this it will turn turbines, which will turn magnets, that generate electricity via induction.

The only explosion you may see is that of a pressure rupture due to high pressure steam seeking a path out of a weak structure to seek atmospheric pressure, not a h/o2 reaction.