Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of the Pnictogen WingIf you pass superheated steam over solid carbon (e.g. "coke" or charcoal) the water is reduced to hydrogen gas, while oxidizing the carbon to carbon monoxide. This mixture has the nickname of "water gas" and it was once used as a method for producing burnable heating gas, but the process is not particularly efficient and it was probably a bad idea to pipe carbon monoxide into folks' homes anyway. Whatever the dangers of piping in methane instead, at least it's not as deadly toxic as carbon monoxide.
The mixture is lighter than air; both CO and H2 are less dense than molecular oxygen, and carbon monoxide is about par with nitrogen. And it occurs to me that it might be relatively simple to suppress the combustion of this mixture in air with a bit of halon.
Is there any terrifyingly bad steampunk-ish way in which this reaction can be exploited for transportation? The need to have a supply of water on hand to make the water-gas is a bit of a limitation, but stillβ¦I think it's possible to imagine filling-stations making water-gas from coke on the spot for pumping into dirigibles. But I was also envisioning the generation of water-gas being used in a submersible vehicle to help maintain buoyancy.
#chemistry #hydrogen #carbon-monoxide #steampunk
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Benjamin Carr, Ph.D. π¨π»βπ»π§¬
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