Oxy-fuel combustion

Well, imagine you're at home and you want to cook some food on the stove. What do you do? You turn on the burner and light it with a match or lighter. The flame burns the gas coming out of the burner and that's what heats up your pan.

Now, imagine instead of using just regular air to make the flame, you also use something called oxygen. Oxygen is a gas that we breathe in to live, but it can also be used to make fire burn hotter and faster.

When you burn something with just air, it takes a lot of energy to get the fire going and keep it hot enough to cook your food. But if you add oxygen to the mix, the fire gets much hotter much faster.

People use this idea of burning things with oxygen instead of just air for a lot of different things. For example, some factories use a process called oxy-fuel combustion to make things like steel or glass. They use a special kind of burner that mixes oxygen with fuel (like natural gas) to make a very hot flame.

The really hot flame makes it possible for the factories to melt raw materials (like iron or sand) and turn them into the things we use every day. Oxy-fuel combustion is really important for making a lot of the things we need in our everyday lives!