ASU Chem E Car explodes: DANGEROUS SITUATION

This video shows ASU Team A's competition car during their first run. According to their poster, their car used a catalysis reaction with hydrogen peroxide to produce steam and oxygen which would then be fed into a "tesla turbine" used to power the wheels. Something apparently went wrong and caused this explosion to occur.

Luckily no one was hurt. It seems the explosion was directed downwards and only damaged the vehicle. However, if this had occurred differently, someone could have been seriously injured.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Chem
• Car
• ASU
• explosion
• car
• bomb
• hydrogen
• peroxide
• steam
• catalyst
• potassium
• permanganate
• 2009
• AIChE

[oucheme]

First, what is a "tesla turbine" and what was yours constructed of? Also, had you tested you car prior to this? Any videos of it working?

[CSUChemE]

Pressure chambers were half inch stainless steal. Tesla turbine was made out of aluminum and hard drive platters. Google it, it's really interesting. We had tested it many times before the competition but we were bit effective in moving the car for a variety of reasons. Our pressure vessels alone were thirty pounds We had two large gears to improve torque by a factor of fifty. The main problem though was liquid discharge into the turbine. added a water knock out; tested it many times. It blew up

[oucheme]

1/2 inch!! dude, we used a propane canister that was probably no more that 1/16'' thick. And it was rated to around 300#. Also good call on the KO drum. We also had slugs of liquid coming into our turbine. At one point we had three different conditioning tanks just to make sure liquid was kept to a min. but hey keep after it.