Buckminster Fullerenes (fuel tanks in Traveler) originally Metal
Hydrides question
Well it is good to have some engagement on this topic. Thanks for the
comments Dave and Leonard. It seems obvious that these things made it
into the too hard basket if they were actually considered by the TNE
publishers. But time and technology march on…
Following is a quick look at buckyballs as a source of hydrogen for
fuel in Traveller.
I’d better include a quick units analysis for my prior musings.
Organometalic fullerenes also known as buckyballs. Two examples are
C48B12 [ScH2] and C60 [ScH2]12. These are known to be stable and can
absorb 8.77% and 7.0 wt% respectively.
Here I’ll only look at Bucky Ball One as representative, though I
may have a look at BB2 later.
Bucky Ball One
Q. What is the mass per mole?
C Carbon 48 atoms
12.00 g/mol Carbon x48 atoms carbon=576 g Carbon/mol buckyball
B Boron 12 atoms
10.95 g/mol boron x 12 atoms boron=131.4 g Boron/mol buckyball
Scandium 1 atom
44.95 g/mol x 1 atom scandium=44.