Gaseous combustion at high pressures.—Part V. The explosion of hydrogen-air and carbon monoxide-air mixtures at varying initial pressures up to 175 atmospheres

Abstract

Since publishing the last paper of this series, in which were recorded the results of our experiments upon the behaviour of hydrogen-air and carbon monoxide-air mixtures when exploded in our bomb apparatus at varying initial pressures between 3 and 75 atmospheres, we have been enabled, thanks to further substantial aid from the Society’s Government Grant Committee, to instal in the Fuel Research Laboratories of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington, a new chrome-nickel steel bomb (No. 3), of similar design to the one (No. 2) previously employed by us, but capable of withstanding explosion pressures up to 2,000 atmospheres. This has enabled us to extend the research to still higher pressures than would have been safe with the old bomb, and the present paper embodies the results of our further experiments with the mixtures in question at varying initial pressures between 75 and 175 atmospheres. A review of these results, in conjunction with those already published in our previous paper ( q. v .), besides providing further strong evidence in support of our view of the activation of nitrogen in the explosion of carbon-monoxide—oxygen—nitrogen mixtures at high pressures, a subject which we have already fully dealt with, throws further light upon other important aspects of gaseous explosions which have always been keenly discussed by chemists and engineers.