Post by Anders Hoveland on Feb 1, 2011 18:35:33 GMT -8
Ozone is potentially an ideal oxidizer since it is more energetic than liquid oxygen, but can burned with hydrogen without producing toxic hydrogen fluoride in the exhaust. There is, however, a significant explosion hazard.
Liquid oxygen enriched with ozone has been proposed as an energetic rocket oxidizer. It is claimed that the sensitivity of ozone to detonation is greatly reduced when care is taken to avoid even very small traces of hydrocarbon impurities. Even 4ppm impurities was enough to dangerously sensitize liquid ozone. Generally, previous observations of the danger of ozone toward explosion had not examined extremely pure samples free from trace impurities.
The boiling point of oxygen is 90 K, while the boiling point for is ozone is 161 K. The liquid oxygen boils out from a mixture of ozone much faster, gradually increasing the concentration of ozone. When the concentration approaches 30 percent, below 93 K, the mixture separates into two distinct liquid layers, the first containing 30% ozone, and the second containing 75%. As more oxygen boils off, the volume of the 30% concentrated ozone layer decreases, while the volume of the 75% layer increases. This creates an unusual danger of explosion when trying to enrich liquid oxygen with ozone. However, addition of either 5% oxygen difluoride or of 9% liquid fluorine prevented layers from separating out in the liquid oxygen and ozone mixture, thus reducing danger of explosion.
Liquid oxygen enriched with ozone has been proposed as an energetic rocket oxidizer. It is claimed that the sensitivity of ozone to detonation is greatly reduced when care is taken to avoid even very small traces of hydrocarbon impurities. Even 4ppm impurities was enough to dangerously sensitize liquid ozone. Generally, previous observations of the danger of ozone toward explosion had not examined extremely pure samples free from trace impurities.
The boiling point of oxygen is 90 K, while the boiling point for is ozone is 161 K. The liquid oxygen boils out from a mixture of ozone much faster, gradually increasing the concentration of ozone. When the concentration approaches 30 percent, below 93 K, the mixture separates into two distinct liquid layers, the first containing 30% ozone, and the second containing 75%. As more oxygen boils off, the volume of the 30% concentrated ozone layer decreases, while the volume of the 75% layer increases. This creates an unusual danger of explosion when trying to enrich liquid oxygen with ozone. However, addition of either 5% oxygen difluoride or of 9% liquid fluorine prevented layers from separating out in the liquid oxygen and ozone mixture, thus reducing danger of explosion.
