4 ms·
> [Nitrogen compounds] are considered promising clean energy-storage materials owing to their immense energy content that is much higher than hydrogen, ammonia
by rich_sasha 1y ago
> [Nitrogen compounds] are considered promising clean energy-storage materials owing to their immense energy content that is much higher than hydrogen, ammonia or hydrazine, which are in common use, and because they release only harmless nitrogen on decomposition.
What the abstract mentions only sideways is that a key use of these properties is production of explosives - nitroglycerin, trinitrotoluene (TNT) or nitrocellulose (modern gunpowder) come to mind, and indeed, they store a lot of energy. Note all have "nitro" in the name.
At this point I'm not sure you care that only exhaust gas is nitrogen.
- a3w 1y agoHexanitrogen? Nice, but Octanitrocubane is what GURPS promised for TL9. Found in the warhead table, yes: this is "cleaner" explosives, but military is not spending billions to safe the environment. But get a higher TNT-equivalent per kilogram.
- rbanffy 1y agoHow many nitrogens do we need to have a chemical primary for a fusion weapon?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 1y agoI suspect you'd need about 0.013 M total, based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf#Deuterium_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf#Deuterium_fusion
- rbanffy 1y agoLooks like a very tiny lump of metallic nitrogen. Eventually someone will make this.
- AstralStorm 1y agoDefinitely not, the primer also needs to be somewhat stable. This is one reason that even azides are not used in this capacity anymore, and metallic nitrogen would be orders of magnitude less stable. Not to mention requiring special conditions to not explode, like a laser trap or extreme pressures.
- rbanffy 1y agoWhatever the conditions, if attained, would lead to a virtually undetectable fusion bomb. Nukes for everyone, yay! A visible amount of the thing wouldn’t even need the fission part.
- WJW 1y agoWhile it's true that most explosives use nitrogen-based compounds, only a vanishingly small amount of all nitrogen based compounds are used for military applications. Rough estimates are that about 85% goes to producing fertilizer, most of the rest is for various industrial applications and as a fuel. Relative to the scale of how much fertilizer humanity uses, there's just not all that much demand for explosives.
- lazide 1y agoThe fertilizer is also a very effective explosive used in mining and for some military purposes. Lots of nitrogen molecules together almost always has a military use, even if it’s not the primary purpose.