At 06:06 PM 10/29/2002 -0800, Sean R. Lynch wrote:
You have merely restated your claim rather than saying on what basis you make it. Generally when someone asks you to provide a basis for your claim, you should provide some evidence to back it up.
Go read chapter 16 of Pauling's 'General Chemistry' on the rates of chemical reactions. It has some illuminating information on catalytic reactions and the functions of catalysts. The essential function of catalysts is to lower the activation energy of another reaction, in this case the decomposition of HTP. The effect of heating the catalyst or the peroxide is not in fact to increase the activity of the catalyst, but to provide the (lowered) activation energy to kick off the decomposition reaction.
As you know, peroxide will decompose spontaneously in storage at a slow rate. This is because the decomposition reaction is thermodynamically favorable (i.e. it wants to happen, which is what makes peroxide such a bitch), and a certain proportion of the molecules in the batch will have enough energy to get over the activation threshold and decompose. This is because the energy of the molecules in a given chunk of matter follow a Gaussian (bell curve) distribution, centered around the bulk temperature of the material.
Remembering that the function of a catalyst is to lower the activation energy, it then becomes clear that at room temperature a potential high-temp catalyst will still lower the activation energy and accelerate decomposition of the peroxide noticeably, even if it is not active enough to start the sort of energetic decomposition we require for propulsion purposes at room temperature.
-p
Mars or Bust!
www.marssociety.com
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