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Jul 5 2007, 11:43 AM
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#1
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Newbie [Level 1] ![]() Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 5-July 07 Member No.: 45,986 |
Now napalm is something cool, we studied it in chemistry. It burns at such a temperture, that you can't put it out with water as the water decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen, and then reacts back making a huge explosion.
Now i'm thinking if it just keeps decomposing and combusting you could use this as power source in very very big vehicles. I mean you could have these huge tanks and stuff. I reckon it would be cool. I asked my teacher, and she said it was stupid.... didn't explain anything though, i think she's stupid. |
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Jul 5 2007, 12:16 PM
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#2
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Member [Level 2] ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 76 Joined: 22-June 07 Member No.: 45,264 |
I think that it might be a little too unstable for that...
O.K. petrol explodes, but that is only because it is put in special high oxygen, high pressure circumstances, but usually fuel should only burn otherwise. Also the nature of it means that if you drove through a puddle, and your tank had a small leak your vehicles might blow up. I can see where you are coming from, and perhaps it could be used alongside a hydrogen fuel cell in some weird and wacky way, but still the most important thing in fuels is the density to energy ratio: i.e. how much powerdo you get from 1 kilo/2 lbs of fuel...the higher it is, the more efficient the vehicle is. Good idea, but needs some work |
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Jul 5 2007, 05:28 PM
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#3
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Privileged Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 628 Joined: 20-May 06 Member No.: 23,968 |
Napalm wouldn't be a good fuel. It doesn't explode, it burns, and whatever it burns, it sticks to, making it a very effective weapon but a poor fuel unless you want to work on an external combustion engine, which has never had the reputation of being as quick, compact, or reliable as an internal combustion engine. IIRC those engines take longer to start up and burn more fuel as well, and if the engine used cheap grade terrorist napalm derived from gasoline it wouldn't really solve any problems we have today. In space it wouldn't be used for propulsion unlike a nuclear, plasma, or antimatter-matter reactor simply because it doesn't explode and attempts for external combustion wouldn't really work out as well due to the lack of oxygen(and if water were discharged off the backside of the rocket it wouldn't serve the crew too well nor generate a decent amount of power for even mere stellar travel, much less interstellar).
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Jul 24 2007, 08:50 AM
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#4
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Newbie [Level 2] ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: 30-June 07 Member No.: 45,704 |
Well. napalm does not have explosion power like gas, so we should change the fuel to nitroglycerin!
I guess that would take internal combustion engines to a whole new level! But it is sooo unstable! |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 22nd November 2008 - 04:33 PM |