Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The hotter chemical flame (cyanogen-ozone).

A quick search revealed an interesting paper dealing with premixed cyanogen-ozone flames (Streng A.G.; Grosse A.V. The premixed ozone-cyanogen flame. JACS 1957, 79(20), 5583-5583). They did some pretty extreme experiments establishing stability of cyanogen-ozone mixtures:

It was first established, in static experiments, that cyanogen and pure ozone can be mixed and stored for a considerable time without reaction. Thus the mixture 3(CN)2 + 403 was kept in a 100-cc. Pyrex vessel, at 1000 mm. at 0'C for 2.0 hours with no noticeable change in pressure; after this time cyanogen was frozen out at -78", the 03 pumped off and the volumes of the separated gases were found to be essentially equal to their original volumes. Identical results were obtained with the mixture 3(CN)2 + 203.
That is a brave chemistry, that's for sure. Both ozone and cyanogen are extremely toxic, and pure ozone is unstable and readily decomposes explosively. Mixing these things together and warming them up, monitoring the pressure, that is something.

And the description of the flames and temperatures (in Kelvin):



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