Andrew Case wrote: > Congratulations to Micro-Space on their success. I hope they change > their mind about the fuel, though.
Hmmmm.... the question of "fuel for small peroxide biprops" has come up before... alcohols have been mentioned (and in some cases, as this one, used), but there is the concern about liquid ezplosive mixtures formed if bulk mixing of fuel and oxidizer should take place. This would seem to suggest hydrocarbons as an alternative, but the hydrocarbon fuels most commonly proposed are commercial fuel oils such as kerosene (or variants thereof, such as the various jet fuels, etc.) However, these also have issues, such as the fact that they consist of a relatively uncharacterized mixture of substances and tend to contain heavy, oily constituents which leave non- volatile residues... also a bad thing. (Reminds me of Clark's comment in "Ignition", about the situation with storable nitrogen-based oxidizers in the late 40's: a choice of several different "sets of headaches - and nothing we could use with any degree of satisfaction.") Wondering about alternatives, I happened to come across this link, for "Isopar" hydrocarbon fluids from Exxon-Mobil Chemicals: <http://www.exxon.mobil.com/chemical/customer/products/families/isopar/index.html> These appear to be very "narrow cut" distillates, with closely specified volatility and density ranges, evidently intended to be used as ingredients in commercial products where well-characterized hydrocarbon fluids are required... it occurs to me that they just might have suitable properties to be good fuels for small biprops. For example, these are from the spec sheets for a couple of different types: Product name IBP DP density ------------ --- -- ------- Isopar E 113 143 .720-.740 Isopar L 185 204-211 .765-.772 (IBP and DP are the "initial boiling point" and "dry point" temperatures, in degrees C, from the ASTM distillation test.) There is also a series of "Norpar" fluids, which are "normal" (straight chain" rather than "iso" (branched chain) hydrocarbons, but the fluids in the "Isopar" series seem, in general, to have a higher density for a given boiling point, and are thus probably of more potential use in propellant work. -dave w _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
