[AR] Re: More thoughts on the SpaceX disaster
- From: Evan Daniel <evanbd@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 17:09:01 -0400
On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 4:18 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...nitrogen will not condense...
Actually it will, if you get any condensation at all, because (loosely
speaking) it will dissolve in the condensing oxygen. What you get is
somewhat-oxygen-enriched liquid air, not straight oxygen. Still a safety
concern, yes.
To go into more detail: this is basically a distillation operation in
reverse. Each step provides a moderate amount of enrichment, if you
want reasonable purity you need things like multiple fractioning steps
and reflux and so on. You can find the composition of the liquid from
the composition of the air and a distillation chart. (Or by looking up
vapor pressure curves and doing some math with them and the relative
concentrations. I'm pretty sure there are no azeotropic or other weird
effects with O2 + N2 + Ar.)
Evan Daniel
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