From: Stirling Westrup (sti@cam.org)
Date: Sat Feb 05 2000 - 02:01:39 MST
Eugene Leitl wrote:
> Stirling Westrup writes:
>
> > The above reminds me of a question I've been meaning to put to the list. What
> > is the highest density chemical energy storage that is currently known? Is the
>
> Homogenous or heterogenous? Homogenous systems are obviously plagued
> by stability problems.
That depends. If you want a heterogenous system, then you need to take the sum
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.
>
> > answer different if we look at joules per mililiter instead of per gram? What
> > are the theoretical maximums for normal matter? I've been trying to project
>
> You might do something funky with recombining atomic hydrogen
> (stabilized in liquid He?), which would go one order of magnitude
> beyond of what you can do with chemistry.
Oh? I thought the hydrogen-hydrogen bond was fairly week by chemical standards.
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.
>
> > chemical storage systems forward to a time when we can nano-construct the
> > molecules if necessary, but I haven't got the right background to make an
> > estimate.
>
> This also could be pretty dense: http://www.rhombic.com/nuclearbattery.html
Interesting, but not really within the realm of chemical energy anymore.
--
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