Slashdot Mirror
NASA Announces Enviromentally Friendly Jet Fuel
drama writes "From the Press Release: 'Two years of collaboration between Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., and NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have led to the development of a non-toxic, easily handled fuel made from a substance similar to what is used in common candles. The by-products of combustion of the new fuel are carbon dioxide and water; unlike conventional rocket fuel that produces aluminum oxide and acidic gasses, such as hydrogen chloride.' Or for pictures and more info, visit the site."
Woot! I feel sorry for all the bees that NASA will be milking, just to make enough rocket fuel for the next launch..
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
jet fuel != rocket fuel
Just like petroleum! How environmentally friendly! (sarcasm aside, this is a step forward from existing fuels, but ecotopia it ain't)
They should just fill it with coke and shake it then take the lid off sending it into orbit. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.
The by-products of combustion of the new fuel are carbon dioxide and water
Isn't that the whole global warming thing? That we're releasing too much carbon dioxide and its causing a global warm up?
The Anti-Blog
One of those would be a gigantic step towards a better environment. Unfortunately, this isn't it.
It's not jet fuel, it's ROCKET FUEL. Put it in a jet and it goes BOOM!!!!!
Cheap and clean is the key to colonizing the solar system. When it costs relatively little to lift people and habitats into orbit is when the mass migration to space will begin. Environmentally friendly exhaust is a nice bonus that will help disarm Green opposition to such ventures.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Then again, can anyone say 'metal fatigue in 2 seconds'?
/.'s 10 Millionth
The story says jet fuel, but the article says rocket fuel. There's a big difference, isn't there?
If it was jet fuel, and it was cheap enough to make Nasa could sell the rights to produce it and become more self sufficient. If it's rocket fuel though, there would be much less of a market and would really only benefit them.
Parent is a goatse.cx link, don't mod up...
Slashdotting (DDOS) a .gov site can get you 20 years to life. Chrisd, you're about to be classigied as an enemy of the state.
Granted, a rocket launch probably belches out a LOT of these chemicals, but there is a launch how often? Not very often, last I recall. The polution they produce is negligable compared to the total polution cars produce.
NASA should be spending this money on more important endeavors, such as the ISS or perhaps even another moon trip. Blowing money to produce environmentally safe rocket fuel is stupid and inefficient.
Oh, man. The challenger jokes. *Scans memory*
*Need Another Seven Astronauts
*What did the school teacher that was going up say to her husband? You feed the kids, I'll feed the fish.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Now they can launch their SCUD missiles full of Anthrax, Botulism, or whatever, and need not be concerned about polluting the atmosphere!
$u(k 1t!!!!11!
I'm gonna keep using gasoline. You know, terrorist and all that.
of explosive of choice for ALL GOOD eco-terrorists :).
:) 1/4 tank of mondo octane goodness...
How long before my car will run on a derivitive of this ? I remember getting av-gas when in high school for the friday night drags
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This is NOT a jet fuel, this is a component of a rocket fuel.
In fact, jet fuel is highly refined kerosene, or what the Brits used to call "parafin oil" - because it is a relative of the parafin wax used to seal canning jars, and MAKE CANDLES!
This fuel is a solid form of parafin that, when combined with a liquid or gaseous oxidizer makes a rocket.
The idea is this:
a purely liquid fuel rocket has 2 liquids you have to handle, the oxidizer and the fuel (e.g. LO2 and kerosene, LO2 and LH2, etc.) That's twice as many hoses, twice as many turbopumps, twice as much to go wrong.
A purely solid fuel rocket has no liquids, but once lit off, it will burn until all the fuel is gone. You cannot throttle it down, stop it, or restart it - the best you can do is eject it.
A hybrid rocket uses a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. You can throttle it by varying the flow rate on the oxidizer. You can stop it, and restart it again. You still need some tubing for the oxidizer, and a turbopump, but only one.
However, I doubt the only reaction products from this are carbon dioxide and water - more likely you are going to get unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and water.
Granted, that's nicer than what the SRB's on the Shuttle use - aluminum and ammonium perchlorate IIRC.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, paraffins are a broad class of hydrocarbons not just the familiar candle wax. Paraffins are characterized by having unsaturated C=C bonds, whereas olefins are all saturated C-C bonds. Not sure what kinds of paraffins would have the kind of energy density they would need for rocketry level thrust, maybe aromatics?
As a ChE, this is cool. But the really interesting part is the oxidizer (which they give no details on) and the nozzle. Vapourizing and mixing must be amazingly fast.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
How do you figure that carbon dioxide is any-toxic? It seems to me that all the ways it could hurt you are pretty obviously not chemically disrupting bodily function. For example, it could suffocate you by displacing breathable air but the same goes for water and pillows.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Who cares I want to know what oxidizer they are using. I think one of the pictures said LOX on it but I could not really tell.
Got Code?
when people started talking about 1 launch a month or 1 launch a week, the amount of chlorine that would be placed in the upper atmoshpere whould be enough to destroy the entire ozone layer in a few decades. The only comparable natural phenomena is a volcanic eruption which puts even more chlorine (and other acids) into the upper atmoshere than a shuttle launch.
with china, japan, north korea, europe and boeing all coming on line as rocket launch systems this is going to be increasingly important. Of course not all of these are solid fuel rockets (the culprit).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
is it me, or does the picture at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2003/03image s/paraffin/medium/Rocketfire04.jpg look furiously like a photorealistic rendering ?
The way the shrubberies stick out in front, and the glimmering on the metal structures on the right all look so unreal...
And the flame really looks like a particle rendered image.
Am I the only one ?
PS please pardon my bad english...
First of all, NASA has a LONG way to go before it has a launch frequency high enough for any pollution from their launch vehicles to be significant.
Second, there are plenty of rocket designs for liquid rockets that already produce only water or water and CO2; so an "environmentally friendly rocket" is not a new thing. The Saturn V, for example used Kerosene for fuel.
What is significant news for nerds is that this is work on a hybrid rocket design. Hybrid rocket motors are interesting because they combine some of the benifits of solid and liquid designs... but that probably wouldn't be considered newsworthy to mainstream media outlets. So, my guess is that this NASA center wrote up a press release and stuck in the magic words "environmentally friendly" to get the news to give them some coverage. The fact that we don't need eco-rockets yet, or that other minimally polluting rocket designs have been around for over half a century are irrelevent because the people they are selling themselves to don't have a background in rocketry, don't bother to check their facts, and many of them feel happy inside when they think they are helping to fund something that protects Mother Earth. And meanwhile the pros and cons of hybrid rocket designs (and probably the things that the test program was really supposed to find out) don't get any attention at all.
Call me when they are testing cubane fuels.
Don't forget the timeless classic...
"She had blue eyes. One blew east, the other blew west."
Sometimes, humor's the only way to cope with the pain.
Must be a very poor design, I do not see any mach diamonds ...
Got Code?
Only problem is, we need to find new supplies of Unobtanium to be able to build it. Oh, and the "force of the earth spinning around" part is wrong, too... read Niven and Barnes' "Dream Park" series, or Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, which has a pretty accurate model of what happens when there's an "oops" somewhere along your 36,000+ km cable and it decides to wrap itself around your planet a few times.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
my bad
The web site is short on details. They are saying that this new motor has the ability to throttle down and reignite. Depending on how well it can do this, you might be able to replace liquid rockets altogether.
t s/aiaa-hr.pdf, which doesn't indicate that it needs to be cooled, and says the specific impulse is about 20% better than kerosene. I'm assuming they mean Kerosene/LOx and not Kerosene/H2O2.
Also, they are talking about scaling the technology up from the demonstrator to space shuttle size with only a slight size penalty. This is all good, except they didn't mention the specific impulse of the fuel vs. the current solid boosters.
Much better info can be found at http://thomasc.stanford.edu/research.html, which suggests that this "solid" mixture must be cooled to keep it solid. However, a better source is http://store.aiaa.org/images/about/02_TC_Highligh
I would still like to see numbers on this stuff.
And sometimes it's just trashy.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
But how long before the world's salmon supply gets depleted? More short-sighted NASA tomfoolery.
Elegance is for tailors. -A. Einstein
There's almost certainly no magic here. You just light it with LOX or some other oxidiser, under high pressure. No big secret. The reason it doesn't normally go as well as in a rocket is because the atmosphere is only 20% oxygen, and the pressure is lower. I think they use some black die in the wax to stop the heat radiation melting it too quickly, but that's about it AFAIK.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"This is a new type of solid rocket fuel. Current high-grade solid rocket fuels use aluminum powders and such like. All jet fuels already produce "only" CO2 and water on combustion, as do many popular liquid rocket fuels (such as LOX/LH2 and LOX/Kerosene, the two most popular rocket fuels for launch vehicles).
I saw somewhere some idea for a device called a space elevator.
It's a time-honored Sci-Fi device, right up there with agropoloi and flying cars.
The reason why we haven't built one yet is, in a nutshell, time(/money) and technology.
Every little bit of that space elevator needs to be strong enough to hold the entire thing--and the thing is going to be the largest thing ever constructed. Period.
Oh, and there is that little problem of actually getting it it up in the first place...
And for every person who thinks NASA produces nothing useful, two words: Compact Disc
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
from the press release:
A hybrid rocket uses a liquefied oxidizer that is gasified before being injected into the combustion chamber containing the solid fuel.
GASIFIED?!?! couldn't they have used a word that at least SOUNDS scientific? Is Aerosolized OK? How about "rendered gaseous"?
I'm not sure I want to trust the future of space travel to people who "gasify" things.
hmmmm?
To use this in automobiles. That would put a stake in the hearts of those in the middle east (assuming it's not oil based).
Also-
/. #s less than 100K? Cause we're old.
Q: How is NASA like a walrus?
A: Their both looking for a tight seal.
Q: What did the school teacher leave as a final present for her students?
A: A big blown-up picture of herself.
The school teacher finally got to take her dream vacation - all over Florida.
Damn rec.humor was bad then - people would bust in with the "What does NASA stand for?" joke like it was new for months after that like it was new when they would finally hear it. Damn.
I think rec.humor.funny split off about that time... coincidence?
=tkk
PS Why does everyone whose repeating these jokes have
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
You see, that is SIMPLE, CHEAP, and doesn't change the way we live. And we can have that, now can we?
Theoretically, carbon nanotubes have the strength you need, but another problem is finding a large mass to anchor the top of the elevator (launch it with mass driver from the moon?). With the conservation of momentum, every load you haul up will pull down the top just a little bit.
Isn't combustion of a hydrocarbon by definition supposed to only leave you with H2O and CO2? It is only in imperfect combustion that you get carbon monoxide and when you add other things that it starts making NOx, sulfides and other unfriendly gasses. For example Methane and Oxygen. CH4 + O2 = CO2 and H2O. Propane (C3H8) and Oxygen (O2) = CO2 and H2O. The only difference is the amounts of CO2 and H2O produced. If you watch a vehicle with a V8 engine at a red light, you will frequently see water dripping out of the tail pipe. So it is good that NASA has "discovered" hydrocarbons. :)
John Carmack, are you out there?
Can this fuel be used for amateur or semi-professional space ventures? Does it give any advantages over using, say, Peroxide fuel? How does the energy release/pound compare?
I know Peroxide is pretty nasty stuff, so it would be cool if a safer to handle alternative came down the pike.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's not rocket science. Um... never mind.
Rockets use RP-1, a purified form of kerosene. Regular kerosene has impurities that clog up parts of the rocket motor during sustained operation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
According to a quote in this press release, the parrafin-based engines can be throttled, shutdown and even restarted, all of which are impossible with current solid-rocket motors.
here's why:
Solid boosters are great because they are easier to handle than liquids, but most of all, because whatever weight a liquid booster carries around as turbopumps, plumbing, pre-combustion chambers etc, can now be given to PAYLOAD. That funny little bit of the rocket that actually does something other than look spectacular.
The design and manufacturing simplicity also reduces cost, which also lets us send more PAYLOADS up!
So a nice simple solid has a couple of nasty problems, too. i) uneven burning rates (thrust) is hard to overcome, causing vibration ii) no liquids to cool the nozzle with, so higher nozzle weight iii) can't shut it down, so no abort iiii) no throttle to control thrust, so payload shroud and carry through structure has to be heavier to accommodate higher MAXQ, AKA maximum aerodynamic pressure.
So the next thought is Hybred! Meter the LOX oxidizer flow, and you overcomesall these problems! COOL!! (but not so easy)
Uhh.... how do you get the fuel to stay solid, until it is really needed for burning? and ... Uhh... What keeps the solid fuel from melting, and just running out of the "tailpipe"? Idea!!: Make it hard to melt! OOPS! it also doesn't become available for combustion!
So here's what's done:
Put in a little pre-burner at the top of the solid fuel, a "heater" for evaporation of the fuel! Run the vaporized fuel through a restrictor into a second combustion chamber down by the nozzle. Also feed the second combustion chamber with the right amount of LOX, and well, you get the picture.
Not all that simple to model and control in practice. And it's very hard to find dense fuels that melt, vaporize, and burn just right.
So whatever this guy is doing is potentially very useful, and in any case, it's real rocket science, not simple stuff!
For those wondering why this is getting funded, or whether rocket exhaust has significant environmental effects, I found an interesting page floating around:
http://www.earthpulse.com/haarp/background.html
some highlights:
--
Saturn V Rocket (1975)
Due to a malfunction, the Saturn V Rocket burned unusually high in the atmosphere, above 300 km. This burn produced "a large ionospheric hole" (Mendillo, M. Et al., Science p. 187, 343, 1975). The disturbance reduced the total electron content more than 60% over an area 1,000 km in radius, and lasted for several hours. It prevented all telecommunications over a large area of the Atlantic Ocean. The phenomenon was apparently caused by a reaction between the exhaust gases and ionospheric oxygen ions. The reaction emitted a 6300 A airglow. Between 1975 and 1981 NASA and the US Military began to design ways to test this new phenomena through deliberate experimentation with the ionosphere.
Orbit Maneuvering System (1981)
Part of the plan to build the SPS space platforms was the demand for reusable space shuttles, since they could not afford to keep discarding rockets. The NASA Spacelab 3 Mission of the Space Shuttle made, in 1981, "a series of passes over a network of five ground based observatories" in order to study what happened to the ionosphere when the Shuttle injected gases into it from the Orbit Maneuvering System (OMS). They discovered that they could "induce ionospheric holes" and began to experiment with holes made in the daytime, or at night over Millstone, Connecticut, and Arecibo, Puerto Rico. They experimented with the effects of "artificially induced ionospheric depletions on very low frequency wave lengths, on equatorial plasma instabilities, and on low frequency radio astronomical observations over Roberval, Quebec, Kwajelein, in the Marshall Islands and Hobart, Tasmania" (Advanced Space Research, Vo1.8, No. 1, 1988).
Innovative Shuttle Experiments (1985)
An innovative use of the Space Shuttle to perform space physics experiments in earth orbit was launched, using the OMS injections of gases to "cause a sudden depletion in the local plasma concentration, the creation of a so called ionospheric hole." This artificially induced plasma depletion can then be used to investigate other space phenomena, such as the growth of the plasma instabilities or the modification of radio propagation paths. The 47 second OMS burn of July 29, 1985, produced the largest and most long-lived ionospheric hole to date, dumping some 830 kg of exhaust into the ionosphere at sunset. A 6 second, 68 km OMS release above Connecticut in August 1985, produced an airglow which covered over 400,000 square km.
During the 1980's, rocket launches globally numbered about 500 to 600 a year, peaking at 1500 in 1989. There were many more during the Gulf War. The Shuttle is the largest of the solid fuel rockets, with twin 45 meter boosters. All solid fuel rockets release large amounts of hydrochloric acid in their exhaust, each Shuttle flight injecting about 75 tons of ozone destroying chlorine into the stratosphere. Those launched since 1992 inject even more ozone-destroying chlorine, about 187 tons, into the stratosphere (which contains the ozone layer)
the development of a non-toxic, easily handled fuel made from a substance similar to what is used in common candles.
All these years and they've finally gotten around to seeing if wax would burn?
That's fricken hilarious!
Man, reminds me of lazer malt. Do they still make that?
Some wino once told me that "that s**t f**ks like water". He weren't kidding.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I didn't read the article, but I need to know -- should I invest in goose down before the gov. contract goes through?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Three posts in this thread get moderated as "trolls" for what are obviously political reasons, then two minutes later you post as an AC with a nasty incoherent response.
Hope you enjoyed the last mod points you'll ever get.
mmmmm...dessert road. a highway of pies...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You got things backwards there. Paraffins are saturated compounds with empirical formula C(n)H(2n+2). For example, octane has formula C8H18. As the carbon chain increases in length for a paraffin (I prefer the modern term alkane- the name paraffin also describes a solid unsaturated hydrocarbon, C25H52), the melting and boiling points increase. In other words, simple alkanes like methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) are gases at room temperature. Butane (C4H10) and pentane (C5H12) boil right around room temperature. The alkane series consists of steadily thickening liquids- compare the viscosities of gasoline (mostly octane) and diesel fuel (mostly hexadecane aka cetane,C16H34). Around 20 carbons, the alkanes start to become solid around room temperature. When they mention a fuel similar to paraffin, I'm guessing they mean something similar to the candle paraffin then, around 23-27 carbons. Olefins (better name: alkenes) are the ones with double bonds in them, and are so named because they tend to produce oily liquids at room temperature. A simple comparision is availble in your kitchen- saturated fats, mostly from animals, tend to be solid at room temperature, whereas unsaturated vegetable fats tend to be liquids (like corn or canola oil) When you see a solid vegetable fat, like in margarine, chances are it has been partially hydrogenated, which converts some of the double bonds to single bonds, increasing the melting point.
It is generally going to be alkanes and not alkenes that you would see used as fuel, due to the combustion properties. Alkenes are much more reactive compounds generally- instead of complete combustion, you'd likely get a ton of nasty side reactions- polymerizations, epoxidations. These reactions make alkenes much more valuable as a starting point in synthesis of plastics and other materials. So, examining alkanes as fuels, it becomes apparent that the longer the chain, the more energy can be extracted from complete combustion. However, the longer the chain, the more oxygen will be needed to produce complete combustion. If complete combustion fails to occur, then the end products will include carbon monoxide and soot.
In a rocket engine, the rocket supplies its own oxidizer, as there isn't much oxygen in space. As such, I'm less interested in the fuel this hybrid rocket will use, and more in the liquid oxidizer (which is not described in the article). IIRC, the space shuttle uses liquid oxygen from the big red external tank (along with liquid hydrogen from the same place) to power it early on, but the main engine of the orbiter is also equipped to burn (once the external tank runs dry) hydrazine (N2H4, one of the most thoroughly awesome substances in the universe) with dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) as an oxidizer. These fuels work very well as rocket fuel, as they are storable at room temperature as liquids, unlike the cryogens used in the external tank, and they are hypergolic, meaning that they spontaneously explode when placed in contact with each other. This is actually a really good thing for a rocket, since you don't need some sort of complex igniter system, and you can easily turn the rocket on and off by opening and closing the fuel valves (unlike the current solid rocket boosters on the sides, which burn continously like fireworks rockets). If you were to use some sot of solid alkane fuel in the boosters, then you'd want to find an oxidizer, preferably not a cyrogenic one, that was able to deliver a large amount of oxygen very quckly to the fuel. In the current SRB, this is conveniently done by aluminum perchlorate- essentially, you get the fuel and oxidizer in one compound. However, it seems for environemntal and control (like I said, burns like a fireworks rocket) reasons, NASA wants to phase this out. Dinitrogen tetroxide is a possibility for an oxidizer, but when nitrogen compunds are involved in combustion, NOx nitrogen oxides are often formed, which are also pollutants. Also, one can only guess the side reactions of a nitrogen oxide with a hydrocarbon in very high energy combustion- isocyanates, cyanides- poisonous stuff. Thus, choosing an alkane as a rocket fuel isn't really as intriguing as what they would choose as an oxidizer.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Lots of rockets use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen too..... 2H2 + O2 = 2H20
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
as does paraffin...
GRAPH: It's not like we don't have enough CO2 already.
GRAPH: Insistance is futile. CO2 is not being net assimilated.
GRAPH: They don't just have trouble with what kind of fuel it is, but the headline writer has a wierd idea of "friendly" too.
Wrong!
GRAPH: the atmospheric concentration of CO2 fits a logistic sigmoid curve. Logistic sigmoid curves are typical for most nonrenewable resource consumption.
Excellent chemistry lesson! I don't think the SSME's burn anything but an H2/O2 mix, however. I'm pretty sure it's either the OMS or RCS that burn N2H4/N2O4, not the SSME's.
SSME=Space Shuttle Main Engine
OMS=Orbiter Manuvering System
RCS=Reaction Control System
By the way, there are several 'flavors' of hydrazine - two are monomethyl hydrazine, and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine. The OMS and RCS use MMH.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
It's contrail , not "chemtrail". Condensation trail. Just an artificial cloud. Condensed water vapor suspended in the air.
Oil and Coal are made of dead trees and animals. The Oceans absorb a lot of co2 as well. The earth can handle the co2. It's the Monoxide, Sulfer, and Nitrogen that are the real problem.
Also, the current boosters have a primitive type of "throttle control" in that the amount of surface area burning determines the thrust. Obviously you can't change this during flight, but the shape of the fuel is engineered to provide a particular "thrust curve" over time.
I am not sure how damaging to the environment the current fuel is. If there were a few launches a day then I could see the problem, but as things are I am not sure if there is one. Of course extra fuel is burned off everyday at Thiokol. I learned the hard way that it isn't good for you. While I was there they switched from buring off the extra/unusable fuel late at night to doing it at about 6 pm. Most people leave at about 4 pm. I was going out to get in my car and there seemed to be a lot of fog in the parking lot. About halfway to my car I realized that it wasn't fog, but smoke from the dumped fuel being burned. I hurried to my car and got out of there. I spent the next hour of the drive coughing. When I asked around about it the next day I was told I should NEVER inhale the exhaust. You should also think of this after your airbag goes off, though I would guess that it would be hard to control your breathing in that situation.
This also brings up the point that there are very strict tolerances for the propellant and some amount of it doesn't meet those tolerances each day and is dumped and burned. If this extra propellant could be burned safely then maybe Thiokol could get into the business of selling high-intensity DuraFlame logs for home heating use. :)
Lasers Controlled Games!
I believe some engineers have also proposed interacting with the Earth's magnetic field using power drawn from solar panels so that the space elevator can react to (relatively small) unbalancing forces all along its length.