A  new kind of fire that burns clean, or without producing soot, has scientists scrambling to find useful applications for this new discovery.

The blue fire was given the name "blue whirl" by researchers at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering that discovered it. Researchers said this previously unobserved flame phenomenon evolves from typical yellow fire whirls, but are smaller, very stable and completely blue, indicating soot-free burning.

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They described the blue whirl is a type of fire tornado, or more accurately a fire whirl, made of flame or ash. Fire whirls can occur when intense rising heat and turbulent winds combine to form whirling eddies of air that can form tornado-like structures sucking in burning debris and combustible gases.

Researchers said the blue whirl lacks the prominent yellow color of ordinary flames because it completely burns away soot particles. A blue flame indicates enough oxygen is present for complete combustion to occur. That means there's less soot and fewer pollutants being released into the atmosphere.

Researchers said the blue whirls they produced in the lab are far more stable and easy to reproduce than traditional fire whirls, making blue whirls easier to generate and study. They admit the true potential of blue whirls isn't fully known yet.

But what they did say is generating blue whirls might be useful in burning oil from maritime oil spills. Current methods of oil spill control involve impounding crude oil into a thick floating layer that's then burned.

This process, however, is toxic and releases massive amounts of pollutants into the air, quite apart from the thick and suffocating smoke it emits. Blue whirls could instead be used for a cleaner burn that massively reduces toxic emissions.

You can see the video of the blue whirl here.

Tagsblue whirl, University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, fire whirl, soot