Interesting info, Michael
Another wrinkle to add in the mix (for a working method of collecting energy
from dense hydrogen in a mechanical device) is the apparent superconductivity
of protons when absorbed into a metal matrix even at elevated temperatures.
Since superconductors are strongly diamagnetic (thousands of times more so than
bismuth) this property offers a way to ensure directional movement of
reactants.
More on this later.
Michael Foster wrote:
A couple of observations. If you are worried about the mechanical resonance of
this reaction, don't use an engine with a crankshaft. Instead, just have a
spring loaded piston with an adjustable tension to match the resonance of the
reaction. Energy could then be extracted by electromagnetic means.
The Papp engine, though, seems to have relied on the UV triggered reaction
between gaseous hydrogen and chlorine. The participation of the noble gases may
have been the formation of numerous excimers with the chlorine. Maybe Papp
didn't really know, assuming he wasn't a total fraud, which of these noble
gasses was reacting, so he just more or less threw in the the kitchen sink. Or
maybe he was so secretive he was trying to hide which gas did the trick.
The UV triggered reaction between hydrogen and chlorine might OU itself. When
I was a very mischievous boy, I used to make what I called sunlight bombs by
filling glass bottles with a hydrogen and chlorine mixture. Hydrogen was made
by electrolysis. Chlorine was generated by mixing Clorox and Sani-Flush which
used to be sodium bisulfate. I put one of these outside at night expecting
that the rising sun would set it off. It didn't happen. I discovered by further
reading that the UV exposure had to be sudden. So with my next attempt I
covered the bottle with a can attached to a string. When yanking the can off
the bottle there would be an unexpectedly huge explosion. This observation,
made more than 60 years ago, is purely subjective; but I can only say that the
explosion was a lot bigger than the chemical reaction warranted. I am lucky
that I escaped childhood with all my fingers and both eyes.
On Saturday, June 13, Jones Beene wrote:
An interesting proposition for an advanced transportation fuel would be
presented to us - IF (big if) hydrogen can be routinely converted into a denser
form on a catalyst, and then expanded in a piston engine configuration. This
concept would relate to using argon as a "pseudo oxidizer." Argon is not
exactly "inert" to the same extent as helium and other Column eight atoms (Vlll
on the periodic table).
AFAIK this exact concept, when transposed into a piston engine configuration,
has never been explored... or has it? There is the Papp engine, which used
argon and other inert gases but did not use hydrogen; and there is the Laumann
engine which included oxygen with argon and no surface catalyst -- but neither
of those is precisely the same.
According to Wiki, "argonium" is the name for argon hydride which is a (1+) ion
species formed by combining a proton with argon into a short-lived molecule (2+
millisecond) life - which has a
surprising strong binding energy. Argonium is actually found to be relatively
common in
interstellar space, despite this short lifetime.
In a piston engine a short lifetime could actually be put to good use if an
asymmetry exists due to the Mills effect. It would act as a thermal sink.
Imagine a closed cycle piston engine which recirculates the two gases H2 ans Ar
in such a way that under compression (at TDC) the two are combined on a
catalyst surface (such as nickel, palladium, iridium etc) allowing for net
energy to be freed as UV photons, which gain would be the result of some
combination of the ion binding energy along with a redundant orbital photon
emission less the ionization loss - as described by Mills, Holmlid etc.
In Mills theory this emission would be related minimally to multiples of 27.2
eV so even if the reaction goes no further that a single redundant hydrogen
orbital reduction, an attractive scenario for net gain would exist - even if
the protons are lost after a single pass and must be continually replace by
electrolysis of water.
