I came up with this idea the other night. Apparently, I am not the first. Instead of rewriting everything, here is an article someone else wrote:

This idea came to me when reading about amateur rocket enthusiasts building hydrogen peroxide powered rockets. H2O2 or Hydrogen Peroxide is an unstable molecule, being esientially a water molecule with a extra oxygen atom hanging on. Disturb it and the water molecule will happily fling off that pesky oxygen with considerable energy. The result is about half the energy density of hydrocarbon burning, but the result is just water and oxygen.

H2O2 rockets work by injecting the liquid into a catalyst pack -usually a stack of silver gauze screens- which rapidly degrades the H2O2 causing enormous heat and pressure. (check out the links) The hot exhaust is perfect for injecting fuel for additional power and specific impulse - these kinds of hybrid rockets are known to be super clean and powerful.

The base of my idea is for this to be adapted to automotive purposes. A car could be retro-fitted to the new fuel easily as a power booster. You could add a squirt of about 7 mls per cylinder charge would increase oxygen available for combustion by 75%. The H2O2's own energy would add to the power, perhaps an additional two three times. Peak cylinder pressure would be enormously high though = engineering headache.

Using peroxide as the sole fuel is ideal of course and is part of my idea. You'd simply inject it directly into the cylinder (the injector would have a catalyst screen that the peroxide was forced through). Air would merely provide a working mass to absorb the heat and pressure. The fuel could be metered in any desired quantity or rate to maximise efficiency or power. Infact you could make ALOT of power.

It'd be much simpler again to simply have a well designed turbine. You'd have a very compact and efficient (turbines reach 80%) engine that could make very high power with a single moving part. (again check out the links - especially the 1500hp go-kart which is a baked and working implementaion - however doing that in a car seems unbaked so far!)

Thus I presesnt my main idea, would be of course an practical application, with four small turbines, each one actually integrated into the hubs of the wheels giving four wheel drive. In economy mode, only the rear or front two turbines would run, making the most out of the fuel at the optimium operating flow and load. The other two would kick in when performance is required.

No need for a gearbox or clutch, that starting torque would be insane!

The main benefit is with such enormous power density is that there is no bulky engine to package in the design of the car allowing more interior space, crash protection and ultimately more freedom for design. Want more power? Simply pump in more peroxide. No tuning or arsing about with aftermarket parts. Except maybe stronger turbines.

But its not as magic as it sounds. I'm not sure about safety as it *is* difficult to store and being such a wonderful oxidiser you don't want accidents. If there was a leak everyone would be more than blonde in a 100 metre radius.

It's not like gasoline isn't dangerously flammable anyway. It's not hard to engineer safety either, present CNG (~3000psi) and LPG (~400psi) cylinders are made incredibly strong and are statisticly safer in a crash than conventional fuel tanks! Oddly higher percentage peroxide is actually more stable (up to boiling point +150 C and freezing -50 C). 95% concentration peroxide is comparitively easy to store and use.

What do you think of this idea or comment?
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