In a closed-cycle piston engine, particularly a Stirling-type, the suggestion
is that there could be an inherent thermodynamic advantage in having sequential
reactions which are exothermic on formation and then endothermic milliseconds
later, on the expansion stroke.
A resonance could then be engineered, especially if the decay was sharp and
reliable and the engine ran at one speed only. However, this may not be what
happens in practice with argon and hydrogen.
If the lifetime of argonium happened with endotherm precisely at BDC, then that
could present a bonus cooling effect in addition to the change in displacement.
This would arguably increase the Carnot spread between the hot end and cold end
of the Stirling.
I have not been able to find evidence for this type of thermodynamic cycle in
the literature.
Jürg Wyttenbach wrote:
ArH3+ is long time stable and Ar H3+ is the driving factor in Mills original
SUNCELL reaction. In fact H3+ is the most abundant form of Hydrogen in deep
space.
