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fuel cell reformation technology - for resistojets
I read recently that researchers had developed a small device that reforms a
water methanol mixture to supply a hydrogen fuel cell. Would it make any sense to use one of these to supply low molecular weight reaction mass to a resistojet? |
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fuel cell reformation technology - for resistojets
In article ,
toby wrote: I read recently that researchers had developed a small device that reforms a water methanol mixture to supply a hydrogen fuel cell. Would it make any sense to use one of these to supply low molecular weight reaction mass to a resistojet? Trouble is, you're throwing away a good fraction of the total mass, because the hydrogen is only a small portion of the input mass. The waste counts against propellant consumption too. For a rocket, you're almost always better off feeding everything you've got into the engine. -- MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. | |
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fuel cell reformation technology - for resistojets
Henry Spencer wrote:
In article , toby wrote: I read recently that researchers had developed a small device that reforms a water methanol mixture to supply a hydrogen fuel cell. Would it make any sense to use one of these to supply low molecular weight reaction mass to a resistojet? Trouble is, you're throwing away a good fraction of the total mass, because the hydrogen is only a small portion of the input mass. The waste counts against propellant consumption too. For a rocket, you're almost always better off feeding everything you've got into the engine. That's what I imagined being done. I dont know what the reformer output is perhaps something like: ch3oh + H2o -- co2 + 3h2 :combined molecular mass = 50 divided by 4 molecules gives average value of 12.5 water is 18? rt(18)/rt(12.5)=1.2 so maybe a 20% improvement over water? 12.5 might be a bit pessimistic as the water fraction may be lower but the minimum can only be with no water which comes out at about 11 not a huge difference. I wonder if it would work with ethanol? c2h5oh + h2o -- 2co + 4h2 [64/6 about 10.7] about 30% better than water. Toby |
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