🧵 "hyperbrisant" fuels via radiolysis/photolysis

Anonymous at Tue, 30 Jul 2024 01:19:31 UTC No. 16302654

Are there molecules which are particularly suited to radiolysis/photolysis which can effectively be used as fuels?

I had a conversation years ago about that which was very interesting, but I have since forgotten the specific term used to refer to fuels/exothermic reactions which the reaction front propagates at the speed of light, either by its own reaction byproducts, or by an external source.

The term I keep remembering is hyperbrisant, but that was in a military context. What I am looking for are the terms used to refer to fuels which some specific chemical bond is resonant to a specific wavelength of radiation. The concept was that these types of had extremely high ignition temperatures, but surprisingly easy to start/stop/control the reaction based on exposure to different wavelengths of radiation.

The concept was fairly simple, a molecule has a range of lengths in the bonds, each corresponding to some wavelength of radiation. Methane with 109 picometers between bonds, means 2.75x10^15 hz, or an integer octave of it. Shitty example here, since that is in the range of visible light, but the question remains the same.

Since the radiolysis reaction front proceeds at the speed of light, the mass of fuel is completely consumed with a low excitation energy. I do seem to recall that there are also more conventional fuels which are able to be thermally ignited, but their ignition releases a wavelength of radiation which then is resonant to the bonds elsewhere in the molecule, thereby causing a self-sustaining reaction, as in a turbine combustion chamber.