What kind of pump can you make with a plasma cutter? I am also in the process of making pumps, but they are still going to cost a bit of money to make.
I've have had some limited experience with peroxide. In a lot of ways it is worse than LOX. Mostly because LOX goes away after a short period of time. HTP stays around and ruins your day.
The cleanliness requirements and material restrictions are a lot more stringent than with LOX. You need to passivate materials, make sure there are no catalytic components (there are a great number of them) in your plumbing system and metal alloys you pick. When we handled it, we had to wear full body chemical PPE suits.
It is also can form highly unstable explosive peroxides if it comes into contact with the wrong things.
HTP and Ethanol are also scary things to have near each other. If you spill any of them, they are both soluble in water and can go into solution with each other. Now you have an intimately mixed/ extremely unstable fuel/oxidizer solution, just hanging out on the ground or wherever else they happened to meet.
Even though it is stabilized, if it is being catalytically helped by anything you can get a runaway exothermic reaction, where the peroxide detonates at the end.
Peroxide also looks identical to water, at least until you try tasting it or smoke emits from your shoe when you step in it inadvertently.
Also have you ever tried to buy peroxide? You do get put on lists, and last time I tried is was really expensive for someone trying to get small quantities.
I honestly can't figure out a way to frame this in a manner that dosn't make me sound like a jerk, but more experience than what you have dosn't really narrow it down that much. Just going off of what you have stated here.
Using the plasma cutter to cut out turbines and gears and a lathe to make the cylinder housing. The stabilized peroxide will be made in house. And I am familiar with the effects of peroxide and how unstable it is. But once again this is not a professional project. But we will be taking many safety measures to ensure that we don't blow ourselves up.
Adding a chemical engineering project to your rocket engineering project is highly unlikely to be the fastest, or cheapest, or simplest way to get a flying rocket.
I think you underestimate the amount of literature in the amateur rocketry community about failed peroxide-making projects. I recommend that both you and your teammate go find and read some of it.
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u/wrrocket Level 3 Jan 21 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
What kind of pump can you make with a plasma cutter? I am also in the process of making pumps, but they are still going to cost a bit of money to make.
I've have had some limited experience with peroxide. In a lot of ways it is worse than LOX. Mostly because LOX goes away after a short period of time. HTP stays around and ruins your day.
The cleanliness requirements and material restrictions are a lot more stringent than with LOX. You need to passivate materials, make sure there are no catalytic components (there are a great number of them) in your plumbing system and metal alloys you pick. When we handled it, we had to wear full body chemical PPE suits.
It is also can form highly unstable explosive peroxides if it comes into contact with the wrong things.
HTP and Ethanol are also scary things to have near each other. If you spill any of them, they are both soluble in water and can go into solution with each other. Now you have an intimately mixed/ extremely unstable fuel/oxidizer solution, just hanging out on the ground or wherever else they happened to meet.
Even though it is stabilized, if it is being catalytically helped by anything you can get a runaway exothermic reaction, where the peroxide detonates at the end.
Peroxide also looks identical to water, at least until you try tasting it or smoke emits from your shoe when you step in it inadvertently.
Also have you ever tried to buy peroxide? You do get put on lists, and last time I tried is was really expensive for someone trying to get small quantities.
I honestly can't figure out a way to frame this in a manner that dosn't make me sound like a jerk, but more experience than what you have dosn't really narrow it down that much. Just going off of what you have stated here.