Kawah Ijen Blue Fire Volcano Indonesia

Kawah Ijen Blue Fire is Top recommended volcano destination in East Java Indonesia. Ijen Crater offer amazing mesmerizing electric blue fire (Ijen Crater Blue Fire), streaming down the mountain during the night, a turquoise, tranquil, but highly toxic lake with a sunrise that leaves you in awe with various shades of pink and purple as a backdrop. Ijen Plateau, known as “Kawah Ijen“, is a volcano complex located in Banyuwangi East Java Indonesia and is regarded as one of the unmissable sights in Indonesia. Ijen is a quiet but active volcano, set amidst a stunning landscape of volcanic cones and a beautiful turquoise coloured sulfur lake.

1. Kawah Ijen Blue Fire Based By photographer Olivier Grunewald

For several years Paris-based photographer Olivier Grunewald has been documenting the Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia, where dazzling, electric-blue fire can often be seen streaming down the mountain at night.

This blue glow unusual for a volcano, The glow is actually the light from the combustion of sulfuric gases, Grunewald explained.

Those gases emerge from cracks in the volcano at high pressure and temperature—up to 1,112°F (600°C). When they come in contact with the air, they ignite, sending flames up to 16 feet (5 meters) high.

Some of the gases condense into liquid sulfur, “which continues to burn as it flows down the slopes,” said Grunewald, “giving the feeling of lava flowing.”

2. Kawah Ijen Blue Fire Cynthia Werner

Cynthia Werner, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, told National Geographic that Grunewald’s photos show an unusual phenomenon.

“I’ve never seen this much sulfur flowing at a volcano,” she said.

Werner noted that forest fires in Yellowstone National Park have caused similar “rivers,” as heat from the blazes melted the sulfur around hydrothermal vents.

“When you go to Yellowstone, you can see their traces as black lines,” she said.

According to Werner, it’s relatively common to find molten sulfur around volcanic fumaroles (hot vents). The mineral has a relatively low melting point of 239°F (115°C), and the temperature at the hot vents often exceeds that.

Kawah Ijen Crater Lake
Kawah Ijen Crater Lake, at the top of the volcano, is the world’s largest such body of water filled with hydrochloric acid. In fact, it’s the acid that makes the water green.

Werner explained how the lake became so acidic: The volcano emitted hydrogen chloride gas, which reacted with the water and formed a highly condensed hydrochloric acid with a pH of almost 0.

The lake has a volume of 1.3 billion cubic feet (36 million cubic meters), or about 1/320 of the volume of Oregon’s Crater Lake.

3. Sulfur At Kawah Ijen Volcano

Sulfur or sulphur is a chemical element with symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent, and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow crystalline solid at room temperature.

As the burning gases cool, they deposit sulfur around the lake.To speed up the formation of the mineral, a mining company installed ceramic pipes on an active vent near the edge of the lake, said John Pallister, a USGS geologist who has studied the volcano.

The pipes route the sulfur gases down the vent’s sloping mound. When the gases cool, they condense into liquid sulfur, which then flows or drips from the pipes and solidifies into hard sulfur mats. After the solid sulfur cools, the miners break it up and haul it off the mountain on their backs. This article of nationalgeography

Ijen Crater (Travel Guide)

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