Originally Posted By BZH
I am guessing in these failures the heat exchanger breaks free from the pot. As a result the aluminum is not being cooled by the water in the pot and begins to get much hotter.
That's my surmise as well.

That's an interesting thought that the aluminum might actually burn rather than melt. Maybe there's a little of both going on? I updated my blog post to quote the original post I saw on-line. In that quote, he mentions drops of super-hot metal.

I also added links to various posts with reports of similar happenings.

HJ
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