Plastic Soda Bottle + Alcohol = Rocket

[Dang911]

I do not know if anyone has done this or not, but here it goes.

WARNING 2 liter, and 5 Gallon PET/PC Bottles WILL explode upon reaching a constant pressure of about 300-400 PSI, not to say they can't take a flash at 800 PSI, but be forewarned!!!

OK, Everyone knows how to make a simple "bottle rocket", but I myself got tired of the small wisps they made, and lack of any "real" thrust. My fix is such.

On the back of the bottle, drill a 1/8"-3/32" hole. Use this hole to force the nozzle connected to your air compressors air gun into it. Now, fill the tank as usual with Methanol, Naptha, Either, Acetylene, R/C Car nitro, whatever your fancy. Here is where is gets crazy.

Start a SMALL (I didn't studder) trickle of air using the air gun. This will push some fumes out to the open flame of your lighter. As soon at it lights, press the air gun fully, to push 120 PSI of fresh air into the bottle. This will mix with the fuel, and also pressurize the "primed and ready" mixture.

The reaction happens in the blink of an eye, with a VERY LOULD SWOOSH!!! At the same time the bottle will have some major combustion going on inside it. You will not be to see any flames (maybe some with fossil fuels), because combustion is way to damn complete/fast.

The outcome?

The bottle will create some serious thrust. Holding a 2 liter, it takes my arm for a serious ride. When I do it with the 5 gallon, I MYSELF GO FOR A RIDE. Yes this is no lie. I weight 135 lbs, and with the back of the 5 gallon' bottle at my side, it has enough thrust to push my body a good 10 feet on smoothed concrete. A warning again, I did have a failure with one 5 gallon bottle. The whole bottom blew off, and my father was convinced my air compressor blew up.

I will post some video of the 2 liters soon.

Below are some stills of my bottle experiments NOT USING FORCED AIR. They were uploaded in backward order, so look at them from bottom to top please (makes more sence). At the top I show how I like to blow up sewers. I love my neighbors, they tolerate all the stuff I do, and actually find a lot of it interesting, yes even the "frequent" explosions, fireballs, and smoke!!!

[pezman]

Dude, you are completely insane -- welcome to the forum.

If your posts suddenly stop, we'll know what happened ...

Seriously, there are some plans out there for water rockets that could be adapted to high-pressure methanol rockets -- like maybe a launcher that releases and lights the rocket in one shot.

This makes me want to experiment with the methanol rockets a bit more ...

[Dang911]

WATER ROCKETS!!! I THINK I HAVE THE KING OF ALL WATER ROCKET VIDEOS. YOU WILL WATCH THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH AMAZEMENT. IF ANYONE ELSE WANTS TO TRY THIS, PLEASE VIDEO TAPE IT!!!

Its real too!!!! HAHA

[Mark]

Some 2 liter pressure tests.
Mark
http://www.h2orocket.com/topic/safe/safe.html
http://waterrocket.uh-lab.de/lr010101_bursttest.htm

[Mark]

http://science.csustan.edu/stkrm/Recipe ... le-jet.htm

[Johansson]

Inspired by your rockets a friend and I built a couple of soda bottle rockets today, the most impressive one was a 2 litre bottle with a 1.5mm hole in the cap. We had much fun playing with it inside my garage... ;-)

[Dang911]

I have recently begun to play with electrolysis with the intent to "farm" hydrogen and oxygen. I have been successfully, but it has been painstakingly slow. I have tried salt water (super slow) and sulfuric (a little faster). For my anion/cation, I am using pieces of stainless.

Does anyone think the material of the anion/cation effects the rate at which electrolysis takes place? For instance, would using aluminum/titanium make a difference in the rate of fission?

I saw the "Mr. Splitter" http://www.et.byu.edu/~wheeler/benchtop/hydropyro.php and he said he could do 0.5L (combined) of oxy/H per min with only a 10 amp drain @ 12VDC!!! I can get between 8-12mL per min. HAHA I know. Now what is that guy doing? I wish he explained on his web site.

I am only using 3A @ 12VDC battery charger, and he is running his off of a 12V Lead Acid battery, with only 7.5AH. I have that exact battery, and I can tell you I get the same, 8-12mL ONLY.

Does anyone know any tricks to speedy electrolysis?

[leo]

try NAOH
natrium hydroxid

[Dang911]

NaOH is sodium hydroxide!!!

[pezman]

Not in the Netherlands -- or Germany Google "natrium" and you'll get plenty of hits.

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Not in the Netherlands -- or Germany Google "natrium" and you'll get plenty of hits.

Or in Croatia. Took me a while to get used to the 'sodium' thing. Also, tungsten is called 'wolfram'. There are probably others, too, but I can't remember them at the moment.

[Mark]

What came to mind to me was kalium. I had most of the periodic table memorized before I took my first chemistry class, and wondered why some elements had funny abbreviations. The elements tin, lead, silver, and gold also have "funny" symbols.
Mark

[Anders Troberg]

Or in Croatia. Took me a while to get used to the 'sodium' thing. Also, tungsten is called 'wolfram'.

Same thing in Sweden, which is wierd since 'tungsten' is actually a Swedish word (meaning 'heavy rock').

I've played around a bit with eloctrolysis, using a bucket, som plastic bottles, electrical tape, some old spoons for electrodes, the mains 220 V, a bunch of diodes I had in my box of stuff to get DC current and put a lightbulb in series to limit the current (to avoid blowing the fuse).

If you do this, set everything up, take several big steps away from the contraption and plug in the power from a safe distance, and do not go close again until you have unplugged it. I mean it, if you stick your hands into this while it is running, you may very well get crispy on the outside and burned on the inside.

I don't know how much it actually produced (using tap water), but it sure as hell bubbled a lot, it only took minutes to fill the bottles.

[Dang911]

Do you know how may Amps DC you were running? So you used diodes to take the top half of the AC sign wave, were you still running 220V DC in the end?

Also you were just using plain water? I find that hard to believe. When I have tried it with regular water, it is practically like an insulator. Maybe your water is treated, thus it has mineral salts added, but pure water WILL NOT go though electrolysis.

I think the speed at which electrolysis takes place is more dependant on the number of amps, not volts you are pushing. Higher amps faster results maybe?

Again I will pose the question, does the inert material used for the anode/cathode in electrolysis, effect the rate at which it happens?

[El-Kablooey]

For cathode, you can use lead, I think for anode platinum is best, platinum won't dissolve like steel, copper, brass, and most other metals. Aluminum won't dissolve either, but it will become anodized and the aluminum oxide surface will insulate the Al and after awhile it will stop the current flow, but Al will work if you strip off the oxide layer after every use in a dilute NAOH solution. If you rectify 220v mains you get 370 volts DC, don't do this! Use a large transformer, with rectified output 12 to 24v DC is plenty enough. A big battery charger probably makes the most sense, although any DC power supply will work (DC welder, modified microwave transformers, etc...)

sulfuric acid electrolyte is commonly used, but I would use anything else! Fooling around with H2SO4 really isn't any fun at all, even in weak concentrations. It's nasty stuff, and no matter what you do you will be finding holes in your jeans, not to mention it stinks terribly. Go with salt water, or maybe NAOH, but I have never used it, I try to stay away from caustic chemicals if at all possible.


Oh yeah, for your anode/cathode electrodes, the surface areas should be about equal. The more surface area, the more current draw, more current = more H2 and O.