From: Michael Roy Ames (michaelroyames@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jan 23 2002 - 15:30:12 MST
"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
--- Taking: C + O2 --> CO2C has a delta-H of 0.45 and a delta-G of 0.69. O2 has a 0 delta-H and delta-GCO2 had dH and dG of ~-94. So the reaction will be exothermic. ....<more of the same> --- If you typed that in from memory, I'm impressed! (did you?) :) In my earlier reply, I was using memories from a high school chemistry class taken 22 years ago... that and (gulp) practical experience. After hearing (in class) that diamonds were just carbon, me and a couple of friends actually tried to burn some diamond. (We were young , okay? 8-D) One of us got a-hold of a couple of small diamonds (he never would say where he got them) and we took them over to the Metalworking shop. There, we placed them in a oxy-butane flame (way over 1000C) and after about a minute, they turned black... then they got a lot smaller. Fearing that they might dissapear completely, I pulled them out of the flame, fire-brick and all, and tipped them into a glass of water. We then spent 10 minutes trying to get them out of the glass without losing them... eventually accomplished by filtering the water through my pocket handkerchief. Note: Small diamonds are very hard to find in a glass of water. More recently, I have observed diamonds being cut by a jeweler's laser... and *they* turned black just like our school-boy experiment! "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote: --- You don't have to add power, you just have to ignite it and it should burn fine. --- Obviously, carbon does contain a great deal of potential energy, but unless it is in powdered form, it doesn't burn very quickly. Example: a major danger of coal mining was (is) the potential of igniting coal dust... because, with the right concentrations of dust+oxygen, only a small spark produces a huge explosion. The above facts would seem to indicate that although carbon is energy-rich, it will be very complicated to powder it, then feed it (along with oxygen or air) into a rocket nossle in the exact combination needed to extract the maximum energy. On the other hand: what an interesting engineering problem... hmmn?!? Michael Roy Ames _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:36 MST