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How does the toxicity of post-combustion byproducts compare between the two? Does GP mean that the exhaust of solid rocket fuel is more toxic than the exhaust o
by Infernal 7y ago
How does the toxicity of post-combustion byproducts compare between the two? Does GP mean that the exhaust of solid rocket fuel is more toxic than the exhaust of liquid rocket fuel?
- CydeWeys 7y agoThat's definitely true too, given that the exhaust of most kinds of liquid rocket fuel isn't toxic at all. Hydrolox releases water, and methalox and kerolox releases water and carbon dioxide. (And that's all of the commonly used liquid fuels.) Note that rocket engines do not completely combust their fuels, far from it. So a lot of that highly toxic solid fuel in its uncombusted form is still gonna be in the exhaust.
- pfdietz 7y agoThey do not fully combust their fuels because they aren't stoichiometric, typically. But all the fuel components are heated to high temperature, so any energetic (and often not coincidentally toxic) chemicals are reduced to a mixture in close to thermodynamic equilibrium. Hydrazine, for example, gets converted to nitrogen and hydrogen, with some of the hydrogen being oxidized.
- pfdietz 7y agoThe solid rocket exhaust will be more toxic, as it will contain hydrogen chloride (for typical composite propellants). Exhaust of the liquid rocket will be mostly innocuous (some carbon monoxide). The danger is propellants released in accidents, or when spent stages with residual propellants crash.