At 12:23 AM 10/29/2002 -0800, Sean R. Lynch wrote:
On Mon, 2002-10-28 at 21:54, Pierce Nichols wrote: > All of the catalysts for peroxide that I have heard > tested or floated in any way are transition metals or their oxides. > Anecdotal evidences (such as the requirement for 'burning in' a silver > pack) indicates that it's the oxides that have the real catalytic action.What if, in general, it's *only* the oxides of these metals that are catalytic and not the metals themselves at all? What if silver is only so good because its oxide is so tenacious?
I suspect we are both handicapped in this endeavor by a lack of in-depth knowledge of how the chemistry actually works. Silver oxide is not really that tenacious -- it's fairly easy to remove by mechanical action (polishing), and does not rapidly and spontaneously reform under ordinary conditions. Therefore, I suspect that silver metal is a decent catalyst, but that the real action is from the oxide.
If this is the case, then the process would be clear: find a transition metal with a tenacious oxide that can stand high temperature... this would be what you call "convenent properties."
Yes, but my idea of convenient properties includes cost and availability, which is the real downfall of things like platinum.
Even if they don't *form* their oxides easily, they probably will form oxides at high temperatures in highly oxidizing environments. Even stainless will, but from what you're saying it sounds like it would probably be sacrificial. Of course, the damned chamber is stainless, but clearly it doesn't have the kind of surface area we need.
Actually, I think that mild steels would be a preferable base for an iron oxides catalyst, since they form oxides more readily.
I think it's time to do some experimenting. Perhaps we should make up a catalyst pack from plain ol' stainless and play around with it? How about nickel? We can get nickel foam pretty easily, and the nickel's darned durable. The next question is the best way to heat the pack.
Nickel is one of the few transition metals that does *not* have a bad relationship with peroxide. I consider the most interesting targets of investigation to be Pt, Pd, Rh, Re, Co, & Ir, mostly due to the common use of these metals in catalysts for other chemical processes. This is sheer guesswork, and most of those material share the expense and availability constraints of platinum.
-p
Mars or Bust!
www.marssociety.com
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