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How about using liquid ozone as an oxidizer?
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lucius
Nov 21, 1986, 2:23:16 AM11/21/86
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Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an
oxidizer for rockets? It has a higher energy of formation (unfortunately I
don't remember how much higher) (thus it is less stable, and decays to normal
oxygen (O[2]) at temperatures found in Earth's atmosphere), and thus its
reaction with hydrogen (or anything else) would give more energy per weight of
reactants used. It seems reasonable that its decay rate would be much lower
at the temperatures needed to liquify it than at temperatures naturally
occurring on Earth -- is this decay rate sufficiently lower to allow storage
of large amounts of it in liquid form? The other problems I could see with
its use are that it might be too toxic, even allowing for the fact that it
would eventually decay (I don't know how long this would take) after escaping
from storage; also, I don't know how hard it is to produce ozone in large
quantities (doesn't have to be pure -- some O[2] mixed in with it shouldn't
hurt performance too much). Does anyone have more complete information on the
chemistry involved?
--
-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
chiara...@husc4.harvard.edu
seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio
Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an
oxidizer for rockets? It has a higher energy of formation (unfortunately I
don't remember how much higher) (thus it is less stable, and decays to normal
oxygen (O[2]) at temperatures found in Earth's atmosphere), and thus its
reaction with hydrogen (or anything else) would give more energy per weight of
reactants used. It seems reasonable that its decay rate would be much lower
at the temperatures needed to liquify it than at temperatures naturally
occurring on Earth -- is this decay rate sufficiently lower to allow storage
of large amounts of it in liquid form? The other problems I could see with
its use are that it might be too toxic, even allowing for the fact that it
would eventually decay (I don't know how long this would take) after escaping
from storage; also, I don't know how hard it is to produce ozone in large
quantities (doesn't have to be pure -- some O[2] mixed in with it shouldn't
hurt performance too much). Does anyone have more complete information on the
chemistry involved?
--
-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
chiara...@husc4.harvard.edu
seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio
Please do not mail replies to me on husc2 (disk quota problems, and mail out
of this system is unreliable). Please send only to the address given above,
until tardis.harvard.edu is revived.
Henry Spencer
Nov 22, 1986, 10:47:27 PM11/22/86
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> Has anyone ever thought about using liquified ozone (O[3]) as an
> oxidizer for rockets? ...It's been looked at a bit, I believe. It's not that hard to make. It is
toxic, but nitrogen tetroxide -- already in large-scale use as a rocket
oxidizer -- is much worse, comparable to most WW1 poison gases. The
performance improvement from using ozone rather than oxygen is modest,
but it might be worthwhile, were it not that liquid ozone is dangerously
explosive.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
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