Several background items are useful to understand what will follow, hopefully, in pursuit of a scheme for a more eco-friendly transportation system. This is the preliminaries for continuing speculation.
1) LOEA = liquid oxygen enriched air = ~58% N2 ~40% O2 Cost to produce at home if everything is optimized using night-time power (from nuclear, wind or other non-carbon source, hopefully) = about $.10 per pound with power at $.08/ kwh (nightime rate) This includes overhead. 2) ROS = reactive oxygen species. You will not understand this post (which will continue tommorrow) unless you understand the chemistry of ROS: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/R/ROS.html 3) Bridgman effect, specifically the Bridgman effect with water ice, which does NOT require thermal input. Water ice has one big advantage in regard to exploiting Casimir. When a water molecule freezes rapidly, it becomes a fully hydrogen-bonded structure with strong and straight hydrogen bonds (such as hexagonal ice) then it can only have four nearest neighbors, due to the angles of its near tetrahedral molecular hydrogen sites. This give an incredible amount of built-in strain, all "free" due to the Casimir effect on hydrogen bonds. IOW that is where the OU part would come in, when the strain is released explosively. Especially with electroyzed water ice. In the liquid phase, molecules approach more closely due to the partial collapse of the tightly hydrogen bonded network. Closer neighbors mean higher density. As the temperature of liquid water increases, the continuing collapse of the hydrogen bonded network allows unbonded molecules to approach more closely so increasing the number of nearest neighbors. Sublimation results in the same kind of expansion ration that one finds with liquid air, about 800:1 which can match up well with the combustion of gasoline. The maximum density of water is a most curious feature, as it occurs at 4 degrees C. Regular ice is lower density so work is performed on collapse. How much energy is available and how does this fit into a hybrid concept with LOEA ? Stay tuned. Jones
