Alan Petrillo wrote: > Nitromethane is an explosive. It can also be used as monopropellant > rocket fuel. As one guy put it "You can put your cigarette out in it, > but if you hit it with a hammer it'll explode." Top fuelers mix it with > methanol to dilute it down to their desired power level according to > atmospheric conditions.
Um, no. It is a monopropellant, but it's not in any way explosive, though it is, of course, quite flammable. Nitromethane burns more slowly than gasoline/air mixtures, so accelerants are often blended in to adjust the shape of the pressure curve during combustion. Acceleration in normal combustion is most easily done by adding hydrogen. A convenience and available form of hydrogen is hydrazine, which acclerates things quite nicely. However, it doesn't take much to accelerate combustion until you get detonation, at which point you're headed for engine failure. There are various standard references; *the* reference is "Combustion" by Glassman. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dave Williams)============================== == waiting, anticipating / for someone to save her soul / well, I == == ain't no new Messiah / but I'm close enough for rock and roll! == ============================= http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/index.htm Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
