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Rich..Hydrazine ?
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Posted by: Offroadr
What is it and how does it work.
Apparently there are some rumors about its use by some of the nitro guys.
Posted by: Rich Rohrich
Jay - It's a very high energy mono-propellant used for rocket propulsion. Lots of low earth orbit satellites use it in the systems that control their orbit.
It's weird STUFF because it reacts easily when it comes in contact with certain metals which act like a catalyst and the reaction is really quick with really high pressures associated with it. Nitromethane is acidic and hydrazine is a base so they form explosive salts when mixed together. The oxygen in the nitromethane is all that is required for combustion. Sort of the drag racers equivelant of a hypergolic engine. 
Supposedly mixes containing greater than 2% hydrazine were incredibly complicated to handle and control. It's obvious it doesn't take much to get the desired reaction and horsepower increase. Those are the basic reasons the drag race guys are interested in it. Hydrazine has been implicated in some fairly spectacular and unexpected engine explosions over the years. Class A explosives tend to be kooky that way.
In the late 70s there was some research done in an attempt to put hydrazine's properties to good use as a fuel for automotive applications, but I never followed it enough to know where it went. The local mini-mart doesn't have a an unleaded hydrazine pump so I'm guessing they are still working on it
It's nothing new really. When the NHRA banned nitromethane way back when (late 50s?) the Chicago guys like Chris Karamesines were outlaw fuel racers and were experimenting with hydrazine. The long held belief among drag race crumudgeons is that the first recorded 200mph pass by Karamesines was done with a hydrazine doped engine. Lots of myth and mysticism surrounds the use of hydrazine. If you can find old automotive magazines or the drag race tabloids from the middle 60s there was always lots of talk of rocket fuel use in drag racing and Indy qualifying.
If you are really interested I have a ton of research papers I pulled from the NACA archives that discuss hydrazine as a rocket fuel. I can dig you up some good references if you'd like.
Posted by: 23jayhawk
I can tell you from a previous life that hydrazine is used for a few other military purposes, in addition to the rocket fuel application Rich mentioned. One common use is fuel for emergency APU's on aircraft. I'm surprised to hear that the 1/4 mile boys have been playing with it, since it is some nasty s***. The old saying at Edwards AFB was "if you smell it, it's too late". And it is incredibly caustic. Anytime the crew fired an APU, the clean up was nasty in the exhaust path.
Posted by: Offroadr
Thanks for the offer but technical research papers and legal documents hold my interest less than a nanosecond :confused:
Thats what your job is...put it in plain english LOL
Sounds like nasty stuff!
BTW, can you believe The Greek is still racing?? He is over 70 and still running! Pretty cool
Posted by: bclapham
hydrazine is very toxic, it has a similar caustic factor as ammonia. it also likes water which is also bad in terms of engines, but the most important thing (in my opinion) that people fail to consider when combusting nitrogen compounds is that the oxides formed are very acidic (nitric acid). it reminds me of my days on the refinery, but most of the prolem with fuels (and their processing) is sulfur which goes to sulfuric acid. however, i think nitric is the worst of the acids since it is a good oxidizer and remember from school that all nitrates are soluble!
Rich: your chemistry knowledge is very impressive. I was going to put you right regarding nitromethane but then i re-read your post. No, nitromethane is not an acid, but yes it is acidic so your statement is correct. Sounds wierd, but the acidity is effectiveness of a compound to give up a hydrogen ion (proton), stuff like hydrogen chloride do this very easily in water but something like nitromethane will not do this to any extent. but that nitromethane proton is "acidic" enough to be removed by a relatively weak base such as hydrazine (indeed forming a salt) and thus can act as an acid.
but in the term of acidity nitromethane and hydrochloric, nitric or sulfuric acid are far apart.
I have seen the "explosive" nature of this....a guy on the third floor of our building made a nitromethane lithium salt, he concentrated it down and every thing was fine. then he tried to scoop some out of the flask and the friction of the metal spatula...BANG! it was really sad to see him getting wheeled out, i spoke to him later and he told me that he was lucky all of the fingers in his hand broke otherwise they would have been lost...he did lose most of the flesh though. (it didnt stop his boss winning this years nobel prize for chemistry)
i remember that the ammonium pechlorate salts are very bad, any compound with a high nitrogen compound is bad since they want to form nitrogen gas which is the explosion. i work with azides and have this worry all of the time, we have some very flammable solvents...ethers are the worst since they form very explosive epoxides also.
its very ironic that scientists such as rich spend their lifes work trying to get good combustion but scientists such as my self are scared witless by it.
just a bit of food for thought next time you go to the local drug store think of me!
enjoy your chemistry
regards
BC
Posted by: PaulXR
Ok I have some experience with this stuff, a small rocket called Lance and one that most folks know, the Shuttle. In a nut shell this stuff is WAY hard to deal with and will kill you dead before you hit the floor! I saw a neat demo that an eye dropped like device dropped a small amount on to a large lid from a can and went into a fire ball about the size of a car in a millisecond! Only one place in the country makes it now, takes many military OK's to get it and ship it, and yes MUCH $$$ also!
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