From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sat Feb 05 2000 - 14:12:44 MST
Stirling Westrup writes:
> That depends. If you want a heterogenous system, then you need to take the sum
I can't want anything, as it is your question. However, while
homogenous (say, tetranitrotetrahedrane (unlike octanitrocubane, not
yet synthesized), or salts with N5+ ion), the energy density in
explosives is not very high. One typically achieves higher densities
in heterogenous systems (sometimes one uses heterogenous/homogenous
mixes, adding finely dispersed aluminum to explosives, for
instance). Of course, purely heterogenous systems do not detonate very
well.
Have a gander at
http://www.alltheweb.com/cgi-bin/asearch?type=all&query=%22high+density+explosive%22
and do a websearch on "high energy density" (maybe "high energy
density materials" aka HEDM).
> of the inputs to determine the grams (or mililiters) to the number of joules
> output. I'm assuming that a nanotech solution might be able to mix hererogenous
> chemicals in a stable form until a trigger is given.
Are you talking about an explosive device or a fuel cell?
> Oh? I thought the hydrogen-hydrogen bond was fairly week by chemical standards.
The bond might be weak (one would ideally want N-N triple bond
formation), but then in chemistry you typically do not have educts in
atomic form. In fact I doubt an atomic hydrogen suspension in liquid
He would be very stable at all. Atomic stuff embedded in a matrix (Ar,
or some other noble gas) will be probably too dilute. Atomic nitrogen,
in an Ar matrix? Might work. Just don't warm it up ;)
> Is it just the sheer density of atomic hydrogen that you could get? If so,
> having to dilute it with something else might be greatly detrimental to its
> efficiency.
>
> Interesting, but not really within the realm of chemical energy anymore.
It doesn't really matter, storing energy in inertia wheels isn't
chemical energy either. As of Rhombic (caution: it might be vaporware
or a straight hoax, the company site strikes me slightly kooky), I
like the 1 kW/1.5 kg density specs, and the non-Carnot nature of the
thing (really elegant, this). Interesting, what the lifetime is (how
much rad does the diamond still get?), and how much energy integrated
over total operational time the device releases.
As usually, we live in truly interesting times.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:26:38 MST