Highest temperature fuel?

[Tricho]

What would you guys here at rorta say is the highest temperature while burning fuel legally available?

[death11284]

It depends on the application, are you looking for a high-temp propellant or something? Fuel is kind of a loose term...

[torcher]

death, you have a good point, but could you tell us some of the hottest liquid and solid fuels for cars and rockets(shit like that)

[death11284]

How unstable can it be?

Nitromethane at ~2200 degrees C iirc..that's the only thing I can think of that would double as car fuel that burns that hot..

Acetylene at a little over 3000

Propane can't remember the temp on it, but high enough for most applications..

Black powder typically works as a very good propellant but it doesn't burn very hot at all thanks to the sulfur in the mix...

Anything with a nitrate group is going to burn incredibly hot, but typically will be made explosive very easily...

Still curious why you want high-heat in a fuel though, usually that's something you very much DON'T want.

[Tricho]

No it was just an interesting subject. I wanted to know more about. Cause I was wondering about the heat effects of fuels that burn at incredibly high temperatures on steel.

[crazy white guy]

No it was just an interesting subject. I wanted to know more about. Cause I was wondering about the heat effects of fuels that burn at incredibly high temperatures on steel.

Watch the jet fuel VS. Steel "I" beam videos. Its fucking cool. I didn't expect the outcome at all.

[Muncher]

Hottest is Dicyanoacetylene not legal though, Acetylene burns at 3300 °C and is available legally. Out of curiosity what are you using it forÉ

[jdcpe17]

Watch the jet fuel VS. Steel "I" beam videos. Its fucking cool. I didn't expect the outcome at all.

yea they make wood that has been impregnated with various chemicals that actually does better in fires than steel does... actually a bad house fire (without the jetfuel) can still melt / bend steel...

[Virus]

A hydrocarbon of your choice with RFNA as an oxidizer.

[-=HeX=-]

A hydrocarbon of your choice with RFNA as an oxidizer.

Suicide.

It would ignite/explode/kill you upon mixing. The RFNA would instantaneously oxidize the hydrocarbon and BOOM.

[Yafmot]

Hydrogen has, by far, the highest caloric content of any combustible fuel, pound fo pound. Only thing is, a pound of Hydrogen is kinda' bulky. And it has a nasty habit of leaking through just about anything. And I mean leaking THROUGH. It will eventually infiltrate through most metals. That's been one of the major bugs with implementing it for everyday, vehicular use.

United Nuclear had a cool Hydrogen fuel retrofit for corvettes, among other rides, but the government shut 'em down because the storage medium "might be used for manufacturing explosives". How unbelieveably chickenshit! I've forgotten the exact substance in question, but I do remember that there are lots of easier ways of making something that goes BOOM.

Back to the subject, it's not for nothing that the F-1 engines on the Saturn -5, and later the shuttle main engines, used LH2 & LOX to make 'em go. I lived close to Aerojet Propulsion during the many years they were testing Titans and other prime movers for NASA and the Military, and you could hear the difference between LH2-LOX engines and ones that ran on LOX & kerosene. The rattles & smacks audible when the exhaust was beating against the (relatively) cold atmospheric air were noticably sharper and more distinct when the former was being used.

Even in orbital applications, they're getting away from hypergolics in favor of LH2 and either LOX or some other oxidizer, due to the deleterious effects of hypergolic combustion products on spaceborne optics and other components. And Hydrogen systems, both for maneuvering thrusters and apogee kicks, provide more shots per pound of propellant than others, which in turn means more longevity for the spacecraft (and they're not cheap).

Look it up. Check the fuels section of 'Mark's Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers." Hydrogen has many more BTUs per pound. Several times the nearest competitor. Nothing else even comes close.

[iceniner]

Good show, old chap.

[madscientist]

Cyanogen for sure. Available for welding applications, burns at 6000K (if I'm remembering this right) when mixed with pure oxygen.

[Beyond]

Cyanogen for sure. Available for welding applications, burns at 6000K (if I'm remembering this right) when mixed with pure oxygen.

Dicyanoacetylene burns hotter; cyanogen is 2nd only to it. Dicyanoacetylene is naturally found and not illegal to possess so technically, it does fit OP's qualifications.

[madscientist]

Guess my book is wrong. Says 6000K here, but looking around online looks like cyanogen burns at 4500K and dicyanoacetylene significantly hotter.

[Mauser]

Guess my book is wrong. Says 6000K here, but looking around online looks like cyanogen burns at 4500K and dicyanoacetylene significantly hotter.

I think liquid propane burns at 3500 degrees Fahrenheit. I heard theres a way they can transfer it from a gas like that into an actual liquid like gas from a gas station.

[True Sounds]

It's easy aluminium!Go to an industrial area annd pick up some shavings off the floor of a metal turning shop and presto high temp fuel (goes along nice with anfo mixtures) (no need to worry about bad reactions with that
)Add booster of tnt and you are go for destruction of concrete(damn medians)and tanks!(The driveable unkind types) Also don't put an old accomplice like God or Allah or Vishnu Or Jehovah into jokes . It makes you look stupid in the hell your going to!The Handsome Man He is.

[Wayland]

OP, rather than ask what's the hottest-burning fuel, ask what's the hottest-burning combination of reactants. The temperature at which a fuel burns depends quite entirely on what kind of oxidizer it's reacting with. Here's a video of a charcoal grill having liquid oxygen poured into it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8) It's reduced to a puddle of molten metal, since the abundance of oxidizer accelerated the burn greatly.

Anyway, you might want to look up Chlorine Trifluoride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride) just for fun. It's the strongest oxidizer known to science. Hypergolic with every organic substance at room temperature; makes metals burn; explodes when brought in contact with water; no substance known to science can extinguish it (must simply wait until it reacts itself away). When brought in contact with silicates like sand or concrete, the byproduct of its incandescent fire are thick and sticky clouds of superheated hydrofluoric and hydrochloric acids. The Nazis used it in WWII in exotic bombs intended to take out hardened positions like bunkers, pillboxes and redoubts. They called it N-Stoff.

As far as practical stuff goes - thermite is good for melting through tricky objects; if you're making a Molotov Cocktail, I suggest kerosene doped with polymers. It burns much longer than gasoline. Don't underestimate kerosene; the most powerful chemical-fired rocket ever tested by humanity, the N1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_%28rocket%29), was fueled by a kerosene/liquid oxygen mixture.

[digermane]

Anyway, you might want to look up Chlorine Trifluoride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride) just for fun.

First off, it can only be used to increase the temperature of an already exothermic redox reaction. Secondly, having worked with more chemicals than probably most of the people on this forum (including ClF3) theres only two chemicals that actually scare me. Hydrofluoric acid and ClF3. Seriously, if theres another way you can do something, don't use that shit.

[Wayland]

First off, it can only be used to increase the temperature of an already exothermic redox reaction. Secondly, having worked with more chemicals than probably most of the people on this forum (including ClF3) theres only two chemicals that actually scare me. Hydrofluoric acid and ClF3. Seriously, if theres another way you can do something, don't use that shit.
Yes, precisely. Handling such a chemical is too difficult. I brought it up just for fun, as I've said.

Where have you gained your expertise, what have you worked on? This is quite interesting.

[digermane]

Research lab doing semiconductor synthesis. Specifically, precursors for high efficiency solar cells.

[Wayland]

Commendable. It's practical, important research. Shame I wouldn't be able to hold much of a conversation; I work a little with DIY electronics, but material sciences involved - not so much.

Sometimes I wonder if my life is ultimately going to sum up as a failure. I never had enough perseverance to make it to a technical or scientific field. Yet I feel such yearning for them... I wonder if I'm just a lazy good-for-nothing...

[Abrazaderas]

i'm surprised only true sounds has mentioned aluminum. atomized aluminum is a primary ingredient of rocket fuel and it's not a fancy compounding procedure as i understand it, they pretty much just stir it in. flash powder includes aluminum powder. aluminum is very explosive.

and tanks!(The driveable unkind types)

[digermane]

Bulk aluminum is very nonreactive (passivated easily) but aluminum nanoparticles are a very strong reducing agent (in the right environment) due to the unusually strong M-O bond aluminum forms (silane is the best but its too hard to make explosives with given that it is explosive.) So, when making inorganic explosives and fires Al is useful for creating a more favorable reaction.

[Wayland]

i'm surprised only true sounds has mentioned aluminum. atomized aluminum is a primary ingredient of rocket fuel and it's not a fancy compounding procedure as i understand it, they pretty much just stir it in. flash powder includes aluminum powder. aluminum is very explosive.
Kindly note:
thermite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
It's pretty crude though. The poor man's James Bond seems to believe that thermite would be good for cracking safes and melting through locks, and it was used in that capacity in an episode of Breaking Bad - however, it's really difficult to use in a controlled fashion. It likes to drip its way through whatever it's lying on top of, which makes it good for destroying car engine blocks (something that a Molotov in the passenger salon can't do).

[-=HeX=-]

How 'bout Mg PTFE... Simple mix, mix em mechanically then press it hydraulically and remotely with a lotta pressure. Too bad in the pressing stage it can explode...

And why do we need high temp unless we are cutting or welding? For mere incendiaries vaporised wax is plenty hot...

[digermane]

And why do we need high temp unless we are cutting or welding? For mere incendiaries vaporised wax is plenty hot...

Exactly. Thermite or acetylene/oxygen is good enough for any use that I could possibly think of. Glass blowing and steel-working are the only two things I'm aware of that require something that hot and an acetylene/O2 torch is perfectly fine for any glass. Thermite is good for welding. If you're doing extended metal working the torch is more than hot enough.

[aurum est potestas]

I like something that Hex mentioned at some time or another. About ten pounds of Paraffin wax melted into a tub with a 3 in diameter hole in the center as it sets, fill that hole to the top with thermite, detonate remotely and you have a cloud of flaming wax droplets.

[-=HeX=-]

Aurum - thats it right there. I normally use a CaSO4:MgAl water cast incendiary, though I have even heard of fucking ground up sparkler dust working, which I intend to try soon for the laugh (Halloween, smaller scale).

Of course, really the incendiary used should be tailored to the task!