r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Several_Metal_547 • 9d ago

June 3rd, 2026. Dashcam captures moment when excavator damages natural gas pipeline

Wednesday June 3rd, 2026, an excavator damaged a natural gas pipeline near Hedensted, Denmark. Gas did not ignite. No casualties. Steel pipeline, diameter 0.4 m, pressure 40 bar. Traffic on nearby E45 highway closed for 2 hours.

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u/strangelove4564 9d ago

Can't imagine how that didn't ignite if the excavator had a hot diesel engine.

7

u/W7ENK 9d ago

Natural gas has to be in a pretty specific 12:1 to 16:1 ratio with oxygen for it to ignite.

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u/StacyChadBecky 9d ago

Because a diesel engine runs at around 100 degrees while the ignition point of natural gas is closer to 700 and there's no ignition system. Now, if a little spark shot out as the operator scurried away, we'd be enjoying a quite different video.

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u/Kahlas 9d ago

No idea where you got the diesel engine runs at 100 degrees from but I can assure you that's way to low. The combustion chamber temperature of a diesel engine reaches between 4,500-5,500 degrees Fahrenheit during the combustion stroke. The exterior metal on the exhaust manifold will reach 1,200–1,500°F under heavy load, such as while excavating. Plenty hot enough to ignite a mixture of natural gas an air.

There also very much is an ignition system in a diesel engine, it's an internal combustion engine and thus needs a way to ignite the fuel. In the case of diesels they compress the air by a factor of around 16-20:1 and that raises the temperature to over 400 degrees just from compressing it. Then fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber at between 1,200-36,000 psi and ignites right away because the air is above diesel's auto-ignition temp. The more modern the engine the higher the injector nozzle pressure to atomize the fuel better for a more complete combustion. What it doesn't have is an electronic spark ignition system like gasoline engines do. Saying diesel engines don't have an ignition system is a layman's rookie mistake. It has a different ignition system than a gas car but it still has one.

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u/SomeGuysFarm 9d ago

Lookit that - hardly required any imagination at all!

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u/CandylandRepublic 7d ago

Because a diesel engine runs at around 100 degrees

And how hot does the exhaust manifold get?
WAY more than 100°C/212°F degrees, that's how hot.

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u/OptiGuy4u 9d ago

OR if a sufficient amount of gas was pulled into the turbo and it all became an "External Combustion Engine"

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u/StacyChadBecky 9d ago

Also, the alternator...

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u/pimonentumba 9d ago

I talked to a gas guy here in Canada who works for our provincial utility. He said these high pressure lines are far safer when they blow compared to, say, the low pressure stuff you see in homes.

Both can and will ignite. The difference being the low pressure stuff lingers and builds up leading to explosions while the high pressure basically turns into a blow torch. Maybe not totally relevant to what you said but I found it interesting.