[AR] Re: Hypergolics with N2O?

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2023 03:27:55 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 25 Feb 2023, BrianK ABQ wrote:

Li in ammonia? A classic organic chem reducing set up. I used it a couple of times as a chem undergrad doing an organic chem research project in 1978.

Unfortunately, the solubility of alkali metals in liquid ammonia isn't that impressive -- the lithium-ammonia solutions are still mostly ammonia. They're cute (in fact they're weird), but for rocketry they seem to give you the worst of all worlds: aggressive enough that they might well cause trouble for things like seals, probably not aggressive enough to be reliably hypergolic with LOX, and liquid ammonia is a bit of a pain and notoriously hard to burn well.

Henry

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