I think your best bet for this stuff is to render it as a particle / fluid simulation in Blender (or whatever) and export as a sprite sheet.
You can still add real time particles for sparks or smoke or whatever, but for realistic fire or explosions, it just won't look as good as pre-rendered.
Even AAA games don't run this in real time. They are almost always mostly pre-rendered, and then they use the engine to add vertex animation or particle rotations or whatever, but not simulate the whole thing.