More suprises from Boron

[icarus]

Boron boride

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 215130.htm

"Scientists have found the first case of an ionic crystal consisting of just one chemical element – boron. This is the densest and hardest known phase of this element. The new phase turned out to be a key to understanding the phase diagram of boron – the only element for which the phase diagram was unknown since its discovery 200 years ago."

[IntLibber]

Boron boride

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 215130.htm

"Scientists have found the first case of an ionic crystal consisting of just one chemical element – boron. This is the densest and hardest known phase of this element. The new phase turned out to be a key to understanding the phase diagram of boron – the only element for which the phase diagram was unknown since its discovery 200 years ago."

Boron is a really interesting and useful element. Beyond fusion, it is very useful for rocket fuel, for thermal protection systems, for electronics.

Powdered atomic boron added to hydrogen or kerosene rocket fuel boosts the specific impulse of those fuels by up to 100% depending on the percent mixture. This is different from the diborane and pentaborane rocket fuels tested in the 60's (also known as 'zip fuels') which had deposition issues).

Hafnium diboride and zirconium diboride are known as SHARP materials in the spacecraft and ICBM community. These materials have melting points above 3600 C, far in excess of any other TPS material used on the space shuttle. SHARP materials are used as steering vanes on ICBM MIRV cones. They permit mach 11 flight at 100k feet altitude and mach 7 at sea level. They permit radio transmission through the hypersonic shock wave even during atmospheric reentry (currently impossible on the space shuttle).

It is too bad NASA doesnt make use of these materials. A contractor was supposed to have launched a flight article to test SHARP materials but the project was cancelled by NASA without explaination other than that it was 'duplicate research' (there was no similar project currently or previously underway in the public sphere). This was at the same time that NASA was scuttling all of its RBCC and TBCC propulsion projects, including GTX and further HyperX X-43 B/C/D programs.

Of course, ascribing all that to Dick Cheney's influence so that his buddies at Thiokol ATK could build their so called 'faster, cheaper, better' Ares and Altair proposals.

[Art Carlson]

My favorite proposal to use boron was as a replacement for gasoline. Boron is a solid that does not burn in air (safe!), but it will burn in pure oxygen. So you put a plant in your car that extracts oxygen from the air. Throw a few blocks of boron from the next service station into your trunk, and take off. The only product of the combustion is boron oxide, also an inert solid. You can either pack the blocks of boron oxide along to exchange at the next service station, or throw them out on the side of the road to be collected from time to time. Ideally, this is a zero emission car. I mean zero. No CO2, no H2O, not even warm air. Maybe someday, ....

[KitemanSA]

WARNING: SLIGHT TOPIC SHIFT APPROACHING!

My favorite proposal to use boron was as a replacement for gasoline. Boron is a solid that does not burn in air (safe!), but it will burn in pure oxygen. So you put a plant in your car that extracts oxygen from the air. Throw a few blocks of boron from the next service station into your trunk, and take off. The only product of the combustion is boron oxide, also an inert solid. You can either pack the blocks of boron oxide along to exchange at the next service station, or throw them out on the side of the road to be collected from time to time. Ideally, this is a zero emission car. I mean zero. No CO2, no H2O, not even warm air. Maybe someday, ....

Does the Boron Oxide flake off the block of Boron? And how do you use the energy released at the surface of the block of Boron? Is this sort of like an Aluminum air battery only with Boron-Oxygen?

[kurt9]

My favorite proposal to use boron was as a replacement for gasoline. Boron is a solid that does not burn in air (safe!), but it will burn in pure oxygen. So you put a plant in your car that extracts oxygen from the air. Throw a few blocks of boron from the next service station into your trunk, and take off. The only product of the combustion is boron oxide, also an inert solid. You can either pack the blocks of boron oxide along to exchange at the next service station, or throw them out on the side of the road to be collected from time to time. Ideally, this is a zero emission car. I mean zero. No CO2, no H2O, not even warm air. Maybe someday, ....

How expensive is boron? Is refining it to make it pure enough for this application expensive? Aluminum is mined in oxide form and is very cheap. However, 5-nines Aluminum is really expensive because of the electricity, among other things, necessary to purify it. I assume that Boron is processed by electrolysis similar to that of Aluminum.

[Art Carlson]

How expensive is boron? Is refining it to make it pure enough for this application expensive? Aluminum is mined in oxide form and is very cheap. However, 5-nines Aluminum is really expensive because of the electricity, among other things, necessary to purify it. I assume that Boron is processed by electrolysis similar to that of Aluminum.

I only know there's quite a bit of it on this Earth. Remember Ronald Reagan ... Death Valley Days ... 20 Mule Team Borax? No? Oh, excuse me.

My contribution to topic drift: My favorite proposal for refining aluminum is to make a plasma out of it. It sounds crazy at first because of the energy you have to expend to ionize anything, but there are some special properties of oxygen that bring it back into the realm of possibility. Some big aluminum company spent quite a bit of research money on it, but in the end they couldn't make it work.

[Tom Ligon]

Yeah, a box of borax from the grocery store would, if we can get fusion to work, run a power plant for hours. I'd work out the numbers, but it is Friday.

Chemically pure boron products should be relatively cheap compared to any other nuclear fuel commonly discussed. The catch is we really want just the boron 11. Natural boron is a mix of about 80% B11, 20% B10.

Interesting point: the nuclear industry already uses isotopically refined boron 10, as a neutron poison in fission reactors and other applications where you want to kill a neutron flux. Very effective stuff. Boron 11, the desired fusion fuel, is thus a byproduct.

I found the following link regarding the typical refinement method, but Art has a good point. Mass spectrometry can be used to separate isotopes, and we're going to ionize the boron anyway to introduce the fuel ... possibly the last stage of refinement could be in the ion source itself. There should be commercial value to both isotopes, so deciding the method is basically an engineering economics exercise to pick the best method.

http://www.3rd1000.com/elements/Boron.htm#Isotopes

Re: rocket fuel applications ... Before I signed on with EMC2, I was corresponding with a self-described crazy rocket scientist looking at various tripropellants, with boron as an ingredient is some mixes. He anticipated possibly getting 800 sec of Isp, which would beat the STS main engines incredibly good 460 sec. He was also interested in beryllium, but I informed him if he burned that in the atmosphere I would wipe my hands of him. After my initial interview with Dr. Bussard I informed him I approved of boron but had a better way in mind to use it.

[Skipjack]

It is too bad NASA doesnt make use of these materials. A contractor was supposed to have launched a flight article to test SHARP materials but the project was cancelled by NASA without explaination other than that it was 'duplicate research' (there was no similar project currently or previously underway in the public sphere). This was at the same time that NASA was scuttling all of its RBCC and TBCC propulsion projects, including GTX and further HyperX X-43 B/C/D programs.

Of course, ascribing all that to Dick Cheney's influence so that his buddies at Thiokol ATK could build their so called 'faster, cheaper, better' Ares and Altair proposals.

LOL, guess made your way here through the alt space comunity, like I did. You are putting many of my own opinions into words here.
I am still hoping for a polywell based propulsion system for SSTOs...

[MSimon]

B11 is the preferred material in semiconductor fabrication. It has a lower neutron cross section. :-)

BTW did you know that the early fission piles had a lot of trouble with their carbon moderators? Boron impurities of 1 ppm were screwing things up.

[cuddihy]

It is too bad NASA doesnt make use of these materials. A contractor was supposed to have launched a flight article to test SHARP materials but the project was cancelled by NASA without explaination other than that it was 'duplicate research' (there was no similar project currently or previously underway in the public sphere). This was at the same time that NASA was scuttling all of its RBCC and TBCC propulsion projects, including GTX and further HyperX X-43 B/C/D programs.

Of course, ascribing all that to Dick Cheney's influence so that his buddies at Thiokol ATK could build their so called 'faster, cheaper, better' Ares and Altair proposals.

LOL, guess made your way here through the alt space comunity, like I did. You are putting many of my own opinions into words here.
I am still hoping for a polywell based propulsion system for SSTOs...

They should call us all, "Children of Hobbyspace."

I'm not the only one who heard about Bussard and the Google video from Clark Lindsey's regular updates.

[Skipjack]

Heheh, Clark, yeah...
It is one of my "daily sites"

[kurt9]

B11 is the preferred material in semiconductor fabrication. It has a lower neutron cross section.

BTW did you know that the early fission piles had a lot of trouble with their carbon moderators? Boron impurities of 1 ppm were screwing things up.

Yes, p-doping. Traditionally, di-borane gas has been used for this. More recently, more complex (but less toxic) boron compounds have been developed for p-doping. Also, the industry is developing new process technology (plasma doping, ion cluster deposition) in order to dope thinner layers than can be done by traditional ion implantation.

[IntLibber]

It is too bad NASA doesnt make use of these materials. A contractor was supposed to have launched a flight article to test SHARP materials but the project was cancelled by NASA without explaination other than that it was 'duplicate research' (there was no similar project currently or previously underway in the public sphere). This was at the same time that NASA was scuttling all of its RBCC and TBCC propulsion projects, including GTX and further HyperX X-43 B/C/D programs.

Of course, ascribing all that to Dick Cheney's influence so that his buddies at Thiokol ATK could build their so called 'faster, cheaper, better' Ares and Altair proposals.

LOL, guess made your way here through the alt space comunity, like I did. You are putting many of my own opinions into words here.
I am still hoping for a polywell based propulsion system for SSTOs...

They should call us all, "Children of Hobbyspace."

I'm not the only one who heard about Bussard and the Google video from Clark Lindsey's regular updates.

Ya, before I got into developing my second life virtual world business, I was working on this: http://www.lorrey.biz

which happened to also theorize using boron additives to RP-1 to boost Isp.