Hydrogen Peroxide

[K@meleon]

Hi there,

 

As an engineering student I have to design an environmentally friendly aircraft with a few fellow students. We where fiddling around with the problems related to the use of pressurized/cryogenic hydrogen when we stumbled accross Hydrogen Peroxide. It seemed interesting being non toxic, stable, cheap, liquid at room temperature, and releasing only water and hydrogen when burnt. But the problem is that it's quite difficult to find accurate information about the use of [math]H_2O_2 [/math] as a propellant. I know it has been used in rocket engines, after being catalysed into hydrogen and oxygen, but we would like to use it as fuel in a gas turbine. We therefore had a few questions we would like to ask to the chemistry "pros":

- Is it possible to burn Hydrogen Peroxide without catalysing it first?

- If this is possible, what would be the energy content of Hydrogen Peroxide in KJ/kg?

- If we have to catalyse it, what would be the best catalyst, and how expensive is it?

- What would then be the energy content of [math] H_2O_2[/math]?

 

In advance thanks for the help you guys can give us!

[woelen]

Whether or not a catalyst is used, the amount of energy by decomposing hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen remains the same. Catalysts only affect the speed (the mechanism) at which reactions occur, but they don't add or remove energy.

 

Hydrogen peroxide does not burn, it decomposes.

 

The energy of decomposition of 2H2O2 --> 2H2O + O2 I don't know by head. Google definitely will give you the answer. It most likely will be specified as KJ/mol, but you can easily transform that to kJ/kg.