New Aluminum-Ice Rocket Propellant Tested 130
eldavojohn writes "With the problem of moving conventional rocket fuel to the Moon and Mars on their minds, researchers from Purdue and Penn State successfully tested and demonstrated the use of aluminum-ice (ALICE) as fuel. In a paper from last August they outlined how it would work (PDF), and now they know it does. Space.com also has more information on the paper and how nano-scale aluminum functions as a fuel."
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
We spend so much time arguing with each other here on Slashdot, but when it comes down to it, we're all in this together. We are going to need to secure a future for future generations, so putting an effort into developing non-volatile fuels which can be formulated anywhere is one huge step towards getting off this rock.
Aluminum is plentiful anywhere we intend to go. This could really be the breakthrough that we've been looking for.
In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.
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Re:In other words (Score:4, Funny)
Yep and apparently they've figured out a way to make water from ice.
Man, what science can do these days is amazing!
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
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Current commercial methods of producing aluminum are energy-intensive processes, work best running continuously rather than start-and-stop, and are not well suited to containment in a vehicle that is not absolutely huge, so I don't think aluminum production facilities will be something that spaceships carry on board. As for water, we have already know water exists on the Moon and on Mars, and on comets throughout the solar system.
If we establish mining and production facilities on nearby bodies with loca
interstellar space (Score:2)
I think you reach is far exceeding your grasp.
Perhaps you mean interplanetary space?
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Do you actually need the Aluminum for the rocket fuel? Or the materials which are refined to make the Aluminum?
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Given that asteroids can be several miles across, I'm sure you could fit a couple nuclear reactors, a mining operation, and an aluminum plant on the surface without too much difficulty. I suppose that the next question is, how small can an asteroid be, and still be worth mining? I wonder how easy it would be
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The point is that while Aluminum is plentiful in our solar system, water is not
Nonsense. It's rare on certain rocky planets. It exists on our Moon, and on Mars. It exists in the ring systems of gas giants and cometary bodies, and presumably rather well represented in the Oort cloud.
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The ice part is water ice. You need a supply of water.
Read it again.
Aluminum is plentiful anywhere we intend to go.
The most likely reason we want to go somewhere long enough term to consider creating new rocket fuel on location will need water (or copious oxygen, hydrogen, and energy) already to support long-term human inhabitants. So, obviously, the limiting factor is just Aluminum, which is also plentiful.
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Non volatile? It is extremely volatile, just hard to light.
It's not hard to light. Just ram it [wikipedia.org] with an aircraft carrier and it will burn fine.
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Volatile, particularly when refering to explosive material, means unstable. Nitro-glycerin is volatile, TNT is less so even though they have a similar explosiveness (TNT is made from nitro-glycerin). Volatility has nothing to do with explosiveness, though a lot of extremely volatile substances (like nitro-glycerin) explosive precisely because they are so volatile.
Atoms are absolutely non-volatile, but if you can manage to split one - BOOOOM!!
You essentially said "Hard to light? It is extremely easy to lig
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Sure, Al is plentiful in the solar system... (Score:2)
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Welcome to Costco.
No buffets :-( (Score:2)
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
It's overrated and the lodgings really suck.
ALICE? (Score:5, Funny)
One of these days, ALICE. Wham! Pow! Straight to the Moon!
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Re:ALICE? (Score:5, Informative)
Get off my lawn or one of these days...POW! Right in the kisser!
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You missed the joke.
Isn't today, wasn't acceptable back then either (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole premise of Ralph Kramden was, "You know that crabby bus driver, I wonder what he is like to his wife and friends?"
Ralph on one hand was supposed to be an object of the viewer's sympathy -- a working class guy barely making ends meet, living in a tiny apartment with his wife, barely any furniture or any other possessions to their name. On the other hand, Ralph was a blowhard, a guy with a chip on his sho
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"now that is not funny either. And one does not laugh."
No, the mental image of (snk) Tiger Woods being whacked with a golf club by his wife is (snurf) most definitely not funny. Not even in abstract.
Sorry, something in my eye. I'll be right back.
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> I don't recall the "Straight to the moon!" line as being a laugh line even
> back in the day.
The humor (such as it was) was in the fact that Alice was utterly unimpressed by the threat.
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Re:ALICE? (Score:4, Informative)
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You're probably old enough to remember when Six million dollars could rebuild a man and we had the technology to do it.
It just gets me when I see electrolytic capacitors being shoved into a leg and it's all of a sudden, bionic.
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Hit any key to continue.
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Alice? Who the f**k is Alice?
it's a reference to her restaurant and the 8x10 glossy photographs that were part of the investigation as to who belted her to the moon.. you know ..
"You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant .."
(Wham! Pow! Straight to the moon)
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I don't think he was really asking who the fuck Alice is [youtube.com]
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Alice? Who the f**k is Alice?
One of Umbrella Corporation's secret projects. And I wouldn't mess with her...
Re:ALICE? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, it's not Mary and Susie you're worried about.
Bob and Alice want to exchange information without Carol and Ted pulling an MiTM attack on them. That's why it was referred to back in the 60's as "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064100/ [imdb.com]
Carol and Ted are in the middle, and would prefer not to have direct, confidential exchange between Bob and Alice.
Whooooooooosh!!
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Reading comprehension. (Score:1)
Re:Reading comprehension. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm. One _could_ make solid fuel with rice flour and potassium chlorate or a similar oxidizer...
Re:Reading comprehension. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. One _could_ make solid fuel with rice flour and potassium chlorate or a similar oxidizer...
Hell, you can turn a grain silo into a rocket with just one match...
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I think I saw that episode of MacGyver!
Been there, done that (Score:2)
This [wikipedia.org] is pretty close to that, exploding a suspension of a flammable dust in air.
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Hmm. One _could_ make solid fuel with rice flour and potassium chlorate or a similar oxidizer...
Wow, I knew McGyver posted under an alias on /. ;)
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You mean you never made potassium chlorate and sugar rockets? Just fill an empty CO2 cartridge with the mixture and ignite it with a hot wire. Hint: don't mix the fuel with or in anything rusty.
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Doh! You're right, only that the fuel would not be Al or Mg but sugar; I wonder if it works as well like that.
Hey, that was in a McGyver episode! - early seasons. He fashions a thermal lance with rust from a paint can and aluminium filings ;)
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Everything you saw on that show was complete and utter horseshit.
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> Burning Iron Oxide+Reactive= Thermite.
No. Iron oxide+aluminum=thermite. Rust catalyzes the reaction between potassium chlorate and sugar. Mix your fuel in a rusty container and it may ignite while you are mixing it.
A glass container is a good choice, but wash it when you are finished. We once mixed fuel in an ashtray and then failed to clean it...
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Old news, but not to /. (Score:5, Informative)
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http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/25/0113247 [slashdot.org]
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mhmmm old news http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7siH1Ausc [youtube.com]
"Enhance"? (Score:3, Informative)
> The oxygen and hydrogen in water molecules enhance the combustion of the
> aluminum.
"Enhance"? Um, the water _is_ the oxidizer.
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So you've got ice there also, and when it vaporizes, it's adding more oxygen and hydrogen to the fire, thus keeping it burning, since in space, you don't have enough of those.
Re:"Enhance"? (Score:4, Informative)
> ...more oxygen...
There is no oxygen present except for that in the water molecules.
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Aluminum will not burn without an oxidizer. In fact, nothing will burn without an oxidizer. There are a few compounds that can be their own oxidizers, but since aluminum is an element it is not one of these.
Frosty... (Score:1)
Thermite + Water Vapor = BOOM (Score:5, Informative)
For a neat visual presentation of the physics they're relying on, Mythbusters did an experiment on the explosive power of thermite powder and water vapor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnHR4cMXiyM [youtube.com].
Amuminum Ice (Score:2)
Isn't ice just the frozen liquid. Therefore, don't they just have to keep the aluminum from melting? Should be pretty easy, with the melting point around 1200F. I think you can buy pretty good frozen aluminum (renolds wrap?).
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the water acts as a stable oxidizer - freezing it makes it into more of a manageable past than a liquid
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Not as in crystallized solid Aluminum.
Its seeing things like this .. (Score:5, Informative)
that highlight the safety instructions I've had at Aluminium plants. You never, ever, ever drop anything like used aluminium cans into the feed that is headed for melt shop as any bit of liquid still in the can will cause a rather powerful explosion
Re:Its seeing things like this .. (Score:5, Informative)
It's also a known rule that you use sand, never water, to extinguish a fire where molten aluminum is present.
However, the biggest danger from dropping aluminum cans in the melt is from the steam expansion, not from burning aluminum. Having *any* humidity at all where molten metal runs, any metal, not just aluminum, will produce large quantities of steam, which will expand explosively throwing molten metal all around.
I know this from personal experience, when I was about twelve years old I was burned while melting lead to make fishing weights. I dropped the mold in water to cool it and the next time I poured metal in it I got a spray of molten lead right in my face. Lucky me, none of it hit my eyes.
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Having *any* humidity at all where molten metal runs, any metal, not just aluminum, will produce large quantities of steam, which will expand explosively throwing molten metal all around.
Yes, it is easy to see this if you pour water onto molten mercury, or vice versa.
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But isn't that mainly because the water will flash into vapor and blow the liquid metal around?
There is (Score:4, Interesting)
A better article on the engine here [inventube.com].
However I don't get how TFA considers this fuel as "environmentally friendly". Firstly one of the byproducts is aluminum hydroxide which, apart from helping us with our stomach ulcers, may be linked to brain disease - but I don't really care about that - the amount generated from a few rocket launches won't kill us all. But I argue that aluminum is not a naturally occurring substance - it has to be manufactured, and aluminum manufacture is the most energy intensive process around. So don't come to me with "environmentally friendly rocket fuel" when god knows how many tonnes of CO2 were dumped in the atmosphere to make the energy to refine that bauxite.
Still, if it works, it's better than "other" fuels that have extreme storage or environmental implications. Good for them.
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Rocket fuel = concentrated energy.
However you get that energy, you can have rocket fuels that are nasty pollutants or rocket fuels that are not, and rocket fuels that produce exhaust that is a nasty pollutant or not. Hydrogen + oxygen = water is probably the best, but some of the solid fuel rockets are nasty. Both the reactants and the products are a little more toxic than "may be linked to brain disease [but we drink it anyway]."
Besides, most aluminum plants are located near some cheap source of energy s
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Oh I acknowledge that. All rocket fuels are expensive to make, store and ship. This one looks reasonably (and relatively) cheap. However the "environmentally friendly" comment in TFA is what I didn't like. It's like saying "environmentally friendly cigarettes". Rocket fuel (of any type) does not qualify for the "environmentally friendly" label, even if this is the "friendliest" one...
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By that argument you could say that no human activity is environmentally friendly.
Take the rocket fuel H2 + O2 = H20. The reactants and products all exist in the environment and the reaction itself occurs within the cells of almost every living thing on the planet (if not all living things). Yet you say it's not environmentally friendly? Why not? Because of the energy needed to produce the H2 and O2 in the first place? The term "environmentally friendly" becomes absolutely meaningless if you interpret
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So... if we got rid of all the people, the Earth would be a nice place to raise a family?
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Hydroelectricity is a pretty horrific form of energy production
Disagree, in context. I would much prefer an artificial lake to a strip mine myself. Not a great fan of breathing sulphur.
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Oh I acknowledge that. All rocket fuels are expensive to make, store and ship. This one looks reasonably (and relatively) cheap. However the "environmentally friendly" comment in TFA is what I didn't like. It's like saying "environmentally friendly cigarettes". Rocket fuel (of any type) does not qualify for the "environmentally friendly" label, even if this is the "friendliest" one...
That's what you get with life. Just look at Mars. Perfectly nice and beautiful environment. Compare to Earth: covered with various forms of nasty organic slime, hardly any unpolluted barren surface anywhere. And don't get me started with Earth's atmosphere, now that's a particularly nasty mix, full of poisons such as O2 and even O3, all released by life.
And now rocket fuels. This does not bode well for our solar system!
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But I argue that aluminum is not a naturally occurring substance...
Then I'd argue you're a moron. Aluminum is what is commonly known as a basic element. It's not a compound of anything, it isn't created in a lab, it's dug up out of the earth.
Now, I'll agree with your point that getting it into a useable form requires processing, but so do algae pellets, bio fuel, orange juice and that nice, tasty steak. You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as a naturally occurring substance, which is obviously false.
Furthermore, aluminum is extremely recyclable, and can b
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Before I start on this, I do want to acknowledge that in my book labels like "environmentally friendly" are by nature relative, and if this is less harmful than the current alternatives that do the same thing then I don't have a problem with the label myself. But I do have a problem with the parent post...
"Then I'd argue you're a moron. Aluminum is what is commonly known as a basic element. It's not a compound of anything, it isn't created in a lab, it's dug up out of the earth."
I, in turn, will argue that
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(And no, I do not consider a cow a steak. If you place one on your plate you will quickly understand why.)
I've seen wolves that would disagree with you. Of course they didn't use plates... is that the critical difference?
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Then I'd argue you're a moron. Aluminum is what is commonly known as a basic element. It's not a compound of anything, it isn't created in a lab, it's dug up out of the earth. (emphasis mine)
As pure aluminum, right? In fact, you can just pull Reynold's Wrap right out of the ground, can't you? It's not found as something called bauxite, which is actually aluminum hydroxide AL(OH)3. You know, just by adding a few OH groups, I can magically turn a thing into something else with COMPLETEL
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> aluminum hydroxide which, apart from helping us with our stomach ulcers, may be linked to brain disease
Are you talking the Alzheimer's link? I thought that that was found to be a non causal link quite some time ago.
Here's a link that pretty much flat out says it's not an issue:
http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_myths_about_alzheimers.asp [alz.org]
There are a lot of websites that talk about it as being a problem, but they all seem a little woo woo.
Need a greener fuel for sure (Score:2)
Aluminium is incredibly wasteful. producing it from raw materials is expensive and using recycled sources as fuel effectively reduces the overall efficiency of the aluminium economy.
This is why I suggest copper. My chemistry is too rusty to know the best stuff to replace the ice, but good enough to know that copper would make for much greener emissions.
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Let's add some afterburners! (Score:3, Interesting)
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> If so, you could add a liquid oxygen tank, inject LOX upstream of the nozzle
> and burn the hydrogen that's freed up to produce even more thrust, and more
> importantly, a higher specific impulse.
True, but that gives you an engine with all the complexity of liquid fuel and all the limitations of solid.
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> Also, you might want to use the quote tags when quoting.
I know how to write html. I choose not to do so here.
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Or perhaps we could add some peroxides to the ice, to adjust the stoichiometry of the fuel mix? Or maybe add a turbopump to inject some air into the combustion chamber, during the atmospheric portion of the flight?
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> Or perhaps we could add some peroxides to the ice...
Interesting idea, but I think stability would be a problem.
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Yes, you get a higher specific impulse and thrust that way... But you also increase the weight and complexity of your vehicle, and add considerable ground handling and operational problems and costs. (It's expensive to manufacture and handle Oxygen Clean hardware, even more so when you're handling cryogenic oxygen.)
Powdered Aluminium as a fuel? (Score:2)
Wish those pesky scientists had thought of this earlier, we could have retired the B52s and had mach 3 bombers decades ago.
Nano-scale aluminum (Score:2)
Previous Cool Motors And Stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.wickmanspacecraft.com/wspcnews.html [wickmanspacecraft.com]
John Wickman has been working on aluminum/oxidizer (LOX, not ice) motors since the 80s. His are intended to run on lunar soil.
Also in the can, a jet engine that runs on Martian atmosphere. Development from Oberth's original ammonium nitrate motors as an alternative to ammonium perchlorate.
Now working on NASA's SHARP re-entry vehicle. He's also one of the few pros that teach his craft at the amateur level and consult out to rocketers who want to carry out major projects.
"Rocket scientist" used to be a compliment. That fell away as they numbered into the tens of thousands and each did a tiny piece of engineering. This guy earns that title all over again.
*Aluminum* Ice? (Score:2)
I don't get how this is going to help (Score:2)
Isp and Exhaust Velocity (Score:5, Informative)
If that's right, that sucks compared to normal mixtures.
Of course, if you're lifting off the moon or asteroids, it may be ok. Mars? Probably not.
Computing case 1
Fixed enthalpy-pressure equilibrium - adiabatic flame temperature
Propellant composition
Code Name mol Mass (g) Composition
34 ALUMINUM (PURE CRYSTALINE) 2.0000 53.9631 1AL
976 WATER 3.0000 54.0458 2H 1O
Density
3 different elements
AL H O
Total mass: 108.008918 g
Enthalpy : -7944.26 kJ/kg
24 possible gazeous species
8 possible condensed species
CHAMBER
Pressure (atm) : 340.230
Temperature (K)
H (kJ/kg)
U (kJ/kg)
G (kJ/kg)
S (kJ/(kg)(K)
M (g/mol)
(dLnV/dLnP)t : -1.00584
(dLnV/dLnT)p : 1.13099
Cp (kJ/(kg)(K))
Cv (kJ/(kg)(K))
Cp/Cv
Gamma
Vson (m/s) : 900.11114
Molar fractions
AL 6.0290e-004
ALH 9.2486e-004
ALH2 2.8353e-005
ALH3 2.1470e-005
ALO 2.4478e-005
ALOH 5.6133e-003
AL(OH)2 3.4527e-005
AL(OH)3 3.1024e-006
AL2 1.4157e-006
AL2O 1.3669e-003
AL2O2 1.1545e-005
H 1.0276e-002
HALO 2.7342e-006
HALO2 3.5370e-007
H2 7.2954e-001
H2O 7.8723e-003
O 3.5048e-007
OH 4.1466e-005
Condensed species
AL2O3(L) 2.4364e-001
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Values below are averages (except the peak row)
motor size
0.5" 1.5" 3.0"
exhaust velocity (
It's only rocket science, people. (Score:2)
C'mon, Slashdot, this is rocket science. You shouldn't need help figuring this out on your own.
I'll come out and say it: this is a stupid rocket. As Baldrson points out above, its "specific impulse" (the most important measure of a rocket fuel's usefulness) is less than a quarter that of rocket fuels currently in existence.
Aluminum is readily available on the moon, but not as big old bricks of elemental aluminum lying around. You need to *make* it by electrolyzing rock. (Don't panic, this is how we make
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> Standard, classic, perfect rocket fuel.
Which requires "standard", "classic" _perfect_ cryogenic pumps, valves, fuel lines, regeneratively-cooled combustion chambers...
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> Now; time to find Bauxite on the moon or asteroids.
Aluminum is very common on the moon (as it is everywhere else). The highland regolith is 10% aluminum by weight.