Horace > If you say COE doesn't apply to liquified air systems then the ball is > entirely in your court. You are off into a way different discussion. It > is up to *you* to prove your assertion either theoretically or > experimentally.
It is the same discussion, and COE can (or nor) apply IF all the relevant variables are known in advance. What I am saying is that a *full energy accounting* is seldom included in the case of certain brittle materials, where structural strain is a "hidden" feature of the material. Ice and clathrates are such materials. This is not wild conjecture. I have quoted this reference a number of times. For me, it demosnatrates that Ice becomes explosive enough to create soft x-rays when triggered by external pressure, and can be considered many times more explosive than gasoline, pound for pound, in certain very narrow circumstances. The question is NOT is this proven by experiment, it is proven - the only question remaining is: is it engineerable for use in energy applications. Can it happen repeatedly in a maximized situation using a particulate of ice in an internal combustion engine, instead of at the focus of enormous pressures in ice floes - that is the real question. I know of no circumstance where gasoline combustion creates x-rays. The threshold regime for ice explosiveness is known, and is within the range of mechanical implementation in an internal combustion engine, but it would probably require much more high pressure containment than ususal. See "Explosive Ice Instability," E. G. Fateev. His interest in this is cosmological and he does not consider terrestrial applications. http://www.udman.ru/sotrud/fat/Stat/432.pdf Abstract: "Explosive Ice Instability" E. G. Fateev Institute of Applied Mechanics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Received January 25, 2001; Explosive ice instability under strong uniaxial compression at high pressures is observed over a wide temperature range from 244 K down to 100 K. The corresponding dependence of the instability critical pressure on temperature is found to display features with minima in the regions of ice phase transitions. It is assumed that this dependence correlates with the corresponding temperature dependence of hydrogen bond strength in ice. The phase transitions in ice may result in an additional (by ~50-70%) decrease in the mechanical stability of ice. Regards, Jones BTW this explosive instability of another candidate material N2O is what could already be happening when nitrous oxide is used in race cars, as I suggested in another post.
