Water cooled gun powder.
Posted by Ben-Goldberg@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 8 comments
This crazy idea is to mix ordinary gun powder with "dry water" (silica coated water droplets).
When the gunpowder burns, the water absorbs heat and becomes steam, resulting in lower temperature gasses in the barrel and reduced flash.
7w4773r@reddit
Why would you want to reduce the gas temperature? Thats the primary mechanism of gas expansion and reducing it would likely reduce the energy available to the projectile. I’m sure you could do an optimization study to determine if there is a break-even point where you can reduce temperature and maintain projectile velocity, but I’m not sure it’ll work.
Ben-Goldberg@reddit (OP)
Reducing the gas temperature results in the gas that goes out of the muzzle being cooler.
Cooler muzzle exhaust would be less visible in infrared.
The amount of visible muzzle flash would be reduced or eliminated.
It might not even reduce the projectile velocity for the same reason that water injection in an internal combustion engine does not usually decrease power.
7w4773r@reddit
Water injection in a piston engine is a totally different principle. It cools the incoming air charge through evaporation which then allows a higher compression ratio or more ignition timing advance to be run with less risk of pre-ignition or detonation due to the lower charge air temperatures. The post-combustion temperatures aren’t significantly lower if at all, and the advanced ignition timing or increased compression ratio more than compensate for the energy lost to evaporating the water.
The only way you’re going to get the infrared signature of a muzzle flash to zero is if the temperature of the exhausted gases are exactly the same temperature as the surrounding air. I suppose you could cool the combustion byproducts to ambient temperature with water cooling but you’d probably find that there is a) not a lot of energy left in the expanding gases and b) too much water for the powder to burn meaningfully.
Ben-Goldberg@reddit (OP)
The energy absorbed by the water in a water injected engine is not "lost" it turns the water into steam.
Water becoming steam increases in volume.
I_might_be_weasel@reddit
So it vaporizes micro plastics?
jesusrambo@reddit
The Reddit special: “So it”
Chiliatch@reddit
Where'd you get microplastics?
Google things before commenting homie. You've got the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips...
fluffynuckels@reddit
I imagine itd make the guns less powerful