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I'd think you actually just use whatever plastic they use to make the container they ship sulfuric acid in?
by andrewflnr 2y ago
I'd think you actually just use whatever plastic they use to make the container they ship sulfuric acid in?
- dredmorbius 2y agoAmong the chief arguments for a balloon-based Venus station is that the high atmosphere doesn't have (much?) sulfuric acid, as the surface does. So surviving H2SO4 isn't highly salient.
- andrewflnr 2y agoIt doesn't take a lot of acid to cause problems over time. You still wouldn't want to use steel, as mentioned above. But yeah, you don't need Teflon either. Honestly I'm pretty sure I remember HDPE showing up in real proposals for Venus missions, which is why it was top of mind.
- kuschku 2y agoYes, that's PTFE aka Teflon.
- andrewflnr 2y agoLooks like you can use HDPE, actually. I think that's what it's usually shipped in, too. https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=157030 https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=15...
- marcosdumay 2y agoWell, HDPE would be way easier to manufacture there. But people on your link are mostly unanimous: "Quite often the caps are the weakest point. And as mentioned above HDPE bottles tend to sweat over time. I would vote against long time storage (years on end) of sulfuric acid in HDPE bottles."
- andrewflnr 2y agoThey are not nearly unanimous. > I have also a HDPE bottle of 98% sulfuric acid over a decade old without single hint of issue. And they're talking about almost pure acid, which is not nearly what's going on in at atmosphere that's mostly CO2. Venus is probably not even as strong as drain cleaner.