Can you burn water?

Question

well my wife thinks you cant? but im not so sure.

Answer 1

It all depends what you mean by 'burn'. Simply heating it up in an open container will just evaporate it, and that is not burning because the water is chemically unchanged - just a change of physical state. In a normal household environment you can't burn it. (You might do something people call 'burning it' when the flavour is changed by the container adding minerals to the water as it boils vigorously).

But water can be involved in reactions that produce a lot of heat. The question is: 'does this count as burning'.

Dropping a small piece of sodium in water might be thought of as burning it, since the sodium rips apart the water molecule and releases hydrogen - the whole thing is highly exothermic (gives out heat). Drop a large lump of sodium in water and it will explode. However the heat given out by the reaction is not itself sufficient to continue breaking down the water so this isn't really burning in the sense that paper, wood or natural gas is burnt. All of these when ignited continue to burn by virtue of their own own released energy. So it is the sodium that is providing the reaction vigorous enough to be self-sustaining and exothermic.

However if the only criterion for 'burning' is an exothermic reaction involving water in which the water is chemically changed but without requiring it to be self-sustaining then there are several chemicals which react violently with water and release a lot of energy. People would generally speak of something being burned in a house-fire (for example) when the something is mostly destroyed by external heat rather than its own self-sustaining combustion.

Like I said, it all depends on what you mean by 'burn'.

Answer 2

Can You Burn Water

Answer 3

Nope. The closest you can get to burning water is...
1) Floating a flammable liquid (such as gasoline) on top of water and burning it.
2) Overheating the particulate matter inside the water. This is what most people think of when they think of "burnt water" (I have done this: left water on the boil for too long and came back with a charred residue at the bottom of the pot), they think of the impurities that have been boiled out and then left to scorch at the bottom of a pot.

Answer 4

No you can't burn water, as it boils at 100 degrees centigrade and evaporates anyway.
Something is classed as "burned" when it has been taken over it's temperature threshold and carbonates, that's why things go black on the burnt bits, it's carbon. Once damaged by burning, it is almost impossible to return the burnt item to it's original state.
Skin works in a similar way, if you burn your skin beyond repair, the damage will be too great to heal and the skin will be dead.

Answer 5

Burning is oxidation..... adding oxygen to a compound

Heating it until it evaporates is not burning.
Neither is splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen..thats decoposition.

My only other thought is does this reaction occur.
Water plus oxygen yeilds hydrogen peroxide?
H2O + O2 ---> H2O2

this might be considered burning.

Answer 6

Of course not. It turns to steam. You can however burn the pan that the water was in. Once the water is completely gone, the pot will burn.

Answer 7

Burning is the process of oxidation. Water does not normally engage in a process to gain oxygen, and so does not burn.

Answer 8

When water is completely evaporated it may leave behind a residue that may burn.

I don't understand the statement about propellers separating the oxygen from water. I thought burn meant combining with oxygen.

Answer 9

No. That's like saying you can wet or drench a flame. The two elements cancel each other by eliminating their source. In the case of water,evaporating it and in the case of fire wetting the fuel so it cant exist.

Crap that sounded good. What do you think.

Answer 10

you can definitely not burn water on its own,
water is made of 2 molecules of hydrogen and 1 oxygen,
you can not burn either one of them
conclusion: you can not burn water.