Reply To: Fantastic news.

[blues]

The chemistry of fuels seems to be a rather odd sort of chemistry, and while I am no certainly expert in it, I did a survey of portable fuel in a very broad context. Hydrogen as a fuel has so far not been working out. Hydrogen gas is called the Houdini of gasses because it readily penetrates just about all materials, the few that it penetrates slowly appear to be rather expensive, and normal valves, etc. are impractical. Plus, it is normally extremely low-density energy; you would need a giant balloon of it to get anywhere in a car with it. It is vastly more energy dense as a liquid, but only so long as you kept it rather close to absolute zero temperature.

As far as fuel cells go, there seem to be 10,000 new designs, bus as far as I can see, none of them is claiming to have over come the severe problem of performance degradation due to contamination of their (generally quite expensive) catalytic elements.

On the other hand, the early difficulties of managing H2O2 really do appear to be largely solved. H2O2 can explode in the presence of certain catalysts, but it is otherwise remarkably stable. The other issue with it is that it generates O2 when it (energetically) decomposes, and the presence of O2 can, of course be quite a fire hazard. But then, so is gasoline. And O2 dissipates very rapidly, and harmlessly in air.

There are some catalysts that cause H2O2 to decompose into H2O and O2, and some that retard this decomposition. Oddly enough, H20 itself is a mild catalyst that causes H2O2 to decompose. Household 3% H2O2 with 97% H20, can easily be stabilized with simple additives. “High test” H2O2 is also very stable, as it contains little H2O. But 50% H2O2 and H2O might cause more rapid decomposition, so it might heat up, boil, and even cause a “boiler explosion.” But if the resulting steam and O2 are allowed to escape, this would be generally self limiting, because since water evaporated significantly more quickly than H2O2, the water would become a smaller portion of the ratio. Also, It would seem that H2O2 and H20 could be separated centrifugally, since H2O2 is about 46% heavier than H2O.

A lot has been learned since WW-II. Here is one experimental new rocket motor that looks very promising (except that the government has decided to neglect funding it, for some inscrutable reason):

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=1047