Making Stuff That Relies On Oxygen That Work In Environments With No Oxygen

[Photon Guy]

To the best of my knowledge, conventional combustion requires oxygen. When you make a fire in the fireplace you need oxygen for it to burn. You need your fuel source which might be wood that you're burning in the fireplace, you need the energy to ignite it which can be produced by rubbing sticks together although in this day and age you would use matches or a lighter, and you need oxygen which on Earth is abundant enough in the environment. In a different environment without oxygen, such as on the moon, it would not work. You would not be able to start a fire in a fireplace on the moon unless you're able to provide the necessary oxygen somehow because on the moon there is no oxygen in the environment. 

Anyway I was thinking about how to produce tools that use fire or combustion that would be able to function in an environment that doesn't have oxygen such as the environment of the moon. I believe guns would work just as well on the moon or in the vacuum of space as they would on Earth because when the primer is struck it produces the necessary oxygen. A gun fires by the primer being struck by a hammer or pin which in turn ignites the propellant in the cartridge and as the propellant burns it creates the pressure that fires the bullet. Obviously the propellant needs oxygen to burn but the primer provides the necessary oxygen when it is struck. Cars however would not work on the moon. The way a car works is a spark is used to ignite the gasoline in the cylinder which burns and produces the pressure to push up the piston, the upward motion of the piston pushes a crankshaft which turns a series of gears which turns the wheels causing the car to go forward. For the gasoline to burn it needs oxygen which the car gets from the environment so you would need an environment that has oxygen for a car to work. So I was thinking about how to make a car you could drive on the moon or in an environment without oxygen, and how to make other stuff that works by combustion that can be used in environments without oxygen. It works with guns so it should work with other stuff. 

[swansont]

14 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

So I was thinking about how to make a car you could drive on the moon or in an environment without oxygen, and how to make other stuff that works by combustion that can be used in environments without oxygen. It works with guns so it should work with other stuff.

You could calculate how much oxygen you need by looking at the combustion reaction. Or just use an electric vehicle.

[exchemist]

41 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

To the best of my knowledge, conventional combustion requires oxygen. When you make a fire in the fireplace you need oxygen for it to burn. You need your fuel source which might be wood that you're burning in the fireplace, you need the energy to ignite it which can be produced by rubbing sticks together although in this day and age you would use matches or a lighter, and you need oxygen which on Earth is abundant enough in the environment. In a different environment without oxygen, such as on the moon, it would not work. You would not be able to start a fire in a fireplace on the moon unless you're able to provide the necessary oxygen somehow because on the moon there is no oxygen in the environment. 

Anyway I was thinking about how to produce tools that use fire or combustion that would be able to function in an environment that doesn't have oxygen such as the environment of the moon. I believe guns would work just as well on the moon or in the vacuum of space as they would on Earth because when the primer is struck it produces the necessary oxygen. A gun fires by the primer being struck by a hammer or pin which in turn ignites the propellant in the cartridge and as the propellant burns it creates the pressure that fires the bullet. Obviously the propellant needs oxygen to burn but the primer provides the necessary oxygen when it is struck. Cars however would not work on the moon. The way a car works is a spark is used to ignite the gasoline in the cylinder which burns and produces the pressure to push up the piston, the upward motion of the piston pushes a crankshaft which turns a series of gears which turns the wheels causing the car to go forward. For the gasoline to burn it needs oxygen which the car gets from the environment so you would need an environment that has oxygen for a car to work. So I was thinking about how to make a car you could drive on the moon or in an environment without oxygen, and how to make other stuff that works by combustion that can be used in environments without oxygen. It works with guns so it should work with other stuff. 

Plenty of explosives have a built-in oxidiser, apart from gunpowder. The issue with all these things is how to ensure you get a suitably controlled reaction that is triggered at the right point of the engine cycle rather than going off at the wrong moment or too fast. You don't want an actual explosion inside an engine. Nor do you want an unstable compound that might go off outside the engine. 

For a lot of applications you would probably better off getting motive power, or heat, another way. The great energy source you have in space is the sun. 

 

[OldChemE]

As noted by exchemist many explosives (including gunpowder) have a built-in oxidizer.  The primer in a gun cartridge does not provide oxygen-- it only provides the energy (fire in the case of a primer) to get the chemical reaction started.  So, if you really wanted some sort of similar reaction as your energy source you could use some controlled system that feeds discrete quantities of explosive into a chamber and then ignites the explosive using an electrically generated spark.  Essentially an internal combustion engine but using a powder instead of a liquid.

[Photon Guy]

On 1/23/2024 at 1:43 PM, swansont said:

 Or just use an electric vehicle.

You could, but that wouldn't have the horsepower of a gasoline vehicle. 

20 hours ago, OldChemE said:

As noted by exchemist many explosives (including gunpowder) have a built-in oxidizer.  The primer in a gun cartridge does not provide oxygen-- it only provides the energy (fire in the case of a primer) to get the chemical reaction started.  So, if you really wanted some sort of similar reaction as your energy source you could use some controlled system that feeds discrete quantities of explosive into a chamber and then ignites the explosive using an electrically generated spark.  Essentially an internal combustion engine but using a powder instead of a liquid.

Well modern cartridges are airtight so they don't get oxygen from the environment. Are you saying that modern gunpowder itself has oxygen in it?

[exchemist]

49 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

You could, but that wouldn't have the horsepower of a gasoline vehicle. 

Well modern cartridges are airtight so they don't get oxygen from the environment. Are you saying that modern gunpowder itself has oxygen in it?

Exactly. That’s what the potassium nitrate, aka saltpetre, does in gunpowder. KNO3, in which O stands for oxygen.

Nitroglycerine is glyceryl trinitrate. - NO3 again. This is true of many explosives. The oxidiser is within the explosive, sometimes even within the same molecule, as with nitroglycerine.

Ammonium  nitrate fertiliser can also explode - there was such a disaster in Beirut, I think it was, a few years ago.

[Ken Fabian]

1 hour ago, Photon Guy said:

On 1/24/2024 at 5:43 AM, swansont said:

 Or just use an electric vehicle.

You could, but that wouldn't have the horsepower of a gasoline vehicle. 

 Not correct; a gasoline vehicle might have greater range than an EV but weight for weight the power of electric motors beat ICE easily by a huge margin. If the vehicle has to carry oxygen as well as fuel an ICE won't have much range either. And if you have to bring the fuel AND the oxygen (or oxidant) from Earth then EV's running off solar power looks like the better choice every time.

Somewhere like the moon might manage with direct solar power for 2 weeks out of 4; large lightweight solar wings in vacuum would not even present serious stability problems without wind - but may need shock absorbing stabilisers for rough ground. Or unfold and unfurl them when stopped to charge batteries. Traveling by lunar night would probably present other problems besides energy storage - scheduling to avoid it may be more practical.

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

You could, but that wouldn't have the horsepower of a gasoline vehicle. 

Um, no. There’s nothing inherent in an electric motor that would make this true. Terrestrial EVs generally have more horsepower than ICE cars. More efficient, too. 

https://electricvehiclehub.com.au/information-centre/are-electric-cars-as-powerful-as-petrol-cars/